The culmination of our "Highway 49" tour concluded on Saturday at a private community just north of Auburn. The drive there was not bad, but still an hour from my house. I arrived at the location to find a manned security gate, not really unusual for a private community. But, nobody gave them my name and nobody gave me a point of contact and "I'm with the band carried no weight. "I'm just the bass player mam. I just show up where they tell me too. What would you have me do?" The lady showed me to a parking area while they contacted whoever they needed to. After about 50 minutes she waved me around to go back out of the community and come back in. What? I'm 10 feet away from the way in, but I had to leave the property and return. So, I had to go wait a s signal, so I could make a U-turn back in to the property only to find about 7 cars lined up, none of which were moving quickly. I was getting tempted to just leave. But I powered through my bitterness, and finally got through.
When I got to the clubhouse, I found a pretty difficult load in, even when parking "illegally". I humped my gear down to the "stage", went back up and moved my car to the proper guest parking area which was several hundred yards away from the clubhouse. I was finding it hard to be in the mood. They had a couple of popups for us so the sun wasn't too bad, and luckily it cooled down as we proceeded through the night. I was relieved that we weren't going to worry too much about a clean stage and we just tucked our cases and bags behind (well sort of behind) the backline. After I got over my grumpiness, I looked around to find a nice little community on the lake. Lots of boats and other aquatic adventures were enjoying the lake. We were a bit disconnected from most of the the crowd. Many of them were up on the deck of the second floor of the clubhouse - if I ducked down and looked up I could see some of them, but while we were playing, there was no connection with them at all. There were some people out on lawn chairs and blankets who we could see, but they were a good 30 yards away. A fairly larger group was behind us. If they weren't dancing, it was very hard to connect with anybody.
Here's some pics:
Our stage from the deck:
The stage from FOH:
FOH:
The crowd was reasonably responsive early on, but few dancers, mostly because of the heat. But as things cooled down, the dance floor filled up a bit. Overall is was a fun crowd. During the second set, a couple of small boys (3ish) were on the dancefloor trying to make sense of us and the other dancers. One of them was just aimlessly bouncing around, but the other one had this very serious look on his face trying to figure it all out. I locked eyes with him and got him to bounce around a little and later, when we were doing Uptown Funk (for the first time) I tried to get him to raise his hands up like we were doing as part of the show. He was really trying, but just couldn't grasp what was going on. After a while, I saw him kind of holding his arms as if he was holding a bass. It's always fun to try to get the young ones into the music. The parents appreciated the attention and I also got comps from some of the other guests who noticed that I had made the connection with him.
We were comped dinner (crappy buffet) and beers which was a nice surprise. After the break, we made sure to shout out to all the boats that were listening from the lake. There were about 20 or so boats hanging out enjoying the lake and the music. As we neared the end of the second set, BL decided to keep the dancefloor pumping and carried on some more. Thankfully, it was only 3 or 4 extra songs, so we did get a second break in. It wasn't much of a break as most of us got rushed by some members of the audience and it was hard to tear apart from them without being rude. I ditched our LG who was in conversation with people who didn't get that we needed a few minutes. This particular guy was a musician himself, not currently playing, but I was still surprised that he monopolized LG for the whole break. I brought LG back a beer for his troubles.
In our third set, one of the guests wanted to sing a song or two with us. So we repeated Valerie. We play this two different ways depending on who we have with us. When we don't have our female LS (which was the case for this gig) we play it in a different key and different style (which is way more fun than the original IMO). So we played it the 4 piece way in the first set and them played it in the original form for the guest singer. She started out singing a little flat, but got better in short time. She wasn't bad at all - I've heard worse actual lead singers. Later she came back up and asked if we could do Uptown Funk again, The BL was all for getting some time off the mic, so we played it again. The crowd went nuts. And we got a decent tip out of the deal! They let me sing my song (Runnin' Down a Dream) which only happens sometimes when we're in 4 piece mode or have a 4 hour gig. I do it passably, but I guess it's not awful - they keep it in the rotation.
We ran about 10 minutes late and pretended not to hear the encore calls which kind of surprised me. But we were all pretty worn out. The load out was even worse than the load in (all up hill!) and it tuckered me out. As we were wrapping up, BL asked if we ere interested in doing the Murphys gig again and told us we got asked to play a private function. I asked what the money was (I normally don't care much, but a 90 minute drive is asking a bit much for a $100 gig. Nobody seemed to be thrilled, but nobody said no. We'll see.
My books are cleared until early September at this point. I'm taking off on a little 2 week road trip next weekend which did cost me a couple (that I know of) gigs, but even us retired folks need a bit of a vacation now and then.
When I got to the clubhouse, I found a pretty difficult load in, even when parking "illegally". I humped my gear down to the "stage", went back up and moved my car to the proper guest parking area which was several hundred yards away from the clubhouse. I was finding it hard to be in the mood. They had a couple of popups for us so the sun wasn't too bad, and luckily it cooled down as we proceeded through the night. I was relieved that we weren't going to worry too much about a clean stage and we just tucked our cases and bags behind (well sort of behind) the backline. After I got over my grumpiness, I looked around to find a nice little community on the lake. Lots of boats and other aquatic adventures were enjoying the lake. We were a bit disconnected from most of the the crowd. Many of them were up on the deck of the second floor of the clubhouse - if I ducked down and looked up I could see some of them, but while we were playing, there was no connection with them at all. There were some people out on lawn chairs and blankets who we could see, but they were a good 30 yards away. A fairly larger group was behind us. If they weren't dancing, it was very hard to connect with anybody.
Here's some pics:
Our stage from the deck:
The stage from FOH:
FOH:
The crowd was reasonably responsive early on, but few dancers, mostly because of the heat. But as things cooled down, the dance floor filled up a bit. Overall is was a fun crowd. During the second set, a couple of small boys (3ish) were on the dancefloor trying to make sense of us and the other dancers. One of them was just aimlessly bouncing around, but the other one had this very serious look on his face trying to figure it all out. I locked eyes with him and got him to bounce around a little and later, when we were doing Uptown Funk (for the first time) I tried to get him to raise his hands up like we were doing as part of the show. He was really trying, but just couldn't grasp what was going on. After a while, I saw him kind of holding his arms as if he was holding a bass. It's always fun to try to get the young ones into the music. The parents appreciated the attention and I also got comps from some of the other guests who noticed that I had made the connection with him.
We were comped dinner (crappy buffet) and beers which was a nice surprise. After the break, we made sure to shout out to all the boats that were listening from the lake. There were about 20 or so boats hanging out enjoying the lake and the music. As we neared the end of the second set, BL decided to keep the dancefloor pumping and carried on some more. Thankfully, it was only 3 or 4 extra songs, so we did get a second break in. It wasn't much of a break as most of us got rushed by some members of the audience and it was hard to tear apart from them without being rude. I ditched our LG who was in conversation with people who didn't get that we needed a few minutes. This particular guy was a musician himself, not currently playing, but I was still surprised that he monopolized LG for the whole break. I brought LG back a beer for his troubles.
In our third set, one of the guests wanted to sing a song or two with us. So we repeated Valerie. We play this two different ways depending on who we have with us. When we don't have our female LS (which was the case for this gig) we play it in a different key and different style (which is way more fun than the original IMO). So we played it the 4 piece way in the first set and them played it in the original form for the guest singer. She started out singing a little flat, but got better in short time. She wasn't bad at all - I've heard worse actual lead singers. Later she came back up and asked if we could do Uptown Funk again, The BL was all for getting some time off the mic, so we played it again. The crowd went nuts. And we got a decent tip out of the deal! They let me sing my song (Runnin' Down a Dream) which only happens sometimes when we're in 4 piece mode or have a 4 hour gig. I do it passably, but I guess it's not awful - they keep it in the rotation.
We ran about 10 minutes late and pretended not to hear the encore calls which kind of surprised me. But we were all pretty worn out. The load out was even worse than the load in (all up hill!) and it tuckered me out. As we were wrapping up, BL asked if we ere interested in doing the Murphys gig again and told us we got asked to play a private function. I asked what the money was (I normally don't care much, but a 90 minute drive is asking a bit much for a $100 gig. Nobody seemed to be thrilled, but nobody said no. We'll see.
My books are cleared until early September at this point. I'm taking off on a little 2 week road trip next weekend which did cost me a couple (that I know of) gigs, but even us retired folks need a bit of a vacation now and then.
