I had a long day with lots of hurry up and wait time.
First gig of the day was with a "new" project, "The Duchess Wilder Band". New is in quotes because I've been involved with this band for 2 and half years and this is our first gig. We've had several iterations of people, each iteration lasting about 6 months and then someone would leave and search for the right replacement was on. Our style of music (Funk, Soul, Blues, a little rock) is a tough sell for musicians and the stuff we cover can be daunting. Most of our stuff requires a lot of re-arranging because we will take on some large band tunes with only 2 guitars, bass drums and lead vox. Imagination and patience are required. Originally we had just one guitar in the mix - I enjoyed the challenge of having to cover more ground, but in the end we realized that it was just too much pressure for one person to handle, so we found a 2nd guitar and finally started making real progress. It was still slow, but we're finally near ready to take on a 3 hour show - at least musically. Our front gal has some stamina issues (we cut a song form our one hour show yesterday) so I'm a little concerned about that.
We rehearse in a garage, but had the opportunity to take it out on her patio last week to do a proper gig setup and sound check. I made the mistake of telling her I had a PA et al, so she asked me to use my system (she really is not in the position to be hauling her own gear around) so I drug it over and we had a good solid dress rehearsal. I was hoping that would mean that the sound stuff was pretty set for yesterday since we were able to setup closely to our expected gig atmosphere.
The gig was a big 420 bash at a tiny BBQ/Pie joint in Sacramento (10 minutes from my house). I was expecting a much different environment based on the flyer and was concerned about logistics.
It turns out there was only one 420 vender in the patio and only a couple other edible vendors out front. I have no idea what people got for the $25 entry (ad they were real tight on letting us bring +1s. We were scheduled to go on at 1:30 (both myself and our drummer had other gigs this day so we needed to be done early), so even though I didn't expect much of a crowd at that time for a noon-8 PM event, it was the only time that could work for us. Although my commute was very close (you'll see), our drummer had a 3 hour drive to her next one.
Since I knew the patio was so tiny, I was kind of expecting the event to bleed out into the parking lot and that while load in might not be too bad, load out could be a lot further away, so my rig being full, I put on my bike rack and strapped my cart to it just in case (which of course would just be a thing in the way if I didn't need it).
We were told to load in at 10:30 so as to avoid any event guests. When I got there the space that I thought was ours to use (I'd scouted it a few weeks ago) was partially encroached on by the 420 vender, so our footprint shrunk by about 30%. We dealt with it and set up in a much tighter configuration than desired, but made it work. The patio had a nice big gate to the parking lot, but the owner wasn't there to open it, so we had to lug everything through the small BBQ joint. Luckily they were cool about letting us leave the doors open.
First thing we did was put up my pop up - it was a relatively warm day (one of the first of the day) and load in about kicked my butt. I'm used to a 3 trip load (without my cart) but with the PA and popup, it was a lot more trips. The load in distance was actually pretty close and I was able to stay parked there, so I opted not to fight with the cart through a tiny restaurant.
We got set up, figured out the power situation - even though there was a plug on the wall, we didn't know about the secret switch. Worked out a little sound check and unfortunately some of my knobs got twisted so we had to go through stuff again. I'm no pro at sound at all and barely know how to work the PA I own (second use in 2 years), but after a few missteps finally got things working OK. Then LS channel started cutting out a random. Tried a different channel and thought it was good. We went in to order our lunch (ie pay for the day) and I grabbed a beer for the hour+ long wait to kickoff.
Here was our stage (well you can almost see it):
1:30 finally rolled around and I turned on the PA and we were ready to kick off: LS had nothing on her mic. We jiggled stuff, checked the cables (she runs through a vocal processor) and just nothing. "Maybe it's your mic?". Not having her backup with her, she took our guitar players mic and sure enough it worked. Totally different input power so we had to readjust things and gave the crowd a little feedback noise in the process. So we had a 5 minute delay to get rolling, but we were off.
One of our guitars had never gigged before so we were all a bit nervous for him, but he did great. He had a few misfires (as we all did), but overall he was on. He'll need to work on actually looking at the crowd some, but that will come.
Here was our set list for this gig:
Wall To Wall (LS's arrangement of a song form an unknown artist)
If You Want Me To Stay - Sly & Family Stone
I Get Lifted - Kem
Burn Rubber - Gap Band
Undercover Lover - Bobby rush
One Fine Thing - Harry Connick Jr
Sensitive Kind - Santana
Who Is She and What Is She To You - Me'Shell Ndegeocello
Crazy -based on Ceelo Green Version
I Want - Chaka Kahn
Stoop Down Baby - Popa Chubby
Stop Runnin - Phantom Blues Band
Cold Sweat - Boneshakers, James Brown
Our full playlist has more bluesy and rocky songs, but LS was targeting the audience. She hopes to get in this circle to play at some of their events. We were well received by the small audience and overall we had a good solid first outing.
So now it's 2:30 and although the temps were probably in the high seventies, it felt like it was in the 90s during load out. With some people there it was much more difficult to find a path to the parking lot and again, I was very fatigued by the time it was all said and done. I went back in, grabbed my lunch and another beer, found some shade and ate. My next gig wasn't until 7:00 and I needed to sit for a while, so I had a cigar with my beer and chilled. With pretty much everyone being baked, it was a pretty chill crowd.
At about 4 o'clock, I decided to head home and drop a bunch of my gear before the next gig even though the next gig was literally right next door to where my afternoon gig was:
Afternoon gig on the right, evening gig load in on the left. I had thoughts of just staying, but the thought of dealing with all of the gear in the way at 11:00 load out made me drive home. I got home, dropped the PA , popup and cart. Tried to take a quick nap, but that didn't stick. It was till nice to sit in some cool quiet for a few minutes.
I headed back over to the to the evening venue for a private party with Walkin' The Dawg. Talk about night and day gigs: we were playing for an 80th birthday in a fairly formal setting. Even though they opted to use the video screen over the stage rather than have the band on the stage we had a lot of room to spread out for a change. We got set up at our normal hour before downbeat, but we still had time to kill. They wanted an hour of dinner music before the full band started in, so KB player noodled through some charts until they sat down to eat. That started a 7:00 pm. 8 pm rolled around and there was no sign of dinner happening anytime soon. Finally we (all but the KB player) sat down to dinner at about 8:20. At 8:40 I went asked the organizer when she though we should start the full band. The birthday boy had some things to say to the crowd and then we'd roll. So at about 8:50 we finally kicked into full band mode.
Here's our stage and FOH:
I was surprised how quickly the dance area filled and for the most part, it stayed busy all night - well all 2 hours that we played. We got lots of compliments some good tips and the pay was good. We were scheduled until 11:00, so we got out of one full set. This didn't hurt my feelings at all, although they did manage to call out most the songs that I'm just fricken sick of. We have over 100 songs on the big list, but rarely get outside of 60 of them.
With any luck this will have been my last gig with this band. I finally had enough of all the little things that makes me crazy about these guys and gave my notice last gig. I have 3 others technically booked, but they say they have another guy in the wings and he's taking the next one. If he's good, I'm done with them. My sub band is keeping me plenty busy (9 gigs in July alone), so I won't much miss this project. I told LS that after a while I'd be happy to sub for them, but I can't keep doing this band with any regularity. I never really intended to almost 3 years ago - it just kind of got away from me.
My next gig is Friday 4/26 with the B-Sides at Thai Terrace in Folsom, CA.
First gig of the day was with a "new" project, "The Duchess Wilder Band". New is in quotes because I've been involved with this band for 2 and half years and this is our first gig. We've had several iterations of people, each iteration lasting about 6 months and then someone would leave and search for the right replacement was on. Our style of music (Funk, Soul, Blues, a little rock) is a tough sell for musicians and the stuff we cover can be daunting. Most of our stuff requires a lot of re-arranging because we will take on some large band tunes with only 2 guitars, bass drums and lead vox. Imagination and patience are required. Originally we had just one guitar in the mix - I enjoyed the challenge of having to cover more ground, but in the end we realized that it was just too much pressure for one person to handle, so we found a 2nd guitar and finally started making real progress. It was still slow, but we're finally near ready to take on a 3 hour show - at least musically. Our front gal has some stamina issues (we cut a song form our one hour show yesterday) so I'm a little concerned about that.
We rehearse in a garage, but had the opportunity to take it out on her patio last week to do a proper gig setup and sound check. I made the mistake of telling her I had a PA et al, so she asked me to use my system (she really is not in the position to be hauling her own gear around) so I drug it over and we had a good solid dress rehearsal. I was hoping that would mean that the sound stuff was pretty set for yesterday since we were able to setup closely to our expected gig atmosphere.
The gig was a big 420 bash at a tiny BBQ/Pie joint in Sacramento (10 minutes from my house). I was expecting a much different environment based on the flyer and was concerned about logistics.
It turns out there was only one 420 vender in the patio and only a couple other edible vendors out front. I have no idea what people got for the $25 entry (ad they were real tight on letting us bring +1s. We were scheduled to go on at 1:30 (both myself and our drummer had other gigs this day so we needed to be done early), so even though I didn't expect much of a crowd at that time for a noon-8 PM event, it was the only time that could work for us. Although my commute was very close (you'll see), our drummer had a 3 hour drive to her next one.
Since I knew the patio was so tiny, I was kind of expecting the event to bleed out into the parking lot and that while load in might not be too bad, load out could be a lot further away, so my rig being full, I put on my bike rack and strapped my cart to it just in case (which of course would just be a thing in the way if I didn't need it).
We were told to load in at 10:30 so as to avoid any event guests. When I got there the space that I thought was ours to use (I'd scouted it a few weeks ago) was partially encroached on by the 420 vender, so our footprint shrunk by about 30%. We dealt with it and set up in a much tighter configuration than desired, but made it work. The patio had a nice big gate to the parking lot, but the owner wasn't there to open it, so we had to lug everything through the small BBQ joint. Luckily they were cool about letting us leave the doors open.
First thing we did was put up my pop up - it was a relatively warm day (one of the first of the day) and load in about kicked my butt. I'm used to a 3 trip load (without my cart) but with the PA and popup, it was a lot more trips. The load in distance was actually pretty close and I was able to stay parked there, so I opted not to fight with the cart through a tiny restaurant.
We got set up, figured out the power situation - even though there was a plug on the wall, we didn't know about the secret switch. Worked out a little sound check and unfortunately some of my knobs got twisted so we had to go through stuff again. I'm no pro at sound at all and barely know how to work the PA I own (second use in 2 years), but after a few missteps finally got things working OK. Then LS channel started cutting out a random. Tried a different channel and thought it was good. We went in to order our lunch (ie pay for the day) and I grabbed a beer for the hour+ long wait to kickoff.
Here was our stage (well you can almost see it):
1:30 finally rolled around and I turned on the PA and we were ready to kick off: LS had nothing on her mic. We jiggled stuff, checked the cables (she runs through a vocal processor) and just nothing. "Maybe it's your mic?". Not having her backup with her, she took our guitar players mic and sure enough it worked. Totally different input power so we had to readjust things and gave the crowd a little feedback noise in the process. So we had a 5 minute delay to get rolling, but we were off.
One of our guitars had never gigged before so we were all a bit nervous for him, but he did great. He had a few misfires (as we all did), but overall he was on. He'll need to work on actually looking at the crowd some, but that will come.
Here was our set list for this gig:
Wall To Wall (LS's arrangement of a song form an unknown artist)
If You Want Me To Stay - Sly & Family Stone
I Get Lifted - Kem
Burn Rubber - Gap Band
Undercover Lover - Bobby rush
One Fine Thing - Harry Connick Jr
Sensitive Kind - Santana
Who Is She and What Is She To You - Me'Shell Ndegeocello
Crazy -based on Ceelo Green Version
I Want - Chaka Kahn
Stoop Down Baby - Popa Chubby
Stop Runnin - Phantom Blues Band
Cold Sweat - Boneshakers, James Brown
Our full playlist has more bluesy and rocky songs, but LS was targeting the audience. She hopes to get in this circle to play at some of their events. We were well received by the small audience and overall we had a good solid first outing.
So now it's 2:30 and although the temps were probably in the high seventies, it felt like it was in the 90s during load out. With some people there it was much more difficult to find a path to the parking lot and again, I was very fatigued by the time it was all said and done. I went back in, grabbed my lunch and another beer, found some shade and ate. My next gig wasn't until 7:00 and I needed to sit for a while, so I had a cigar with my beer and chilled. With pretty much everyone being baked, it was a pretty chill crowd.
At about 4 o'clock, I decided to head home and drop a bunch of my gear before the next gig even though the next gig was literally right next door to where my afternoon gig was:
Afternoon gig on the right, evening gig load in on the left. I had thoughts of just staying, but the thought of dealing with all of the gear in the way at 11:00 load out made me drive home. I got home, dropped the PA , popup and cart. Tried to take a quick nap, but that didn't stick. It was till nice to sit in some cool quiet for a few minutes.
I headed back over to the to the evening venue for a private party with Walkin' The Dawg. Talk about night and day gigs: we were playing for an 80th birthday in a fairly formal setting. Even though they opted to use the video screen over the stage rather than have the band on the stage we had a lot of room to spread out for a change. We got set up at our normal hour before downbeat, but we still had time to kill. They wanted an hour of dinner music before the full band started in, so KB player noodled through some charts until they sat down to eat. That started a 7:00 pm. 8 pm rolled around and there was no sign of dinner happening anytime soon. Finally we (all but the KB player) sat down to dinner at about 8:20. At 8:40 I went asked the organizer when she though we should start the full band. The birthday boy had some things to say to the crowd and then we'd roll. So at about 8:50 we finally kicked into full band mode.
Here's our stage and FOH:
I was surprised how quickly the dance area filled and for the most part, it stayed busy all night - well all 2 hours that we played. We got lots of compliments some good tips and the pay was good. We were scheduled until 11:00, so we got out of one full set. This didn't hurt my feelings at all, although they did manage to call out most the songs that I'm just fricken sick of. We have over 100 songs on the big list, but rarely get outside of 60 of them.
With any luck this will have been my last gig with this band. I finally had enough of all the little things that makes me crazy about these guys and gave my notice last gig. I have 3 others technically booked, but they say they have another guy in the wings and he's taking the next one. If he's good, I'm done with them. My sub band is keeping me plenty busy (9 gigs in July alone), so I won't much miss this project. I told LS that after a while I'd be happy to sub for them, but I can't keep doing this band with any regularity. I never really intended to almost 3 years ago - it just kind of got away from me.
My next gig is Friday 4/26 with the B-Sides at Thai Terrace in Folsom, CA.
