USEAUS @ The Rustic Inn (Ottawa, IL)

This past Saturday (4/6/13) was my first gig w/my new band “USEAUS”. We played at the Rustic Inn (Ottawa). They’ve played here before but I never have. I looked at pics of the place on their Facebook page & it looked like a long narrow bar (built in the late 1800’s) with 4 seating high top tables against the wall across from it so I REALLY wondered where we were going to set up but they have a permanent tent attached to the back which creates a “beer garden” area. Not huge, but not bad either. The band has their own trailer that they use for their “road gear” and the singer told me he was going to set up in the afternoon and then go back home since he was only ½ hr away. I’m 1 ½ hrs away so I told him I’d be there around 7:30pm. I’ve never seen their stage setup before I just knew they had a practice PA where we rehearse at. When I got there I parked in the alley and loaded in & HOLY CRAP!!! These guys really had a TON of stuff!! They had a separate riser for the keyboard player, 2 speaker towers, monitors (back & front), a lighting truss that held the band’s banner and a laser show box and on the sides we had 2 LED light towers. We also had a fog machine and a hazer but I didn’t know that until we were playing and the lasers were shooting around in the haze. We also had a sound guy AND a light guy to run everything & I have to say these guys REALLY looked like a “pro level” band. :D

They told me there was a B-Day party coming out and they had 150 people there before but Sat night we had about 20-30ppl in the beer garden area which was really too bad considering all the effort that went into the stage show. The majority of the crowd was in the attached bar area jamming to Top-40 Country tunes. I thought the crowd size was a little disappointing considering they told me to expect at least 100 people but I don’t think our area could’ve held that many even if they did. Weather could’ve been a factor too, during the first set I could see it was POURING outside.

This is the first band I’ve been in where I’m the only guitar player and I felt really comfortable in this role. Playing with a keyboard player REALLY made everything we did sound full. I mean it’s amazing how much keyboard is in embedded in the songs we love. He has a really cool setup, (4 keyboards). One is a MOOG synth and one is a Hammond, they all sounded AWESOME!! He did “Piano Man” and it sounded GREAT!! We did 2 LONG sets and the first set I played like a REAL PRO!! :D I mean I usually make some mistakes but I don’t remember any during the first set (I also drilled HARD for this first gig). I have a new amp I bought myself for X-mas (Fractal Audio Axe FX-II) and it performed AWESOME. The Van Halen patch during “Pretty Woman” was spot on, so much so that my sister-in-law said I got “really good” but my wife told her I’ve always been this good, it’s just my amp that’s been upgraded!! :D

The second set starts out with me playing my acoustic guitar (new) mounted on a mic stand (with an M-Brace) with my electric around my neck so during the solo I switch to my electric and finish back on the acoustic. This transition didn’t go as smoothly as how I practiced it so I’ll have to make some adjustments. Instead of turning off the tuner pedal to my electric I’m just going to roll on the volume I think. After this song I attach a capo (re-tune) and play the Goo Goo Doll’s “Slide” with a “Jellyfish” pic which makes my acoustic sound just like the recording!! :D The next song is Matchbox 20’s “3am” which I also play on the acoustic tuned to Eb (re-tune again). So I’m thinking I might have the band play this one in standard tuning to save time re-tuning. We do a number of Matchbox 20 songs and they really got the biggest responses Sat night, well that and “Jessie’s Girl” :D . Every time we played a Matchbox 20 tune people would come into the beer garden to listen and sing along. I think we’re going to have to add some more of those tunes to the setlist. About ½ way through the second set the singer just started calling out the tunes since we had more than enough material to go and we finished the night. Tear down & loading out took some time with all the cables and gear but I thought our first went well and I'm looking forward to working w/these guys going forward.

Thanks for reading and all the great comments KEEP ROCKIN’ !!!!

Tommy Gunz