About four weeks ago my guitarist called me, asking if I had any plans on Friday, 13 August. I told him that as far as I knew, I did not, and that was basically all it took for me to get hired as a sub for his other band,
The Red Light Rumors. The only condition was that I would be playing my electric upright exclusively.
Obviously, a month is more than enough to learn about 12 songs, even if they are all originals. But I just switched jobs and I took off to France for a week so in the end I found myself squeezing in practice time whenever I could, and learnt the songs by means of a bad live recording with the bass mixed in too low. We had a "full band" rehearsal last week, and boy was I nervous! I have been playing with the guitarist for a while now, but I had never played with the singer and I was not exactly used to playing in a drummer-less environment. But it went well, so I was stoked about this gig. The day before the gig, the singer and I got together for another rehearsal and he decided to throw in a new song that his band had hardly rehearsed themselves. Sure, why not?
We arrived at the "place to be" and it turned out to be someone's back yard. Still, they had booked 4 bands, there was beer on tap, a food stall and you could even get merchandise
Unfortunately it was raining, and I mean really pouring down, so most people were hiding near the beer tap. Not a bad place to hide, I guess. We checked out the band that was on - they had this dreamy instrumental thing going. Actually pretty good, but after a while it all blended together since it was mostly guitar oriented.
I took out my WAV and immediately got a few reactions from people. One guy (whom I think also plays bass) had a look and said: "That is one helluva great idea!" A few kids came up to have a look, and one of 'em actually said to the others: "You have to play this with a bow." Needless to say I was impressed
We had a quick set up (no drums, remember?), did an even quicker sound check and off we went. The guitarist had told me up front that the singer (who is the main songwriter and also plays a mean rhythm guitar) likes to change it up on the fly, but during both rehearsals he had stuck to the arrangements as recorded so I thought nothing of it. First song (an instrumental intro) and he was already extending it for a few bars and throwing in breaks that were previously not there. Kept me on my toes! During the first few songs our sound was not really balanced (too much lead guitar) so we didn't sound too tight. I went over to the guitarist and asked him to turn it down a bit, and suddenly it all clicked. We played really well, despite a few obvious clams from myself and a few more on-the-spot rearrangements.
I was sick with the flu for most of yesterday, so I didn't stay too long afterwards and missed the two other acts that were going to be performing after us. There had been no talk of any remuneration whatsoever (beer and food aside), but the "organisation" had put up a tip jar for the musicians, and in the end each band made about 70 euro. Not bad!
Here are two pics from the gig:
Rather simultaneously my girlfriend told me after a gig that my upright didn't "sound sucky" anymore 
