Friday started what I dubbed the "Hwy 49" tour for us. We played 2 gigs along the State route in 2 days, about 2.5 hors apart, neither really convenient. Technically, Murphys is not on CA 49, but most of the drive there was on Hwy 49 and I always associate the cool little town with my many days of riding motorcycles on Hwy 49.
For those not familiar with the area, Hwy 49 is a route that snakes through central and northern CA and winds through a multitude of little towns with significance of the old 49er days. It's easily my favorite route in CA from tip to tip. It stats in a little town called Oakhurst, just 45 minutes from Yosemite and eventually terminates at the CA/NV border about 30 mile north of Reno. I've never done the entire route in one day; living near the middle of it never made sense to do so, but I've covered every inch of the route many times. Enough geography lessons on to the report.
Murphys hosts one of my favorite wineries, so since I had to do the 90+ minute drive, I figured I get down early and grab some wine. And I was concerned about traffic - Friday evening gigs can really present problems and the fact that mush of this route is single lane highway, there's always - ALWAYS- a lot of room for getting stuck behind trucks, campers and other drivers who just drive too slow. The Google projected 95 mins turned into closer to 2 hours. I was very glad I didn't have to stress about getting there on time.
The park is a pretty cool little public park with a little stream running along side. There were lots of people hanging out in the stream, a few even tubing down the gentle current. As you'll see, the park has a little bandstand, but we ere told that the acoustics were terrible, so we planted on the ground in front of the gazebo. As were finishing up, I checked my phone for expected temps, more out of curiosity then anything and noticed that there was a 30% chance for rain. I announced my findings and we all looked up and indeed saw clouds forming. Then our contact came over and told us that he had 100% chance of rain and that we should prepare. Luckily, we had brought a couple of popups (expecting to need shade), so we popped them up and had them ready in case the rain came. Here's a few pics for context.
How we started:
FOH before the show started:
Stage from across the stream:
As part of our rain dance, we decided to move the drummer up on the gazebo - talk about a drum riser! He was already planter but we grabbed stuff an helped him relocate. We managed to set up a monitor so he could hear vocals, but we knew it was going to be tough to really hear each other. As we approached downbeat, I noticed that our female LS wasn't there - it seems she failed to calculate her travel time until she left. Since we do perform as a 4 piece without her, we planned to move on with our stuff and bring her stuff into the mix after she got there. All the commotion of moving the drummer, made us just a few minutes late and just as we were ready to kick off, voila, LS walked on the stage. In here words, "a perfect Diva move!"
Here was the pre rain start of the show (from band Mom):
You can see the popups ready for deployment behind our BL. About 4 songs in, here's the new stage look:
We've started setting me out more on the wing and center stage, which I believe is appropriate. Just being the bass player with some backing vocals is not center stage material, especially with my indifferent stage presence, LG does sing a couple of leads and he is the LG, so it feels a lot better for him to be more center stage. I believe this is a better fit. But, I'm noticing that my bass really sounds isolated (to me) when it's not close to the drums or inside LG's amp. Not a huge deal, it's just harder to mix in when it feels isolated.
The rain did NOT slow down our very responsive crowd. My best guess is that there were about 150 people there for most of the show and we did have a lot of dancers for most of the gig. I have to admit that I expected people to bail when the rain came, but I guess living in the foothills, summer showers are just part of life. Some had umbrellas, most just didn't care. It was never a hard rain, just a heavy drizzle. Some of the dancers were looking for little patches of dry created by the tree that was above us, but most just let it all hang out. Here's another band mom pic:
This is about half of what we had out there at it's peak. Young, old and everything in between were digging our stuff.
I started experiencing trigger finger on my plucking hand near the end of the second set - I was really looking forward to the break. But because we had a packed dance floor, the BL decided to just skip the break and we just moved onto set 3. Not my favorite move, but I get it. Overall we had a really great show with a lot of positive response including a request to play a private party somewhere in the area. Always a bonus when you get more gigs from one you just played. Apparently we've been invited back for next year's "First Friday" series.
Unfortunately, I had pretty major brain freeze and I really can't even explain it. "Billie Jean" came up. It's one of my favorite songs with these guys and I usually just crush the groove, The drummer kicked in an my mind went completely blank. For whatever reason I had "I Can't Go For That" which does have a similar pattern to it and I couldn't get it out of my head. I started making noise in the wrong key, moved to the right key when everyone else came in, but I was just playing a groove, not the right part. Try as I might, I could never get my brain to find the right groove. It never came. It didn't stop people from dancing and nobody even seemed to notice. Just personal shame.
Having the drummer where he was did lead to a few moments where we all got out of sync. He couldn't really hear the instruments and it was actually a little hard to hear him. I don't remember the song but at one point drum, LG and myself were all in different places in the groove. I focused my hearing on the drums, but found it hard to ditch the LG groove. It doesn't feel like it was noticed, but it was just uncomfortable.
The 90+ minute drive home was a little less dodgy than the drive up, but it was dark and it is deer country, so it was hard to relax.
Our next gig was yesterday in Auburn, CA. If we hadn't of booked that, I would have likely found a room and enjoyed a little getaway,
For those not familiar with the area, Hwy 49 is a route that snakes through central and northern CA and winds through a multitude of little towns with significance of the old 49er days. It's easily my favorite route in CA from tip to tip. It stats in a little town called Oakhurst, just 45 minutes from Yosemite and eventually terminates at the CA/NV border about 30 mile north of Reno. I've never done the entire route in one day; living near the middle of it never made sense to do so, but I've covered every inch of the route many times. Enough geography lessons on to the report.
Murphys hosts one of my favorite wineries, so since I had to do the 90+ minute drive, I figured I get down early and grab some wine. And I was concerned about traffic - Friday evening gigs can really present problems and the fact that mush of this route is single lane highway, there's always - ALWAYS- a lot of room for getting stuck behind trucks, campers and other drivers who just drive too slow. The Google projected 95 mins turned into closer to 2 hours. I was very glad I didn't have to stress about getting there on time.
The park is a pretty cool little public park with a little stream running along side. There were lots of people hanging out in the stream, a few even tubing down the gentle current. As you'll see, the park has a little bandstand, but we ere told that the acoustics were terrible, so we planted on the ground in front of the gazebo. As were finishing up, I checked my phone for expected temps, more out of curiosity then anything and noticed that there was a 30% chance for rain. I announced my findings and we all looked up and indeed saw clouds forming. Then our contact came over and told us that he had 100% chance of rain and that we should prepare. Luckily, we had brought a couple of popups (expecting to need shade), so we popped them up and had them ready in case the rain came. Here's a few pics for context.
How we started:
FOH before the show started:
Stage from across the stream:
As part of our rain dance, we decided to move the drummer up on the gazebo - talk about a drum riser! He was already planter but we grabbed stuff an helped him relocate. We managed to set up a monitor so he could hear vocals, but we knew it was going to be tough to really hear each other. As we approached downbeat, I noticed that our female LS wasn't there - it seems she failed to calculate her travel time until she left. Since we do perform as a 4 piece without her, we planned to move on with our stuff and bring her stuff into the mix after she got there. All the commotion of moving the drummer, made us just a few minutes late and just as we were ready to kick off, voila, LS walked on the stage. In here words, "a perfect Diva move!"
Here was the pre rain start of the show (from band Mom):
You can see the popups ready for deployment behind our BL. About 4 songs in, here's the new stage look:
We've started setting me out more on the wing and center stage, which I believe is appropriate. Just being the bass player with some backing vocals is not center stage material, especially with my indifferent stage presence, LG does sing a couple of leads and he is the LG, so it feels a lot better for him to be more center stage. I believe this is a better fit. But, I'm noticing that my bass really sounds isolated (to me) when it's not close to the drums or inside LG's amp. Not a huge deal, it's just harder to mix in when it feels isolated.
The rain did NOT slow down our very responsive crowd. My best guess is that there were about 150 people there for most of the show and we did have a lot of dancers for most of the gig. I have to admit that I expected people to bail when the rain came, but I guess living in the foothills, summer showers are just part of life. Some had umbrellas, most just didn't care. It was never a hard rain, just a heavy drizzle. Some of the dancers were looking for little patches of dry created by the tree that was above us, but most just let it all hang out. Here's another band mom pic:
This is about half of what we had out there at it's peak. Young, old and everything in between were digging our stuff.
I started experiencing trigger finger on my plucking hand near the end of the second set - I was really looking forward to the break. But because we had a packed dance floor, the BL decided to just skip the break and we just moved onto set 3. Not my favorite move, but I get it. Overall we had a really great show with a lot of positive response including a request to play a private party somewhere in the area. Always a bonus when you get more gigs from one you just played. Apparently we've been invited back for next year's "First Friday" series.
Unfortunately, I had pretty major brain freeze and I really can't even explain it. "Billie Jean" came up. It's one of my favorite songs with these guys and I usually just crush the groove, The drummer kicked in an my mind went completely blank. For whatever reason I had "I Can't Go For That" which does have a similar pattern to it and I couldn't get it out of my head. I started making noise in the wrong key, moved to the right key when everyone else came in, but I was just playing a groove, not the right part. Try as I might, I could never get my brain to find the right groove. It never came. It didn't stop people from dancing and nobody even seemed to notice. Just personal shame.
Having the drummer where he was did lead to a few moments where we all got out of sync. He couldn't really hear the instruments and it was actually a little hard to hear him. I don't remember the song but at one point drum, LG and myself were all in different places in the groove. I focused my hearing on the drums, but found it hard to ditch the LG groove. It doesn't feel like it was noticed, but it was just uncomfortable.
The 90+ minute drive home was a little less dodgy than the drive up, but it was dark and it is deer country, so it was hard to relax.
Our next gig was yesterday in Auburn, CA. If we hadn't of booked that, I would have likely found a room and enjoyed a little getaway,
