Appearing as Sky High. Left at 11am and had a pleasant enough run over on a sunny but chilly day. Arrived to find Mick already parked up and had most of my gear in the building before Nigel arrived. Gave Nige a hand in with his EV15” and Behringer PA Amp which he was going to use to reinforce the bass sound. As we were bringing the gear in some folks from Norwich British Legion came up to say hello and how surprised they were to see us. We explained we were operating as Sky High at this venue and Bob said “You're on this evening - this afternoon its the 'For Everlys'!” Well, Mick had a word with Lee (the entertainments manager) and discovered that despite the contract being written as Sky High Afternoon and Evening, the cub had promoted it as Everlys in the afternoon and Sky High in the evening and that's what he wanted. I said to Mick I didn't mind however he wanted to sort it. So Mick says to Nigel – can you do the Everlys spot? Nige has to decline because he hasn't had a run through and no book and no guitar. So Mick confers with Lee and gets his mate Steve to turn out for the evening. So its 'Sky High' in the Avo and 'For Everly's' in the Evo. Then one more bombshell: Lee says you're on at 2pm not 3pm; so its all rush and bash to set up. Meanwhile the PA roadie for the Thunderbirds had arrived and wanted to start setting up. But we managed to get set up by 1:45 and went to get changed. Nigel had got his bass reinforcement working by taking the pre-amp output from the bass channel on the T1 and routing into a normal channel input on the Behringer (it seems the pre-amp is needed). Then I dished out some red ties for the boys; but we decided to go white shirts and black ties to give the British Legion coach party a change of view. We opened up with “Flingel Bunt”, it seemed an OK balance and we got a good round of applause. I took a minute to introduce the band and acknowledge the coach trippers from the British Legion and then we got on with “Just One Look”. The vocal balance seemed well down, so Nige and I made attempts to get that right so that by the end it was OK. Then we got signalled to turn the whole volume down as we got into “Heartbeat”. We eased back on the instruments a bit and from then on the sound was fine on stage and seemed to be OK out front as well. After “Do You Wanna Dance” we continued with a mixed set: some Jim Reeves, some rock'n'roll, Searchers, “Ferry Cross the Mersey Wonder of You, Sweet Caroline, Hi Ho, Amarillo, Hey Baby etc”. It all got a good reception; particularly “Wonder of You” where we had the two sides of the room trying to outconduct each other on the “Whoa oh oh's”. It was soon time to call the last number: “Walk Alone”. This went well and we got enough shouts for 'more' for the entertainments guy to ask us to do an encore, which we obliged with “Johnny B Goode” complete with drum and bass solos. Then it was a quick change, gear off the stage, pack and load up. Mick went off to get himself organised for the evening and Nige and I drove off in the sun homewards. I got in about 5pm and was able to have a relaxing evening at home – Claire and I had fish'n'chips 'cos Ms J had been lunching with the ladies.
