So, we've been trying to get a gig at this place for a while. It's very convenient to me and our guitar/singer. It's in the same city as where we practice and a mile from guitar/singer's house. It's also an all ages venue as it is a restaurant that also has a bar. There is no stage, just a part of the floor in front of one of the front windows. It's right on the lake, so they've gone with a beach bar theme (Margaritaville was definitely on the set for this one). They have an area with tables in front of the "stage", a bar in the middle of the room, some more tables off to the side of the bar and a big outdoor area with tables and couches.
We got there at 5 yesterday and started loading in. There were already quite a few people there for happy hour and dinner. The owner said they didn't like a bunch of sound checking mics while people were eating dinner, so we just hooked everything up, tapped the mics a couple of times to make sure everything was hot and then waited for our 8pm start time. We were going to do a quick medley for a sound check, but decided to just start the show and hope everything was set right. We've gotten to know our system pretty well and usually don't have to tweak too much.
We started and everything sounded pretty good. I was playing with a brand new amp (Ampeg Portaflex 500), but my volume was dialed right in. About halfway through the set, we did Good Times Roll and got our first group of dancers. There was a big table of people and they danced with us all night and got people from other tables up. I sang Twilight Zone toward the end of the set and struggled with my vocals. It was super hot and dry in there and I could hear all of us having vocal issues.
We played 3 really good sets, including a guest guitarist we know playing a few with us. We went to take a break after the 3rd set, expecting a 4th one, but they said they were about to make last call. It was only 11 and we were expecting to play til 12. Apparently, they are still in the process of switching over to their summer hours, but there were still at least 50 people there. We went with it and started playing our 4th set right then and did about 5 songs. We rocked Gimme 3 Steps and had just about everyone left up dancing. Then we went into Johnny B. Goode and played it better than we ever had. We were totally feeding off the energy of everyone dancing in front of us. The bass line I play on that song is tough, but I kept it driving through the whole song (basically, I'm playing an 1/8th note walking line and we play it fast). For the first solo, one guitarist plays the typical Chuck Berry style, then we do a 2nd one at the end and our "metal" guitarist plays it similar to the Back to the Future scene. We did the stop and he went into the Eruption tapping lick and then went to town on the rest of the solo. After we ended, I had a buddy of mine who is in his early 20's that had never seen us tell me my bass playing was "sick" (to translate for us older folks, that's a good thing).
Even though we had to end early, it was a great night and it sounded like the bar liked us. We kept the volume down and kept a lot of people there the whole night. Hopefully they will invite us back. We don't have any more paying gigs on the calendar right now, it's time to do another sales run. We are playing a benefit for an animal shelter on April 27th in Dickson, TN. That will be 2 45 minute sets.
