See what a Moonrider looks like!

That's a set list and a half - nothing there I wouldn't listen to, and a lot of stuff I like.

Hmmmm - Richmond, VA? Isn't that where Nick's from? We could always organise a trip to see him, ask him if he knows where there's any good live bands - and if he doesn't know, we could always suggest a couple of places.....

Oh yeah - love that pic of the white Squier Tele you posted!

:D :D :D

Vic

That's a set list and a half - nothing there I wouldn't listen to, and a lot of stuff I like.

Hmmmm - Richmond, VA? Isn't that where Nick's from? We could always organise a trip to see him, ask him if he knows where there's any good live bands - and if he doesn't know, we could always suggest a couple of places.....

Nick's about 2 hours North of me. He lives in Alexandria, which is basically one of the DC suburbs. Hope he doesn't have to cross the river tomorrow, 'cause he'll have to drive a LONG way around due to the Inauguration. Both bridges into DC will be closed.
Oh yeah - love that pic of the white Squier Tele you posted!

I haven't been able to take a picture of Ivory that really does her justice. There's just little things like the checkerboard flame on the fingerboard (quarter sawn neck!), and the amber highlights on the nickel-chrome hardware, that just give her a subtle beauty, rather than over the top bling.

We did this one last Wednesday . . . finally got it typed up

Emilio's Tapas Bar

This is the smallest venue we've done yet. Going in, we knew it was unlikely we'd make enormous sums of money at $5 a head. There were three things that helped us decide to play the venue.

First, a good showing and good response at the downtown Tapas bar opens the door to bookings at the two (much) larger suburban locations. Second was being given our choice of any of the menu selections, which offered paella, arroz, and a variety of Spanish cuisine as well as about 30 Tapas selections. Third, was the offer of a "generous bar allowance."

We got there at our usual two hours before show time, loaded in and had everything ready to go in about an hour. By that time our meal orders were ready so we sat down to, "holy MOLY that's a lot of food!" We dug in with gusto, and for the next 40 minutes the conversation consisted mostly of "Mmmmm. You gotta try a bite of this!"

Having savored our most excellent meal, we made our way to the front preceded by inadvertent eructations and followed by flatulent praise of the cook's skill. Once there we rocketed into our first set. Our good mood must have been infectious because we were treated to raucous cheers and the room soon filled to capacity and stayed that way through the last set. Emilio's asked us back for a Friday night slot. We'll be returning there in late April, since our since our weekends are booked solid until then.

I'll give Emilio's an A grade as a venue even though it's small and you know it's not going to pay a tremendous amount of cash. Once you add in the fantastic meal and your favorite beverage at no charge, it becomes a very good spot for "low pressure, just plain fun" type gigs. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it became a prime musician's hangout in the city before long.

That's it 'til next Saturday! We'll be playing in a bowling alley!

Loading in at the Plaza Bowl OR If 6 were 9 you'd be there at 10? :x :x :x :x

I dunno. Maybe it's just me being an old fart and not in touch with the "modern" way of doing things.

Tonight's (1/31) load in was scheduled for 7:00 pm. Doors at 8. Venue provided PA and FOH engineer, basically all we actually had to bring was instruments and amps. Because we're 5 paranoid old geezers we decided to go ahead and bring our mikes, cables and stands( God only knows where the house mikes have been. ). Because I'm a suspenders and belt kinda guy I've got 3 more mikes, 4 mike cables, a passive DI and an ungodly collection of adapters and patch cables in my equipment bag. Good thing too.

True to form, all five of us are at the venue at 6:45, with our drummer the first to arrive so he can rag on us for being pokey old coots. No sound man in sight.

We shrug, since we ARE early, and load in and set up. Since our drummer uses a Roland MIDi drum set, this doesn't take long, and we have our amps set up, and went ahead and set up our stands and mikes (including amp mikes!) All the sound guy has to do is plug cables to mikes and we're ready for soundcheck.The time is now 7:20.

No sound guy in sight. We break to get some liquid in our systems.

7:35. No soundman in sight. We break out our cables, hook up the mikes into the snake, and do an input list stage left to stage right, so he'll know what vocal and instrument mike is in what channel. Yeah, basically we've done everything for him, using the equipment that we brought "just in case." All that's left to be done is power up the system and sound check. It's 7:45, door at 8.

No sound guy in sight. He's been called twice. "I'm on my way man!"

7:58, we have a soundman stroll in the door, with his girlfriend! :evil: "Sorry I'm late! What do you need mikes on?" We hand him the input list of what we had already hooked up. "Wow! you brought your own mikes? Kewl" We point out that we're supposed to be playing NOW. "No problem, I'll just get the system powered up, we do a quick sound check and we're gold."

8:15. Sound guy finally gets the system power on.
8:30. Soundcheck finally finished and we're off.

Am I being unreasonable or old-fashioned in expecting the venue's FOH staff to arrive or be AT the venue for a stated load-in time? We do everything we can to make the FOH engineer's job easier, and we get a lot of praise from real FOH engineers for being an easy band to mix, and a great band to work with (even tonight's guy said he enjoyed working with us, and he was greeted with 5 grumpy old men letting him know in no uncertain terms we weren't at ALL pleased about his late arrival. )

I take my performance seriously, and to me, load in at 7:00 and curtain at 8:00 means be there at or BEFORE 7:00, and curtain at EXACTLY 8:00. Not whenever the FOH gets his knobs twiddled to the right spot.

In the last 4 weeks we've already gained a core group that comes out almost every time we play, and it's growing every week. To me, starting 30 minutes late is 30 minutes of music those fans paid for and didn't get.

Oh yeah . . . how did the rest of the gig go?

WELL, let me tell YOU it was . . . < to be continued >

Plaza Bowl: All she wants to DO is dance!

Where was I? Oh yeah . . .

I really hate going straight into performance from a sound check, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do . . .

This was a family friendly venue, all ages welcome, plus Saturdays are shoe rental and all ya can bowl for $10. Between the people that came specifically to see us, and the families who came for the cut rate bowling, the house was PACKED! Bowling alleys hold a LOT of people, even with the 4 center lanes ripped out to make room for the stage and a big ol' dance floor.

I think the "too much fun" alarm went off about three songs into the first set, and overloaded two songs later.

Things that stand out. . .
The group way down on the far lane against the whose cheers echoed so amazingly . . .
The little girl in pigtails dancing in front of the stage who made me feel like a rock star by asking me to throw her a pick . . .
The hottie on lane 9, who liked to dance in between rolls. She had the other guitar player so discombobulated he forgot where he was in the song!
Watching the counter help singing along with us at the snack bar . . .

It was an excellent night for everyone, The audience had fun, and the owner commented that most of the families would usually bowl and leave, with mostly teens after 10:30. We kept almost everyone there until closing, which meant HIS sales were up. For us it was a very nice change after some of the smaller rooms, even though we'd agreed to do the job for the door. It was a really NICE door :D

This one's on our must play list. It's a real hoot to play, and it pays well! Hopefully, Slowpoke the Sound Guy will take some of our advice to heart, and be there on time from here on out.

Sounds like a great gig - and a great plan by the owner - put a stage in the middle of a bowling alley? Who'd 'a thunk it.

And nothing beats an appreciative audience.

To be halfway fair to the sound guy, most bands are late and he may feel that there's no point in trying to place mics until everything else is set. He probably knows his gear, so a soundcheck should go fast. So I'd give him to 7:30. After that, he's costing the house money. You should remind him/them when you schedule your next gig there.

Also, you won't always get a chance for a break between sound checks and starting your set list. Something to consider is to have an easy song that has a mix of solos and harmonies that you can use as a sound-check song. I use "Feelin' Alright", and it's been said that "Frankenstein" started out as a warm up for Edgar Winter.

PS: Did you ever play with the remnants of the other band, or did they just fade away?

To be halfway fair to the sound guy, most bands are late and he may feel that there's no point in trying to place mics until everything else is set. He probably knows his gear, so a soundcheck should go fast. So I'd give him to 7:30. After that, he's costing the house money. You should remind him/them when you schedule your next gig there.

Also, you won't always get a chance for a break between sound checks and starting your set list. Something to consider is to have an easy song that has a mix of solos and harmonies that you can use as a sound-check song. I use "Feelin' Alright", and it's been said that "Frankenstein" started out as a warm up for Edgar Winter.

PS: Did you ever play with the remnants of the other band, or did they just fade away?

If he'd have been there by 7:30, we have been OK. It doesn't take that long to hook up 4 vocal mics, 3 line feeds and 2 guitar mics. We would have started on time. Walking in 2 minutes before curtain is flat out unacceptable by any standard. Yes, there are acceptable reasons for tardiness or absence. They usually involve death, disease, or blood. That wasn't the case here

As far as "most bands are late," that should be amended to "amateur bands are late." Being late sends the message that you're unprofessional, don't care much about the job you're supposed to be doing, and have little to no respect for your contract with the venue OR the implicit contract you have with your fans.

We play music because we love playing music. We formed a band to make money doing what we love. The band is a business, and we treat it as such.

The other band? The one before this one that broke up and reformed without me 'cause I was "too intense" for wanting to play paying gigs more than 2 or three times a year. I'll jam with 'em if I have the time.

Also, you won't always get a chance for a break between sound checks and starting your set list. Something to consider is to have an easy song that has a mix of solos and harmonies that you can use as a sound-check song. I use "Feelin' Alright", and it's been said that "Frankenstein" started out as a warm up for Edgar Winter.

I've heard this one used for a dual purpose "fist song of the set/sound check" more than a few times.

I have no ears and I must hear: Plaza Bowl Redux
Now for the coda . . . :x :evil: :twisted:

Keep in mind that the monitor mix on stage was . . . usable. Not great, but OK.

Keep in mind that sound doofus had 10,000 watts of power available to him on the mains> Plenty of headroom

Keep in mind that we keep our stage volume low. Barely loud enough to cover a fart. I mean, I'm using a 15 watt amp and the master volume on that hangs around the "three" mark. The OD pedal adds about 3db when I kick it in. We're depending on FOH to make sure we can be heard in larger venues. All of us tend to be "set and forget" with the volume knobs when we have someone running the sound for us.

We had hooked up a Zoom H2 to a pair of stereo RCA record outs. Everything was miked up, and we figured we'd get a "board mix" we could use to review the performance. We got a board mix all right.

We listened to the first track.Instruments sounded pretty decent. Then the vocal comes in.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Ho-TEL!!!!!

Who ran my vocals through the Super Distortion pedal????

Everybody's eyes turn on Billy, who was in the audience that night. "Billy, did the vocals sound like that the whole night?" "Well they did sound kinda tinny," quoth Billy.

Wunnerful.

Apparently Ritard the Chronologically Challenged Sound Slug hasn't made any attempt at figuring out proper gain staging for his rig. One wonders if he's even heard the term.

It's a digital board. EVERY channel we were using was clipping. Hard. For those that don't know, digital clipping is not a pretty sound. Think of vocals run through the fuzz tone on the Stone's "Satisfaction."

. . . and I have no idea where my Louisville Slugger is.

Sheesh! Was his girlfriend sitting on his lap? Can you ask Billy to run the board?

It's also amazing that the audience keeps on dancing...

"You can spot the musicians in the audience - they're the ones with tears in their eyes."

"The drunker you get, the better we sound."

... and other classics. :shock:

Valentine's Day at Benny's Tavern: Roses are Red Hot!

We returned to Benny's Tavern on this past Valentine's Day. We've really been looking forward to returning, since we enjoyed our first time there so much. We weren't disappointed a bit.

Monday we'd gotten a call from Vanessa, who handles the booking for the club. She reminded us that their regular sound tech wasn't going to be there for us, let us know she was having trouble finding a replacement for him, and if we knew someone we'd like to run sound for us to have them contact her so she could hire them for the night. A quick call to friend Brent, who called friend Jeff, who called his partner OJ and we were set to go. He asked us to be ready for sound check by 7:00PM, so he could get familiar with the system before the 8:00PM curtain. He arrived at 6:45, just as we finished load-in and setup. After a thorough sound check, we took a break, and put our ties on.

Ties? Oh - since it was Valentine's Day, we decided to dress up a bit and wear black shirts with red ties. I hate ties in general. I really hate ties when I'm playing a rock gig, 'cause I sweat. Not "glow," or "perspire." I'm usually dripping wet by the end of the night, and have soaked through every stitch of clothing I have on. That's one of the reasons I prefer black stagewear. I had to borrow a tie from our bass player. He looked kinda surprised when I handed it back to him at the end of the night. "Doug, this tie's soaking wet!" "Hey, it's drier than my shirt."

One of the other promotions we did was give a silk rose (discreetly accompanied by our business card), to the first 24 women in the door. Hopefully they'll remember us next month when we return again.

Every gig has it's own little quirks, and this one was no exception. We'd loaded up the first set of the show with our romantic songs. We figured a good chunk of the audience would want to do a little cheek-to-cheek snuggling on the dance floor then leave early and do more snuggling at home. That didn't quite work out like we expected . . . By the end of the first set, most of the guys had gravitated to the pool room and the tables were filled with starry-eyed women. . . and four band wives with "don't get any funny ideas" expressions.

By the middle of the second set the dance floor was packed, and the guys started filtering back in to see what all the screaming and giggling was about. The high point was bartender Stephanie's rebel yell as we broke into a Grateful Dead medley. The third set started off with request for "Feelin' All Right," which we'd been over exactly once. During sound check. Good thing it's only two chords! We finished up the night with "Little Red Rooster," and took a few minutes to catch our breath and dry off before load out.

Once again, I have to comment on the professionalism of Benny's staff. They keep the band aware of potential problems, and work WITH the band to help solve them. They work equally hard at creating a welcoming ambiance for their customers. The result is a place that's just plain fun to be in. We'll be headed back to Benny's again on March 14, and will likely be playing there once a month from here on out.