A very local gig at which Abbie would make her debut. Chris the bass had secured us entry to the
club to set up and sound check at 3pm.
This is the Golf Club on the West side of town so about a 12 minute
drive from my house. I drove over arriving at 3pm to meet up with Chris the bass in the
hall. Its a big car park but we got the
cars parked close to the entrance - I parked in the Secretary's space! Chris the drum arrived shortly after and we
muscled the gear in through the main door and right down the main hall to the
playing area - an area of carpet in front of the temporary dance floor laid
down over the carpet. It's a large but
dry sounding room and we were able to set the Bose up well apart. This time I had elected to use a simplified
set up with everything but the bass thru the Mackie mixer. I had tried out mics at home and thought the
Audix didn't make much difference thru this mixer so I was going to use my
Shure Beta 58A to match Abbie using a Shure SM 58. Chris the drum was using a switchable
Studiospares S5805 mic which sounded like a SM58 with more bass end. Chris the bass had his trusty switchable AKG.
We had a Thomann T-bone on the bass drum.
I mixed the vocals and guitar to about 75:25 this time rather than hard
panned. Chris the bass reported he could
hear the guitar clearly on the Bose on his side so I knew that was working! With all the amplification set up neatly, Chris the bass then set up his renovated
lighting and we were all set to sound check.
Unfortunately the room was still well populated with members enjoying a
Saturday pm drink, so we decided to keep
the sound check down to one quietish verse of "Just One Look" and a
bit of "Ring of Fire". Seemed
OK so we powered down, stowed the bags and set off home agreeing to meet at
7:30 for the gig.
I had a couple of hours at home playing with grandson who had arrived with his dad for a short notice visit (so Ms J was staying at home for this gig). Then had a bit of dinner before setting out dressed in white shirt ready for the gig. The club dinner was running to time and they had an organist lined up to entertain in any breaks. The two Chris's had their missus's: Trudy (drum) and Bridget (bass) with them - nicely turned out for this event ladies! Abbie arrived with them looking great in a black dress with a classy long white jacket. Her brother Nathan had also come along to take some pics and discuss setting up a web site. Us chaps in ReTrio slinked off to find the gents golf changing room and got changed into our white shirts black ties and waistcoats for the first set. Then we congregated in the bar for a welcome beer. About 8:30pm I was pleased I was able to nip out of the bar and switch on and gently test the amplification in the main hall. I had forgot that the last sound test was my 12 string and couldn't work out why my 6 string wasn't working until I realised it wasn't even plugged in! Surprisingly the dinner ran to schedule and organiser Ray got us lined up to start at 9:25pm. We got the vibe that he wanted a slow number to start the dancing so we agreed to front the usual set opener with "Albatross". This we did. It all sounded fine and we played it pretty well, but only a few came up for a dance - but it did get some applause. We continued with our usual opening of "Flingel Bunt, Just One Look, Heartbeat" and gradually the floor filled - most gratifying!
Ray had asked us to do another slowey at this point, so we did "Ferry Cross the Mersey". I thought this sounded pretty good with the large echo and strings; and there were a few slow dancing to it and it got some good applause. We continued with the "Everlys and Beautiful Body" at which point the dance floor had thinned a bit. So I thought it would be a good idea to return to the sloweys with "The Green Green Grass of the Golf Club Greens!" I think they got the joke but we only got a few couples up and dancing so I kept the number short. After that we carried on picking and mixing from our usual set 1 list reading the audience pretty well with a mainly rock n roll vibe. We finished with "Delilah" with Chris the drum out front on Abbie's mic, the audience singing along as well and giving it a great reception. The plan for set 2, was to do a few as ReTrio then bring Abbie on for her debut. First we had to back Ray singing the Dads Army Theme (busked it pretty poorly in C) Then we opened with "Eight Days a Week, Walk in the Room and Ring of Fire". These got the audience nicely warmed up ready for Abbie. I gave her a bit of an intro and she came out confidently, took her place in front of the band and we opened with Tammy Wynette's "Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad". I got the guitar breaks good enough but muffed a couple of chords in the first verse, but she carried on like a pro and got a good reception for this up tempo country song. Abbie introduced herself with a bit of background on who she was and then we followed up with "Blanket on the Ground" which also went well. Her next song was an inspired choice: "Valerie" from Amy Winehouse. This packed the dance floor and I could see Abbie was delighted by the reception. The next two were down beat modern country from Little Big Town: "Pontoon and Sober". These went as well as I would have hoped for but, not being that well known in the UK, you could see the audience losing a bit of interest. Abbie finished her spot with "Country Roads" getting the crowd singing along and departing to a great reception - I was so pleased for her and she looked pleased! Although we in the band were a little stressed trying to remember the music and harmonies, we also took great delight in how well it had all gone down with the audience! We had about 40 minutes to play from this point so we just played thru our normal set 3. I must say we weren't playing at our best in this set. But despite the mistakes the audience was dancing and singing along to songs like "Saturday Night at Movies" and "Sweet Caroline" and probably didn't notice the errors. About 20 minutes in we did "American Trilogy" and we played it well. I even got the high note at the end without going falsetto! We got a really good reception for this but some of the audience were now beginning to drift away as taxi's arrived. A few numbers later we finished with "Johnny B Goode". I don't know if it was fatigue but this simple 12 bar was a bit ragged. But we had got all the remaining audience up on the dance floor by the end! That left us nicely placed to do our planned encore of "Wonderful Tonight" which did go well and we got enough shouts for more to put Chris the drum on to wind up with a bonus encore of "Help Me Make It Thru the Night" - I quipped 'we should have done it first number boys!' We were tired at the end and pack up took a good hour. We agreed we could have done better musically, but we had done a good job for this audience. The reports we got were generally positive although there was a view that my vocal was a tad quiet. It had sounded quite loud to me - phase cancellation maybe? But the Chris's ladies thought we were very good (much better than expected) so we stopped beating ourselves up to rest on those laurels. A 15 minute journey home and in bed by 1:30pm.
Hope to add some photos of the action later.
I had a couple of hours at home playing with grandson who had arrived with his dad for a short notice visit (so Ms J was staying at home for this gig). Then had a bit of dinner before setting out dressed in white shirt ready for the gig. The club dinner was running to time and they had an organist lined up to entertain in any breaks. The two Chris's had their missus's: Trudy (drum) and Bridget (bass) with them - nicely turned out for this event ladies! Abbie arrived with them looking great in a black dress with a classy long white jacket. Her brother Nathan had also come along to take some pics and discuss setting up a web site. Us chaps in ReTrio slinked off to find the gents golf changing room and got changed into our white shirts black ties and waistcoats for the first set. Then we congregated in the bar for a welcome beer. About 8:30pm I was pleased I was able to nip out of the bar and switch on and gently test the amplification in the main hall. I had forgot that the last sound test was my 12 string and couldn't work out why my 6 string wasn't working until I realised it wasn't even plugged in! Surprisingly the dinner ran to schedule and organiser Ray got us lined up to start at 9:25pm. We got the vibe that he wanted a slow number to start the dancing so we agreed to front the usual set opener with "Albatross". This we did. It all sounded fine and we played it pretty well, but only a few came up for a dance - but it did get some applause. We continued with our usual opening of "Flingel Bunt, Just One Look, Heartbeat" and gradually the floor filled - most gratifying!
Ray had asked us to do another slowey at this point, so we did "Ferry Cross the Mersey". I thought this sounded pretty good with the large echo and strings; and there were a few slow dancing to it and it got some good applause. We continued with the "Everlys and Beautiful Body" at which point the dance floor had thinned a bit. So I thought it would be a good idea to return to the sloweys with "The Green Green Grass of the Golf Club Greens!" I think they got the joke but we only got a few couples up and dancing so I kept the number short. After that we carried on picking and mixing from our usual set 1 list reading the audience pretty well with a mainly rock n roll vibe. We finished with "Delilah" with Chris the drum out front on Abbie's mic, the audience singing along as well and giving it a great reception. The plan for set 2, was to do a few as ReTrio then bring Abbie on for her debut. First we had to back Ray singing the Dads Army Theme (busked it pretty poorly in C) Then we opened with "Eight Days a Week, Walk in the Room and Ring of Fire". These got the audience nicely warmed up ready for Abbie. I gave her a bit of an intro and she came out confidently, took her place in front of the band and we opened with Tammy Wynette's "Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad". I got the guitar breaks good enough but muffed a couple of chords in the first verse, but she carried on like a pro and got a good reception for this up tempo country song. Abbie introduced herself with a bit of background on who she was and then we followed up with "Blanket on the Ground" which also went well. Her next song was an inspired choice: "Valerie" from Amy Winehouse. This packed the dance floor and I could see Abbie was delighted by the reception. The next two were down beat modern country from Little Big Town: "Pontoon and Sober". These went as well as I would have hoped for but, not being that well known in the UK, you could see the audience losing a bit of interest. Abbie finished her spot with "Country Roads" getting the crowd singing along and departing to a great reception - I was so pleased for her and she looked pleased! Although we in the band were a little stressed trying to remember the music and harmonies, we also took great delight in how well it had all gone down with the audience! We had about 40 minutes to play from this point so we just played thru our normal set 3. I must say we weren't playing at our best in this set. But despite the mistakes the audience was dancing and singing along to songs like "Saturday Night at Movies" and "Sweet Caroline" and probably didn't notice the errors. About 20 minutes in we did "American Trilogy" and we played it well. I even got the high note at the end without going falsetto! We got a really good reception for this but some of the audience were now beginning to drift away as taxi's arrived. A few numbers later we finished with "Johnny B Goode". I don't know if it was fatigue but this simple 12 bar was a bit ragged. But we had got all the remaining audience up on the dance floor by the end! That left us nicely placed to do our planned encore of "Wonderful Tonight" which did go well and we got enough shouts for more to put Chris the drum on to wind up with a bonus encore of "Help Me Make It Thru the Night" - I quipped 'we should have done it first number boys!' We were tired at the end and pack up took a good hour. We agreed we could have done better musically, but we had done a good job for this audience. The reports we got were generally positive although there was a view that my vocal was a tad quiet. It had sounded quite loud to me - phase cancellation maybe? But the Chris's ladies thought we were very good (much better than expected) so we stopped beating ourselves up to rest on those laurels. A 15 minute journey home and in bed by 1:30pm.
Hope to add some photos of the action later.
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