Gig Report - 2020-06-17, Blue32, Saginaw

Yeah, still slowly poking our heads out of our shells despite the uptick in COVID cases in DFW and Texas overall. People are paying attention to social distancing as a result of the increases, and at this gig I noticed the audience was considerably more spaced out with the exception of family groups (exempt from the guidelines), and there were far more masks in evidence. But, we are still venturing out. We're Texans, and Americans; we do the right thing, after trying every other option.

This one was at a patio bar within 5 minutes of my house instead of across town, which was great because I left my backup bass and my "gig box" (toolbox with spares and extras for hooking up or on-the-spot repairs) and had to duck back home. No house sound this time, so the lead guitarist invested in a couple SOS tops to supplement the rehearsal monitor rig we'd been running for vocals and acoustics, and we just ran the rest of the band off the "stage" (one rail of the patio deck).

I learn things when I play gigs. Last night I learned that I've been spoiled by having either quality installed sound with some set-and-forget ability, or else a good PA contractor who knows the rig and has pretty much seen it all running FOH, in almost all my gigs to date. This was the first time in a long time that I had to set the PA up from scratch and that we didn't have an FOH guy who knew what he was doing, and it easily added a half-hour to our load-in and setup time. Remember that "gig box"? Yeah, glad I went back for it. We had the use of one 4-outlet drop, that had to power two guitar amps, a bass amp, two pedalboards, a mixer and four powered speakers. Extension cords and power strips were in high demand and we used every one we had, including the one in the gig box.

I also learned that being indoors for a gig also has a tendency to spoil you. Seems like as soon as the sun dipped its butt below the horizon, the wind kicked up. Not a problem for me; a 40-pound amp, 10-pound bass and 200-ish pound bassist are pretty wind-resistant up to about 30mph. However, the lead guitarist and lead singer/rhythm guitarist both use paper charts. I typically find charts to be a crutch, if you have 'em, you come to depend on 'em. While I do use charts for my church gig (where we get fewer rehearsals, have more turnover in music, and I'm playing guitar and singing), for this band I bit the bullet and memorized the patterns and roadmaps for each song in our more static setlist. One less thing to look at while playing means more eye contact with the audience, more situational awareness with the band, and when the charts are in your head they're less likely to blow away.

This gig proved my point; while the chart-users did have them hole-punched in binders, the wind can still flip pages, and it did, mid-song, several times, with ensuing hilarity of trying to figure out how to flip the page back while continuing to play. Our lead guitarist might bite the bullet and at least condense the charts to a cheat-sheet of riffs, keys, capos etc, but our lead singer's just not there yet, so I did want to ask: To anyone that uses tablet-based charts, what tablets and reading software do you use, and do you like it? We will be seriously looking into a digital solution for future use.

Anyway, despite the issues, we got the gig in the books, the lead singer padded her college savings another couple hundred bucks, I got some free beer and wings out of it, and much safe fun was had by all. Pics when the people with the cameras forward them to me.

 

Not for this band. The entire point of the group is to get the lead singer exposure and to pad her savings and upgrade her gear, so she gets all the money from the gigs. And of course, we have fun.