When we first started out in this band, Krystal had a friend playing in a local band that played at Dupont. They very nicely let us do a few songs during one of their sets. This was probably in late 2009. The soundman wasn't great; he wasn't awful, either. It's a hard bar to do sound in, because it has kind of an "L" shape. It had a fairly powerful sound system, with big subs under the stage, and we were impressed by the light show.
My manager, at the corporation where I work, was impressed that we were going to be playing there. "That's a nice bar," she said, surprised we could land such a big deal gig. Of course, we didn't really land anything; we just played a few songs as a guest band.
The owner at the time also had a sound company. We paid his sound company to do a few of our shows, (it was MURDER, because the sound guy cost at least HALF our pay.) So because of that, we were allowed to play for half price at Dupont, on a summer night when there were a ton of festivals going on. We were dismayed to see most of the light show was gone, because it had been lent out to a festival where Dupont's main draw was playing.
The odds of us getting a lot of people in weren't too good. We might have had 60 at our peak, and considerably less at other times in the night. Here is our first drummer, me playing a keyboard I have since replaced, Krystal playing her old Washburn bass, and Arthur singing a song that is, frankly, out of his range.
We weren't thrilled with that gig. We definitely had a ways to go as a band. We didn't think we had nearly a good enough crowd. Little did we know that was the biggest crowd we would ever draw there.
We played a few more half-price shows there, thinking we'd get in good with them, but they ended up stopping having bands, and ripped out the sound system. They just weren't drawing, even with their "money" bands.
BTW, here's your ex next to my '78 Oly white fretless (which obviously has mellowed, or yellowed, with age):
