Gig Report - Life is Drama @ Boobens/Maple Ave Pub

I'm a little behind w/my gig reports been REALLY BUSY at work. So here is a quick update to my travels :D

Booben's:
On Sat 10/29 I played a return engagement w/Life is Drama @ Booben's in Dwight. It was their Halloween Bash and while I was driving there I was driving behind a pickup truck with some road cases and a drum rack in the back. On my way home I saw KISS (or a band that was dressed up like KISS) loading their gear up after their gig @ 2am, looks like everyone was working this night :D .

My wife & I just returned from a cruise to Spain/Italy on Wed night so I was still suffering from jetlag for this gig and Sat afternoon I started coming down w/something. I started getting the chills, coughing, I was just worn out. I kept thinking about other people in bands who have just toughed it out & played so I did too...toughest gig I've ever played. I don't want to do that again anytime soon. I bought 2 bottles of orange juice for the gig on the way and had a Bloody Mary at the gig to see if the spice would help some. My band kept asking me all night how I was doing, by the 3rd set my head was just hanging low :( .

We had an average crowd there, approx 40ppl and only 5ppl dressed up in costume...if you include the band (we dressed as pirates) there was a total of 10 of us dressed up. For a costume contest that was kinda disappointing, but the crowd really getting into it made up for it. This was our first gig with our new bass player and I have to admit we sounded GOOD!!! Just listening to our first 6 songs of the night and WOW!!! We sounded just as good as the original recording!!! :D

At the end of the night the owner told us that he'd probably be closing after the 1st of the year which is disappointing. :( We told him that we'd play his last bash for a lesser rate if he wants to do that. He's been really good to us.

Maple Ave Pub:
This past Sat we had our first gig at Maple Ave Pub. This was our first foray back to the Chicagoland area (we've been playing in the boonies the past couple of months it seems). The club had a stage door in the back with a ramp onto the stage which made loading in/out REAL EASY :D It was a pretty big place with the stage on the right side w/a cage for dancing, the bar more forward and centered in the room w/pool tables on the left side. It was a pretty big room and pretty empty when we started, I was a little concerned about that. The bar provided a sound guy for this gig and he had us sounding REALLY GOOD, all the comments I heard between sets was how great we sounded. Stage volume was a bit lacking but I didn't want to touch my amp and screw things up for the audience. Again, I thought we played AWESOME Sat night & they said we had 120ppl there :D . Didn't look like that many from the stage, it looked full but not PACKED but that number was impressive and bodes well for us w/our booking agent :D (always important). I'm sure we'll be back there soon!!!!

My next gig w/ LIFE IS DRAMA is @ JW Holsteins (17358 South Oak Park Ave, Tinley Park IL) on Friday (11/18/11). This is my first time playing here & we used to live in Tinley Park for 15yrs so I should have a pretty good “hometown” crowd coming out to this one. We play from 10:00pm-1:30am.

Thanks for reading and all the great comments & KEEP ROCKIN' !!!!
Tommy Gunz