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.
