The White Swan, Loddon

I had picked up a bit of a cold queuing to see the Terracotta Warriors in London on the Friday. So I set off at 6pm well drugged up with Contac pills to keep the symptoms at bay. It took just over the hour to get to Loddon, which still had some snow around. Parked round the back where the gang were unloading. We had Nigel depping for Dan on the night and Jenny assisting Dave. It is a warm, cosy pub with quite a bit of room for the band once the pool table was shifted. On a first glance it looked a young pub and not our kind of audience – they were playing Kurt Kobain on the jukebox! But on further inspection there were a few older “farmhands” around and they did engage us in conversation. The guvnor said there was no changing room and we didn’t need to change (not that kind of crowd) so that was one less thing to be bothered with. The room is well damped and generates a high bass response. Set the PA up and immediately ran into problems with boomy feedback. So I reduced bass on all the mics and ended up boosting the mids to get a bit of cut through. Sounded a bit rough on stage, but I had a walk out in the soundcheck and it was OK in the room. We ran Dave’s Beta 58 into a spare channel and we put a bit of a monitor signal through Nigel’s bass amp. The guitar sounded a bit weedy at first, so I cranked it up onto the hi-voltage setting and it started to cut though nicely. 

Had a couple of beers and started off set 1 much as usual and it seemed to go down OK. To cater for the younger crowd, we cut out all the sloweys out and extended the rock’n’roll - including a hi-impact version of “Jailhouse Rock” to finish the one hour set. The band had started low key but ended up rocking along at fairly high volume! Went back on to do an hour second set. Strangely we missed out “Beautiful Sunday” but we did do the Elvis routine and got a bit of reaction. Played through the rock’n’roll medley and ended up pinching some of the set 3 stuff such as “Spirit in Sky”, “Hi Ho” and “All Right Now” to get us to the hour. Another beer break and then we did about 40 minutes for set 3 starting with “Amarillo” and then playing some of the rockier pieces that don’t get aired that often e.g: “Shakin All Over” “You Really Got Me”, “Mustang Sally” (Nigel sang it) “Status Quo”. We finished with “Pretty Woman” but had enough shouts for more to get us to do “Great Balls” as an encore.

All in all the gig had gone much better than we could have expected, but I think this was mainly because we adapted to playing a rockier, raunchy repertoire and sound for this audience. The guvnor was well pleased and interested in booking us back and we handed out several cards - we have a prospect for the Loddon Jubilee Hall dance! I was pretty tired at the end and glad of some help from Nigel in getting the gear out. It was a bit of a health and safety nightmare on the frozen car park surface! But I got off just before 1am and home for 2am.