ReTrio on the Southern Comfort Paddle Boat from Horning

We had been booked for some time to play Beryl and Bryan's Golden Wedding Anniversary on a boat cruising the broads and the day had finally arrived. This gig would be out of the ordinary in several ways:

Firstly, Beryl and Bryan had requested:  "Albatross,  Don't Stop,  Take 5 and Anniversary Waltz".   We had had plenty of time to work up the Fleetwood Mac songs and Anniversary was no problem but,  despite a couple of goes at it,  we were unable to get a convincing version of Take 5 working.  So I cheated and put this into the background music playlist.  

Secondly, we were going to provide band backing for Michele Summers on a couple of songs:  "Brown Eyes Blue" and "Grandma's Feather Bed".  I had taken time to arrange these and run them by Michele before practicing them with ReTrio.  The practice had gone well so I was confident these would be alright on the night. I had also agreed to provide Michele with guitar on the night. 

Thirdly, another complexity was that we had been asked to provide backing for Beryl's granddaughter Gabriella on Queen's "Somebody to Love".  I had arranged it but it was quite complex to play as songs go.  Also I wasn't sure what key she wanted and how experienced she would be working with a band that might be a bit imprecise.  In the end I had suggested she use the backing track she was familiar with rather than risk the band!  

Finally,  we knew small gear would be necessary and the Bose would be too tall for the cabin.  So we had elected to use the Phil Jones Bass Suitcase for bass and half the PA,  a small Marshall AS50R acoustic amp for Michele's guitar and the other half of the PA. We used a Bose T1 to mix 3 mics and the MP3 player into the two amps being used for PA.  For my guitar I would be using a very small Vox Valvetronix 30 without pedal board -  making use of 3 stored sounds for instrumental, clean and dirty numbers.  Chris B would cut out a cymbal and large tom from his kit.

 

 

Come the day,  the two Chris's came round my place in the afternoon and we loaded all into the back of my S-Max (just).  We set off for the gig about 3:30pm on a sunny mild day.  Traffic was a bit busy in Thetford and Norwich,  but it was Friday afternoon. We still got to Horning as planned just before 5pm - delighted to find the boat berthed and available for our load in without guests in the way!  We had just started set up when Michele,  Beryl and Bryan arrived.  I asked Michele to try out my Godin nylon strung Multiac and she was pretty happy with it.  We completed set up; the PA sounded good,  the PJB gave the vocals more bass than was needed but we could easily adjust that with the on-board equaliser.  (Chris the drum's mic also needed a little bit more bass roll off on the T1 mixer)  I had fitted the Multiac with the little tuner Nige had given me and this was invaluable in getting Michele set up ready to plug in the Marshall. We were also able to test the upper deck cabin mic which ran the band sound down into the ships pa in the cabin below. It was still well before 6pm (when guests would start arriving) so we took the opportunity to do an extended sound check playing both of Michele's numbers,  "Anniversary Waltz" with Michele singing and a couple of verses of "Just One Look" to check the harmoniser was working.  We actually had the luxury of enough time to be able to make a couple of adjustments to Michele's song arrangements with: band in on second verse for "Brown Eyes Blue" and a reminder to play the intro bit after each chorus in "Grandma's Bed".  Satisfied we declared ourselves ready to rock and headed off to the nearby pub, the Swan, for a beer!

 

 

We returned in good order and good time and Michele introduced us to Gabriella who had brought a cd with the "Somebody to Love" backing track on.  Shock horror!  We hadn't got a cd player - I had assumed she would have had an MP3 backing on her phone or something?  After a bit of thinking we ended up with a workaround where the track would be played on the ships cd player / pa and we would put a mic in front of the pa to run it into our PA.  Michele also advised that grandson Zak had agreed to do a duet of "Remember September" with her at some point. With speeches and cake cutting, it looked like the band would be doing a couple of spots of about 45 minutes each.   We in ReTrio were ready to go dressed smartly in our white shirts,  black ties and our waistcoats and a few minutes later the boat pulled away.  We struck up with our opening sequence of "Flingel Bunt, Just One Look and Heartbeat".  We had bits of applause and our captive audience seemed to be enjoying it, and no one was covering ears - always a good sign!  For me the PA sounded OK but I couldn't hear the guitar too well (probably 'cos I was standing over it?)  Chris the bass a bit further down the cabin said it was a good band sound where he was so we ploughed on playing a selection of easy listening songs from our usual set 1.  I couldn't resist the opportunity to change "Mersey" to "Bure" for "Ferry Cross the Bure".  Despite the confined space we had a few dancers up to "Rock Around The Clock" so I extended that a bit and the boys followed nicely.  We finished off the set with "Delilah" and "Green Grass of Home" to good applause and some of the crowd singing-a-long - a good enough start I thought.  There were about 100 on the boat and it was tricky moving around,  but we managed to get some shandies in the break.  We resumed with Michele's set which she sang and played great.  I thought we backed her well - it certainly all went down well with the crowd.  Then Gabriella came up to do her bit. Chris the bass held a mic to the ships pa and we got enough sound coming through to give it a go.  She has a very strong voice for a 13 year old and she sang this tricky song well under the difficult circumstances and got a deservedly great response from the crowd.   Next it was time for the buffet so we had a bit more time off to grab a bite to eat and banter with the crowd.  It was getting colder and darker as we approached the turning point at South Walsham and so the cabin was even more full as people took shelter.  We resumed with "Anniversary Waltz"  which Michele kindly sung (giving me a break!) and Beryl and Bryan led the dancing.  I took the opportunity to rattle out the two requests "Albatross and Don't Stop".  These went really well and Bryan was well pleased, congratulating us on a good performance with just 3 of us doing what it had taken 6 to do with Fleetwood Mac when he saw them in Australia.  We were pleased too and announced they would be staying in our play list.  We took another break for speeches and then commenced the final set as we cruised home.  We only had about 30 minutes to play so we were able to pick a good selection of sing-a-long dance-a-long songs to keep the increasingly jolly atmosphere going.  e.g. Halfway to Paradise, Saturday Night at Movies,  Sweet Caroline,  Pretty Woman.  As we sailed back into Horning we embarked on "Johnny B Goode" with added solos to see us into port.  A well timed ending for which we got a great reception.  

It took about half an hour to pack up as the guests left and so we had a free run to off load the gear and load up the car - setting off home about 10:45pm.  We had a good run home, getting back about midnight.  We declared ourselves well pleased with the nights work as we unloaded the car.  The boys got off home and I went in the house to find Ms J had stayed up and made me a cup of cocoa - a fine ending to our second gig.