Recent content by JazznFunk

I have a Vintage D2 as well and love it! That dual/sweepable mid control is great. Another amp they already discontinued.

Cool! I ended up getting the Eden WTX-500 to dip my toes into the 'micro amp' thing in the late 2000s, for a bit more power using 2 cabs than what the NA320 offered. Very similar sounds. I too ended up going with MarkBass in recent years, specifically the Big Bang head, which is sadly now...

The Nemesis line was highly underrated. My main gigging amp for a long time was my NA320. I still have it, and fired it up not long ago just to 'check in' with it. I haven't gigged it seriously in over a decade, but I do play with it on occasion, and every time I do I'm reminded why I love it. I...

Understandable. They're polar opposites in terms of tone 'goals' for each amp's design. I played through many of those heads as backline on many occasions. Rock solid!

All of this. Bravo.

Heard. My jazz group plays similar summer festivals/series around here, and most of them are put on by local municipalities. I used to do a lot of those with former non-jazz groups too. Those can be a good 'stepping stone' as well to get noticed, in a setting where you'll get a built-in diverse...

You have big decisions to make. The people I know around here who work the 'high profile gigs booked by professional organizers' are in custom-constructed cover bands who do just that, with specific repertoires, and those bands are typically their almost-full-time thing. They play weddings...

I've been where you are. At best, even as an 'amateur/weekend cover band' you will need bandmates who are willing to put their personal lives on hold at a moment's notice to serve the band, without a 2nd thought as to any consequences personally. i.e. 'Sorry family, we gotta cancel this...

Or that one member gets forced out against their will, even when they proposed pragmatic compromises to make it work. When a majority of the group has an 'either/or' mentality, that's when things really go wrong.

There are plenty of people who happily enjoy 'semi-professional' status and make money playing music as a double-figure percentage of their income, while also holding down another job during the plentiful hours where they are not performing. No one tells the musician who gigs regularly and also...

COVID, and other shifts in society, have greatly changed what peoples' tastes for 'late night' entertainment are - depending on where you are in the country. Around here, I used to play the 10pm-1am or 10pm-2am bar gig thing a lot 15-20 years ago. None of those establishments exist anymore, and...

Man... I had some empathetic PTSD just reading this. We never were playing 5-7 nights a week, but we got to a point where we were gigging locally Friday and Saturdays, and sometimes on a Thursday as well, almost every week. Usually locally, or within an hour of home. I made that work for a long...

I understand this, having been through it before. You can be a PROFESSIONAL band in how tight you are on stage, how well prepared you are, how good your finances and your books are, and yet the one thing that will demolish it is differing perspectives on what the end goal of the band is. Was it...

A lot of that depends on the geometry of the building and the difficulty of the schlep. Lots of bends/turns up stairwells (narrow ones) can make a reasonable haul of a heavier cab much less reasonable. It's 'cool' to be a masochist/hero until something bad happens. I threw out my back on a...

Absolutely. And, as my instructor always told me early on, what is the one thing we must never forget in the event of an emergency....? FLY THE AIRPLANE. Don't get so focused on the technical issue that the big picture gets forgotten. I think a defensive driving course and car control course...