Album Release: Train Wreck Edition (video!)

By all band member accounts, this show was an unmitigated disaster. And we got it all on tape for posterity. Where to start?

Sick lead singer, no sound guy, subdued and scowling crowd of elderly financial supporters, bass player gets lost at regular intervals, improvised arrangements due to lack of rehearsals, stiff performance, we were supposed to dance more according to lead singer lol! I could go on but I'll try to highlight some of the key factors for the good readers amusement.

Firstly. No sound person running the board sucks, it sucks bad, real bad. Don't do it if your playing with a PA, never ever! We managed to get a somewhat functional sound about half way through the show when our guitar man had time to race over to the board for tweaking, but it just sucked. Couldn't hear the lead vocals at all at the top of the show. Sounds like she's singing through my bass amp.

Our lead, we'll call her Alex for anonymity, hurt her voice finishing up the album. So she couldn't sing for our rehearsals leading up to this show. She also decided to add extra verses or extended choruses to keep us on our toes I guess. Very little excuse for getting lost anyway as most her tunes are three or four chords. Extra sour notes from our lost bass player about timestamp 3:00 for ***** and giggles. I told everyone it was advanced music theory and actually very avant-garde. I think they bought it!

Only the drummer was really on top of it musically.

Check out the crowd! That looks like legitimate scowling as if they are saying, "I paid for THIS?!" They perhaps warmed up as the night went a long, and was probably an pretty enchanting evening for some. Slide show with funny narration, raffles and stuff, but from an artistic stand point it was very much LOL.

Be gentle!

 

Copy that! I know in the end, there's always the next gig. There's good ones and not so much. Definitely better prep would have made it much smoother. Hell, I would have settled for a proper sound check.

Musically, next time I'll have a chance to come up with some more interesting bass lines, rather than just reading the changes kind of thing.

Thanks for the encouragement!

 

LOL at your gig dialogue! Fortunately I haven't seen a gig meltdown come close to blows like that.

I appreciate what you said and figure as artists, we're tossing our hearts out there to the wolves anyway, at least on TB it's the kindler gentler bass wolves that perhaps have constructive feedback, as evidenced thus far.

Alex is a total babe, that's why I let her sing lead in my band. Ok really she's the head honcho, model, CEO, president of the project and actually very intelligent, has all her ducks in a row in terms of the business aspect, one of the things that sold me on the project. Plus I want to play with her mom too, who's the vocalist for the Cascade Jazz Trio. Little family of musicians tucked away up here in the enchanted forests of the NW.

Here's the studio sound on her recently released video. I landed a spot as extra dead guy floating in the water behind her in the underwater scene.




https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/deep-to-deep/id950113325

Also available on Amazon, Spotify, Google Play, Beats, Rdio, Deezer, and YouTube Music Key! yadda yadda blah blah. There! I did my capitalist duties for the thread.

*salutes*

 

Ya, no sound guy was the pits and not something we expected. There was a sort of maintenance guy that opened the hall for us and seemed to have some understanding of the halls PA, so I think we assumed he had a clue. WHOOPS! I think he basically turned the lights on and went on a lunch break. heh

I would love to add another guitar or violin. Like you said, melodically there's a tad lacking and when I try to get too tricky with the bass line to liven it up she thinks it's jazz and has me tone it down. I try to keep the groove interesting while also staying out of her way, really just try to support her vocals, pretty standard pop stuff but I try to think orchestrally while composing with her. It's all her writing too for which I have a lot of respect for, just needs a solid producer perhaps.

Tyler, guitar man is going to whip out the electric for some tunes coming up which will give us a new texture and she does do some interesting keys at least. She has a tune that they capo on the guitfiddle that puts us in F#. Woot! I got to think a little on that tune.

You are wrong on one point though, the most interesting song was by far which ever one I bust out the disco groove on, I think it's 'I wonder.' Here it is at rehearsal few months ago. I pushed the disco motif towards the end as an experiment, but it works somehow.

Cheers for the input, Essentially you voiced all of my concerns musically. The violinist on Deep to Deep is Titus from Abney Park, so dude is busy on a solid and popular project, but I know another fiddle player that could really add some color to her sound if she'll go for it.

Also, new rule! All you cats that are better than me, probably most of you, aren't allowed to call Alex and steal my gig! New TB rule.

 

You can see we had to heavily edit the show video, that was just the BEST parts.

It really is a young project, slowly evolving no doubt. Taking a little break for her voice and decompressing after studio time, but we'll come back together refreshed and with new ideas I'm sure. Either way it's a privilege to play with her, with any good musicians. it's a privilege to play bass.

 

Agree 100% and appreciate the feedback. There is often plenty of space underneath her for more interesting rhythm section stuff and I contribute it's absence for the show due to lack of prep on my part for sure. We ALL, even the composer, had to read off a stand though, so only mostly bass players fault. lol

We've only been together as a full band for a couple months now. Was a random CL ad I responded to and was in the studio with her the next week trying to come up with something tasty that would be remembered forever. Like to think it's moderately more interesting melodically in the bass line in the studio, but still pretty tame stuff. Trying to balance brief flights of melody when the space is there, and yet keep it a simple rock feel.

I'll have some more interesting ideas in the future, this show felt more like survival mode staring at a chard chart. Haha

 

1.) Sexiness
2.) Sexiness
3.) Sexiness

and lastly...

4.) yes!

It was a highly produced show in terms of our ambition, we just pissed all the kickstarter funds away on booze and hookers or we could have had finances to match that ambition. Her changing tent was stage right, just behind me, so I could, uh, ya know, like help out if her zipper got stuck and monitor her progress. It was a great show in that regard, but I like to be helpful, so it was easy.

Kickstarter was a bit of a curse as well as a gift in the sense that we were under a timeline to complete the album AND video, which was surprisingly a lot of work even though we hired a production company that was supposed to do the work.

Thanks for the feedback gang, it solidifies some of my own thoughts and has given me great ideas to push at the next band meeting.