Last night I played with Ugoddawanna's last show at THE place to play on the south side of Chicago, 115 Bourbon St. 115 Bourbon St is a HUGE club with 2 rooms (the Big Room and the Sports Stage) for live entertainment and a separate nightclub. You can easily put in over 1k people in this place and the people just wander around from room to room scoping out the bands and the scene. We just watch the people stagger around from the stage. Ugoddawanna has been playing Bourbon St a couple times a year now for the past 6 years. Ever since I've started playing in bands 4 years ago or so, 115 Bourbon St has been on the TOP of my list of places I've wanted to play and I finally got to last night. I've been looking forward to playing Saturday night for 5 months now.
I was the first one to arrive, lugged my gear all the way from the back alley to the front of the club where we were performing. The stage seemed smaller last night than I remembered it to be. They told me that we pointed our amps towards the back of the stage because some bands were overwhelming the audience with thier volume that and we were to rely on the stage monitors. The stage monitors were...to put it politely...lacking. During one song during the first set my monitor quit so I had to walk back to my backwards facing amp so I could hear myself play and my wife said I dropped out completely out of the PA too. I knew there had to be an issue when I looked at the soundman and he was ducking up and down at the board trying to fix the problem. My monitor also couldn't produce my clean tones all night, so it was barely audible for me on stage, but it did come out in the PA so that was fine and midway through our 2nd set my monitor just completely quit on me. There would be a "pop" of me every once in awhile but I just mostly listened to the other stage monitors. At the end of the night I learned that we could have faced our amps forward. That will help the next time I play there.
Overall I thought it was a great night for Ugoddawanna. People bought us shots, we had a previous guitar player who played with them for 5 years come up and play a song with them. He used my guitar and rig. We had the drummer's daughter come up who sang with the band previously for I think 7 years and the previous guitar player asked if he could close the show out with the band playing the one song the were really known for "Just Wanna Make Love To You" by Foghat. I said "sure" because I felt that this night was really about the band and really, I have always felt since day one that I was just a "hired gun" playing with them for the last 8 months. The other guitar player in the band suggested when we were setting our gear up that I take the spot closer to the the center (like we did at the Taste of Chicago) because the male lead singer's music stand blocks the audience from seeing me play my guitar. I said "no, this may well be his last time playing here so I'm going to give him all the room he needs tonight." I don't think this will be the last time I play here. I have to say I've really enjoyed playing with them and I have been fortunate to have played some of the premier places around Chicago these past 8 months, 115 Bourbon St, Taste of Chicago, Harrah's Casino in Joliet, and a huge festival in Oak Lawn. I've gone from playing in bars that would hold 50-60 people and be considered "packed" to playing places with 200-400 people in them this year alone and what a difference this year has been for me. Starting next month I will be going back to playing the smaller bars and on Oct 2nd my new band GTA (Grand Theft Audio) will be opening for my buddy's band in Crest Hill. I'm really looking forward to "climbing the mountain" again so we can play the bigger venues these next few years.
I'm really hoping that my next band can achieve the same level of success as Ugoddawana has enjoyed.
I've posted some pics on my MySpace and Facebook pages
Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/home.php
MySpace
http://www.myspace.com/tommygunzguitarplayer
Ambition is the path to success...persistence is the vehicle you arrive in!!!
Nice going! Glad you finally got the dream gig of a lifetime! :wink: Good luck and God bless with the new band.
Cool that you overcame or survived the sound problems and had a blast. Atta boy.
I still hope that the best is yet to come, go get 'em Tommy!!! :D
Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
I hope so too. My next goal is to play the big room someday. They have the bigger bands play there regularly.
Ambition is the path to success...persistence is the vehicle you arrive in!!!
Hey man
Really nice going! I'm glad everything worked out for you!
I love reading posts like this - I'd love to join/form a band some day. When I can play...
Ash
Thanks for the reply Ash. I've only been playing in bands for 4 or so years now. I used to play to cds at home and then i decided that i wanted to be in a cover band. So i started reading the ads looking for guitar players. They were all looking for "lead guitar" players. So I went and started taking lessons from a teacher at a Music store for about a year. But after (among other things) I told him that i was looking to join a band and he said "why?" it was clear that I needed another teacher to reach my goals. So I found one and I worked with him for 2 1/2 yrs and during that time I played in 2 different bands. I quit my lessons but I still stay in contact with him. When we got the Taste of Chicago gig I called him to ask how do I use a backline? If you think you're too old for a band...I'm turning 41 next month and i'm having a great time playing gigs. It just takes a little longer to recover getting home @ 3am ;) Stick with it!!! Its a lot better playing with people than to cds.
Ambition is the path to success...persistence is the vehicle you arrive in!!!
Excellent :)
I know I'm not too old to join a band, at 22, but I wish I'd learned to play the guitar years ago! My parents were never exactly supportive of my musical endevours mind you, so I was never able to afford a guitar until a few years back, and getting lessons was out of the question!
I'm still a little hit and miss about whether I want a teacher or not to be honest - while I know one would help me improve dramatically, I also seem to lose interest when I'm required to go to a certain place at a certain time. Then again, for the past 2 weeks I've been practicing for 2-3 hours per night at least, so maybe I should give it a shot...
Oh well. There's potential for a house move within the next year or so. Dunno if it'd be worth getting a teacher when I might be moving in such a (relatively) short time.
Still, excellent to hear about the gig! I look forward to reading about future events. It definately keeps my hopes up and provides ample inspiration!
Ash
Well my response is for you Ash and those who may be reading this who also can relate. I'm taking vocal lessons now every week because now that I can play lead guitar they want me to sing backups. Next they will probably will want me to dance too (triple threat). Anyway, I find it VERY difficult to play and sing at the same time now let alone hit pitch. So I'm taking lessons, I sing in the car and I don't practice outside of that, but I'm making progress and that is whats important to me. My guitar playing is much more important to me and I practice that a an hour or two each day. But if I weren't taking vocal lessons every week I would not be progressing at all...so that keeps me disciplined.
My first year of guitar lessons taught me the 5 blues patterns and the Diatonic Major Scale and I played these every day for A YEAR just to get fluid with them. I still play them regularly and now I incorporate play 3 notes down come back 2 notes play 3 notes down ect. I start on the 3rd fret G and do the Ionian scale and proceed to A ect until I did all the patterns in each position. This took me a year...but it helped because when I did my audition for Ugoddawanna one of my songs was Sweet Child O Mine and I had the second solo...great, intimidation factor HIGH!!! They said it was in the key of D. I tried to learn the solo in the key of D and none of the notes fit any of my scale patterns. But the solo did fit the patterns exactly in the key of G, there is one note that is outside but I'm assuming that was just a mistake. Anyway after working it for 5 days I had it down and I got the gig. So taking lessons for 3 1/2 years paid off for me.
I've also found that I have improved faster and have become a better player by playing in a band for some reason. I've always told people "I'm not Eddie Van Halen", I can't play like that. Well, last week my new band decided we are going to cover Michael Jackson's "Beat It" as opposed to Fall Out Boy's which doesn't have Eddie's solo in it (easier). Then the other guitar player decided that he wanted me to do the solo...great. Needless to say I was intimidated like I was with the Sweet Child O Mine solo. I haven't done 2 handed tapping in a couple of years and back then I used the edge of my pick because I couldn't get it to ring out right. Well, again after 5 days of working on it I am able to play it and it sounds very close to the recording. I do "cheat" during the "stretch legatto" part (12-15-19) because my fingers are like breakfast sausages, not pencils like you see with the guys on youtube. So I tap 19 and finger 12 & 15. As long as it sounds close, who cares.
So there are advantages to both having a teacher AND playing in a band. Both will help you achieve your goals of being a better player quicker than just going it alone.
Ambition is the path to success...persistence is the vehicle you arrive in!!!
Some very good points, I would be using a teacher to compliment playing in (hopefully) a band, and the other way around however. I wouldn't go either one or the other.
I can see how a teacher would be helpful, but I do seem to lose interest in a subject when I start having to go to a certain place at a certain time to do a certain thing. (Probably why I hate work so much!) This is the main reason I'm slightly reluctant about getting a teacher - I suppose I could try it for a few lessons and see what they're *like* at least
All the best
Ash
