Alan and Jill Golden Wedding Wymondham Ex Services

It was cool, still and foggy on the way over, but I made good enough time getting to the gig just before 6:30pm. The club is hard to find and you get to the load in doors by driving down a narrow path to the back. Once in I was pleased to see it is quite big ex cinema type hall with a great vintage red décor. Had my gear in by the time Nige and Alex (depping) arrived, having also experienced some bad patches of fog. The sound limiter at this gig has quite a reputation - it is set too low and we had been advised by the Peppermint Men to look at alternative power. I surveyed the possibility but thought it would be a long run and hard to hide the lead so we decided to give it a go with the limiter. Actually it sound checked well enough and our celebrating clients, Alan and Jill, had told us they preferred it quiet. They kindly gave us 2 beer tokens each. At 8pm we got off to a quiet start but once again Alex surprised me with his abrupt end to “Foot Tapper”. But there was little reaction from the few people near to the band so we carried on with a fairly lightweight set 1. The only thing that got a reaction was some rock'n'roll later in the set so we extended that a bit running “Blue Suede Shoes” into “Whole Lotta Shakin” quite successfully. We didn't experience any limiter problems in the first set and took a break at 8:45pm as discussed to allow a long break for the buffet. We were invited to partake and I had a couple of things which were very tasty; Alex had a good helping! (noticed a leak from the roof near the buffet) We resumed set 2 with a background instrumental loosely based on “Albatross” before resuming normal operations. By the time we got to the Shadows walk we had a bit more interest in the band and we got 2 young girls to come up and play the tennis rackets and do the dance. This got a lot of attention and the massive applause at the end cut the power off. It took about 2 minutes to power up again. Took another short break and then we got on with Set 3 which was a lot more dancey. Nige did a lot of improvised singing as we extended rock'n'roll to include things like: “Great Balls, Lets Dance, Good Golly Miss Molly, Jailhouse Rock” Unfortunately the band volume and applause started to bring the limiter in which shut off the power momentarily. Alex could keep the rhythm going and we could shout and then we'd resume as things powered up again. We wrapped up to a warm reception with “Wonderful Tonight”. Our clients were very happy with show and we had a sense of achievement for the way we dealt with the limiter so, all in all, a good feeling at the end of the night. It was still a bit foggy on the way home but I wasn't delayed too much getting in just after 1am.

Norwich British Legion

Martin depping. Marita and Jacqui decided to accompany me and we had a good run over to Norwich rolling up at the gig at 6:30pm. Nige and Martin (depping) arrived just as I was opening the car and we reconnoitred the hall first and were a little surprised to find it open at the back. But Nige and I had a sixth sense things weren't right, and we went to the front to check we were expected before bringing the gear in. Shock horror! Someone had written a notice showing 'Just Kevin appearing tonight'. Nige resolved it courageously over the phone with Bob the entertainments man who gave us the go-ahead to get the gear in. Got set up OK and briefed Martin on the probability of a barn dance. Once again I elected to just use the 6 string. Got off to our usual start and a good reception from a full enough room. We soon had them barn dancing and then Nigel made a good call for Kevin to come up and do a couple of numbers with us. Off we went into “Three Steps to Heaven and Halfway to Paradise”.

In the middle of the set Jenny arrived to sit with Jacqui and Marita. She looked OK until towards the end of the set when Martin sang “Three Times a Lady”. She looked a bit upset at that one and had to leave the room for a while – Jacqui followed to look after her. After the Bingo we resumed with “Under the Sun” for Dave and (with the consent of the club) Nige informed the crowd of the forthcoming Tribute day. Having bravely put in an appearance, Jen said she would head off home after a couple of numbers. We played along set 2 and had a very short break to finish with a final 20 minute spot through to the end of the night which Martin wrapped up with a great rendition (again) of “You'll Never Walk Alone”. Lots of applause and shouts for more, but we were over time so decided to call it a night. The ladies helped me pack and load and then we had good run home satisfied with a well done weekend!

Caxton Club Beccles

Ginge (over from NZ) accompanied me on this gig and we set off in slightly stormy looking weather at about 5:15pm. We were first to the gig and had got most the gear in by the time Nige and Alex (depping) arrived.

Although I have seen smaller stages I elected to just use the Godin 6 string and put my energy into getting the harmoniser sounding good. When Nige and Alex arrived it was good to see Alex had most of his family with him in support. By the time we got set up the place was still empty, so we had a bit of a sound check, trying out bits of “Just One Look”.

At 8pm there were about 20 in and, with occasional visits from some hen party girls dressed in pink, the room looked well enough attended by the time we opened up with the usual start. Things went generally well from the off with lots of applause for just about everything we did. Not much dancing initially but the audience were attentive even listening to our banter quite well.

They liked the wigging up for the Beatles and, although there were no takers for the Shadows walk, it went down very well as usual. After a 15 minute break we got underway with Set 2 opening up with a dedication of “Under the Sun” to Dave. Followed up with a good sequence of “Tambourine Man”, “Searchers” and “Hollies” getting a great response from the smallish crowd. We used the harmoniser to good effect with “Lying Eyes” and it too got a very warm response. Towards the end of the set we rocked it up a bit with “Johnny B Goode” and it brought the house down and some blokes up and dancing. In the break we had a request for Hotel California, which we opened Set 3 with. It started well but lack of recent playing led to a messed up guitar solo. However, I extricated myself to get a clean ending and once again we got a good audience response. Towards the end we rocked it up a bit doing “All Right Now” and “Can't Get Enough”. We wrapped up with “Wonderful Tonight” to a great reception with lots of shouts for 'more' so we did an encore with “Saw Her Standing There”. Pack and load up went well with many hands helping me. We got underway about 12:30am and home for 1:30am satisfied with a job well done.

Plug Studios Norwich Try Out Session with Mick

I met up with Mick and Nige at Plug and we got set up in a largish practice room equipped with a Mackie PA and a Peavey bass amp for Nige – I was using my Mesa and had brought along my PRS 12 string in addition to my Godin. Nige and I elected to use our Audix mics which sounded OK through the PA. We opened up by asking Mick to 'dep' with us for a normal Foot Tappers start. All went very well, after “Foot Tapper“ Mick sang lead on “Just One Look”, the harmonies and the band sounded good and together. We played through a variety of things e.g. “Beautiful Body, Cathys Clown, Ipanema, Phoenix, Lady Is a Tramp, Blue Suede Shoes, All Shook Up, Beatles, Searchers, Eagles etc” Mick fitted in pretty good with it all and did a lot of the singing. We had a break then we tried out a bit of practice on Ace's “How Long” and a vocal arrangement of “Stand By Me”. Considering we hadn't had time to do real homework, this showed that we can work constructively together. We finished off with “All Right Now” to try out rockier stuff and then packed up and opened up a discussion. It was obvious there was a good musical fit so we had a long talk about how we might take it forward. There is a shared vision of a harmony showband that can earn in the £500 per night bracket. Mick is keen to get things going quickly and is prepared to work hard to make things happen. We agreed the bones of a project to create a new band, complete with 2 x one hour shows, with scripted comedy/entertainment routines, changes of outfit, dressing up and artiste tribute sections. The project would also put in place all the marketing collateral (photos, web site etc) and admin to allow bookings for next year to be negotiated. We explained our short term limitations, i.e. we are committed to deps up to Xmas, and then, apart from a couple of weeks in early Feb, I'm away until end February. We saw no reason why we couldn't get on with building the new band up to Xmas, but there was little scope for working together until the New Year. One possibility in the immediate New Year was Nige and Mick working as a duo. So, at approaching 1 am, we left it that we are agreed there is a good fit, we would sleep on it and then all discuss how we can take it forward whilst addressing the key issues of keeping Mick working through the Winter and getting the project underway as soon as possible. The next day Nigel and I 'chewed the cud' a bit and agreed that it was hard to see £500 gigs coming our way on the club and holiday park circuit unless we were a semi -name band. Weddings and Corporates which would pay well needed a re-engineering of the band to include female singer/s and hard dance sets. Over the next couple of weeks we agonised independently about what was best for the future and in the end we had a band meeting at my house where we had a good open and honest exchange with Mick about taking what bookings we could for 2010 whilst we looked to develop a higher paid long term future. Armed with that understanding we could look to immediately progressing things such as the name, photo's, repertoire etc and get promoting the band for jobs in 2010

50th Anniversary Gig With The Checkmates at King Edward Hall Lindfield

I had twisted my ankle on the Thursday night and was too immobilized to make changes to the Foot Tappers PA so that confirmed a likely decision to take the “old Checkmates PA”. We set off in good spirits about 10:30am and, apart from a 20 minute delay at the Dartford tolls, we had a good run arriving with friends Miles and Jenny in Lindfield at 1pm. Had a nice lunch with them and then I helped Miles fix some TV wiring before setting off for the hall. I rolled up about 5pm to meet Raye who was already unloading his Sonor Kit. Graham arrived a few minutes later with his boy Adam who was roadying for the night. Raye looked in good shape and with Adam's help we soon had all the gear set up in a really well decorated hall. The Mesa was ready to go with the previous Foot Tappers outing settings so I turned to the PA. I was setting up the 'old” PA from scratch and took the opportunity to check out the previous weeks theory that you could cut out the enhancer by making a few equaliser adjustments. I switched out the enhancer and the compressor and it was an OK sound, but with a low wattage hi-fi power amp there wasn't much volume – couldn't even get it to feedback! So I switched in just the compressor set with near zero compression and used the make up gain stage on that to boost the vocals a few dB and then we got a more powerful sound. Interestingly by switching out the enhancer we lost the sub-bass frequencies that often cause more harm than good! The guys were getting bored by then, so we ran through several Checkmates numbers and some of the more complex other ones like “American Trilogy” and I made some minor adjustments on the fly – tending to boost the hi's and lo's a little. Adam reported a good PA sound and overall balance out front, so we tested it out for volume by boosting everything a bit more and blasted out Johnny B Goode. It sounded fine and Brian and Carol (the organisers) looked suitably shocked, so we carefully reset down a couple of notches to give ourselves a good starting level. By now it was 7pm, the bar was open and the first few punters were coming in the hall. Raye treated us to a beer and I settled down with a sandwich to rest my leg. Raye's old song writing mate, Chris (and wife Vera) popped into the dressing room to say hello and explain that they were going to try and take some pictures and video of the event – so could we assist by doing a bit of posing? “Yes” we said and they started off with a bit of 'fly on the wall' video in the dressing room as I searched for my gay pink comb which it turned out I had left behind. Then our wives arrived and said hello, fortunately no one said “break a leg”! It was showtime. We crept onto the stage as Brian drew the curtain shut and began his introduction, doing a voice over the 'pick of the pops' theme music to tell everyone: “it was 50 years since “Eyes at me for” entered the charts to peak at no 1 over Christmas and New Year; the last no 1 of the fifties and the first no1 of the sixties – its the Checkmates!” The curtain goes back and we open up with “Eyes” and the audience are all singing along with it, what a fantastic start! From then on we could do no wrong. We had applause in plenty, the crowd laughing at the banter and lots of dancing. About halfway through the set I put on the glasses, went out front and did a Shadows 'limp' to 'Apache' on the extra stage set up in front of the band. To be honest it looked and sounded much the same as the Foot Tappers but it seems this kind of thing is rare in Sussex because it just brought the house down! We resumed our set and played on to complete an hour with “Wipe Out”. In the break we had a request for a Duane Eddy instrumental. So I briefed the boys to do a short “Shazam”. I was a bit sweaty so we changed into the blue for the next set. Opened up with “Slow Boat” and then did the request for “Shazam” - again we were getting an incredible response! We played on through the Checkmates hits and a few others including “FBI” as another wildly received Shadows limp! To finish Graham announced “Let There Be Drums”. In the rush we hadn't had time to talk this through so we set out on this journey in improvisation mode. All went well until the bit where I take the tom tom down to the dance floor. I forgot to do the cymbal! But by then I was already playing along with Raye on his kit, so I had to detach myself a bit from that, move the cymbal forward and then finally take over from Raye who picked the cymbal up on his way down to the dance floor. Raye carried on drumming out front but I couldn't find any sticks for Graham? All we could find were some vintage looking bongo bashers so Graham had to manage with those! We joined Raye and the next section was a complete mess of improvisation cut short by Raye being forced away from the tom only to return with a massive set of sticks. Graham and I departed and left him to it for a minute while Carol came out in her nurses uniform and helped Raye to get laid out on the floor (still playing his tom). Graham came over with bass attached stood over Raye who then did the playing of the bass bit successfully! I got ready for the big resumption on the front stage and Graham joined me and Raye got back to his feet, counted us in, we managed the run ups OK and did the big ending well. The icing on the cake was Carol coming over to revive Raye and then Brian and a mate came in dressed as medics with a stretcher and stretchered him off – This was completely unexpected and I laughed so much my sides nearly split! After the raffle we resumed for the final set starting with Raye giving a valedictory speech about the band. The we opened up with “Great Balls” and continuing a fairly up tempo sequence through to “American Trilogy” which I was pleased to get pretty right on the night. After a couple more numbers, we started the closing sequence of “Lucky Old Sun” and the Raye went out onto the front stage with snare and cymbal to finish with “Early in the Morning”. I played safe on this and did the answer backs in lower (non – girly) register that usual and it sounded just fine! After a fantastic reception, Brian asked us to do an encore and we obliged with “Eyes” with everyone singing along! We did a lot of glad handing as the hall emptied then set about the pack and load up. With Adam's help we had the cars loaded for the off at about 12:30am and, after final goodbyes, we set off on our separate ways. Miles had left the door unlocked for us and Jacqui and I felt like naughty teenagers creeping into our lodging for the night. Next day we had breakfast with Miles and Jenny and then we set off to visit old friends Chris, Elaine, with their daughter Rebecca and recently born baby for Jacqui to coo at! Finally set off home about 1pm and got in about 4pm after a stop en route. All in all a very good weekend. I had been thinking about Nige doing the Foot Tappers gig at the Oasis and hope he had a good time. It turned out it was an admin cock up. Despite our dligent contacting of clubs and promoters after Dave passed it turned out the Oasis had been cancelled and replaced with a gig at Caister. But we had no record of that so poor Nige didn't get to play and the Caister gig had no band. Oh dear, we've had a run of bad luck just lately, we are due something going right – perhaps the drummer vocalist we are trying out with on Wednesday?

Trimingham Caravan Park

Back from Spain on the Thursday. I picked up the guitar and, despite the 12 day break, all my fingers still worked OK. In fact I felt I could play a bit faster with rested finger muscles! Loaded up the conventional gear for this gig and set off about 5pm on a cool but dry day. I was soon back home 'cos I realised I had left my phone at home and turned back at the Great Barton roundabout. Eventually I arrived at Trimingham to meet up with Nigel and Alex. We had to wait a few minutes for Andy to arrive with the pass card then Alex and I went through and parked up for the unload. Unload was a bit painful 'cos the conventional PA and Mesa amp are heavy compared to the Bose. We started to set up and in comes Jenny - just to say hello and have a hug. She'd been to see a clairvoyant and seemed to be re-assured as how best to deal with things and a little more accepting of Dave's passing. We thought it was brave of her to come and see us for a short while, but we agreed it was best Jen didn't stay for the performance on this occasion. We jokingly tried to persuade her to help Alex set up his kit but she looked a bit tearful and decided to set off home. We continued set up and I couldn't get the guitar to work through the Mesa. After a bit of panicky flapping, I discovered I had plugged into the foot switch socket by mistake. I decided to go for the high voltage setting from the off and I set the treble, mid and bass to about 12 o'clock and backed down the pre/power amp volume quite a bit. This gave a tight clear sound with a pleasing valvy harmonic chime on the mid and top. I was well pleased with this set up and made a note to use that for the future. I decided to pass on 12 string and strings, but I did set up the harmoniser. It too sounded good so, with confidence rising, I set to work on the basic PA sound which was sounding boxy. Nige and I put a bit of time into it but couldn't get it quite right. However, there were now a few people in the club in so we decided to omit the sound check and start with the volume down thinking we could adjust it on the fly – this turned out to be a poor decision! We wolfed down a beer, got changed into the white'n'black and were on stage for a prompt 8:44 pm start. We counted Alex in for “Foot Tapper” and off we went. Good band sound from the off and about the right volume for the room. Despite a rather rapid finish (Alex took our signals a bit too literally), we started up “Just One Look” OK, and there was a good sign from the off with a couple coming up for a dance. But the vocals still sounded boxy. Nige signalled for more mic volume but the sound particularly from Nige's mic was still dodgy. “Heartbeat”, the Everly's and “Beautiful Body”went a bit better so we settled down. Next we tried a couple of slowies. I opened up with “Around the World” as a waltz. To my horror, I realised I had no push in my voice and there was a bit of phlegm and break up in the throat which led to minor, uncontrollable intonation problems. Not nerves - just out of practice and unfit! Nige realised I was suffering and threw in a nice harmony which softened the audience perception. We carried on with “Phoenix” which I thought went well, I got the chords about right and with the band at low volume Nige's vocal sounded good. He also did a fine “Lady is a Tramp” to complete our jazz phase. The rock'n'roll was OK; we even tried a bit of country; but whatever style we tried we were getting precious little reaction from the 20 or so in the audience. Once we got back into the more poppy stuff we had to suffer a poor vocal harmony sound. But we could only grit our teeth and play on through the set. After “Move It and Easily Fall” I did a lonely Shadows walk. Listening to the band out front as I tripped and skipped over my lead I expected a good sound as usual; but the band really did sound excellent on this instrumental – the Mesa guitar sound was just great and the bass and drums were perfectly balanced, punchy and tight. And to cap it all we got some audience reaction with some warm applause. So well done boys! We wrapped up with “Dream” which is getting better as I get familiar with the proper words and the interesting key changes we have worked in. In the break Nige swapped his mic for the Audix and we fiddled a bit with the equalisation. We got some improvement but there was no transforming breakthrough. We resumed set 2 with “Flingel Bunt” then we dedicated “Under the Sun” to Dave and that was appreciated by the audience. After “Tambourine Man” we did the Hollies medley and during that my voice started to give up badly – a bit like having a sore throat but I knew I didn't have that; most weird? We tried out “Peaceful Easy Feeling” with Nige doing the lead line. Sadly I couldn't get the harmonies right, but we busked an OK solo. We soldiered on to finish with the Buddy Holly medley. Set 3 we started with “Walk Don't Wipe Out” which Alex got really well considering he had had no exposure to it at all. After “Dance the Night Away” and “Do You Wanna Dance” I got the boys to do “FBI”, it went well and was a good rehearsal for one I'll do with the Checkmates next week. Oddly enough we now had a group of chaps on a table near the band applauding what we were doing. I asked them if they had any request and we impressively set off into “Fulsom Prison” when they asked for Johnny Cash! Then we just picked and mixed through Nige's vocal songs such as "Midnigh Hour" to end at midnight with “Wonderful Tonight” with Nige helping me out with the vocal. Oddly enough we got a couple of shouts for more, but we were a bit done so we called it a night. Nige had saved the night with a huge effort on vocals, but we were a bit down about the overall performance which was below our recent standard. Fuelled by coffee from the bar we packed up steadily and were ready for the off about 1am. To avoid tricky turns I led Alex forward through some caravans to pick up the path back to the barrier and meet up with Nige. Off we went in convoy going our separate ways in Cromer. I stopped briefly en route to check the phone to find Jacqui wanted picking up from Norton; so I diverted there and we finally got home about 3am! I was pretty tired the next day but I had had time to reflect on the vocal problems, concluding:
* More top needed on the PA. Try using the mid parametric to boost some of the higher mid frequencies. The mid frequencies we were boosting were too low and created the boxy sound. But we seemed to have got the bottom about right.
* Take out the Behringer enhancer – it seems to add a processing delay but we are hardly using it for equalisation with the combination of Makie mixer, QSC Power amp and EV speakers. Use the Mackie equaliser to compensate.
* Turn one of the EV's in to give Nige more foldback.
* I need to do some vocal exercises to maintain vocal fitness between gigs.