Trimingham Woodlands

New gig. Had an easy drive over in good travelling weather, dry with a mix of sun and clouds; and spotted the sign to turn right just before the radar station. It’s down a long drive which opens into a modern holiday park set in a wood. The club house is new and I got one of the staff to open the back door for us to get the gear through the dressing room and straight onto a good sized stage. . I got most of my gear in by the time Dave and Nigel arrived. There is a small dance floor then beyond that lots of tables for eating, and there were a fair few in eating as we set up with the new Bose gear. I was using my replacement Korg pedal with guessed settings in it, a Roland GR33 synth, and Audix OM5 microphone. I also issued Nige with an Audix OM5 (we are waiting for Dave’s to arrive, so he used his Shure Sm58 Beta A) We set the Bose’s up well back and Dave well forward. Needless to say it all took a bit of time to get working, but the vocal sound on stage was really very good. The guitar sound was brittle and remained so, but I need to work on that over a period of time. We warmed up with “I Feel Fine” and were told it was a bit loud, so we backed off the masters a bit, I put my show background MP3 on, and we settled down for a drink. Dave had some mates arrive to see the band and Jenny and Laura arrived for show time. We started off with the usual set 1. This went pretty well with good audience reaction and a relaxed “bantery” atmosphere on stage. The new Searchers medley went very well, the vocals sounded particularly good on “Sugar and Spice”. Had a break, Nige put on his MP3 for background. Then came back on for the usual set 2, with a return of “Seasons of Gold” to the set with “improved” vocals. We still got good audience reaction and this time we got a couple of dancers up. We played right thru the Rock’n’Roll finish to “Love is All Around”. Had another break and went on to play Set 3 through to midnight. We started with “Travel Lodge California” and the set went well enough right through to American Trilogy which got a rousing reception. To be fair I was struggling to play the solos with the brittle guitar sound but it didn’t put the audience off. Then we filled in a bit with “Bad Moon Rising” and “Dance the Night Away” before we were into the closing sequence; encoring with “Wonderful Tonight”. Despite the newness we were delighted with, and people complimented us on, the sound; in fact Steve had arrived for the start of set 3 and said he heard us start “Hotel California” at the bar and it sounded clear there and remained clear and balanced as he walked through to the front. A long pack up ‘cos I don’t know which leads go where; and then we set off with Dave in the lead the wrong way down a cart track. We had to reverse back in convoy, before finally getting underway. I followed Dave to North Walsham and then onto Norwich from there. It was kind of Dave to lead the way but I reckon I’d have been quicker going back through Cromer. Finally got in about 2:30am after taking a “short cut” through Thetford that brought me back onto the A11 I had just left!