Tyneside Sheringham

Lovely weather for a drive over to the Norfolk coast. Had a good run over, hardly any traffic and I arrived about 6:20 at the gig. It turned out the roads were quiet because England were playing Kasakstan and beat them 5-1! I had most of my gear in by the time Nigel arrived with Dave and Jen rolling up shortly after. I had integrated a Rolls RMX 603 Line mixer with the reverb to give control over what PA sounds went where. It is set up so I get a bit of Nigel and Dave’s’ vocals in my Bose and vice versa. The synth and radio mic (if we set it up) are routed into both Bose equally to centre the sound. Testing it out it all worked fine; although the nature of the Bose dispersion is so good that it doesn’t make that much difference to the on stage sound because we can hear each other’s Bose well anyway. But from an audience point of view sounds like the synth strings now appear to come from the centre back of the band. I have a final adjustment to do on the reverb to remove a small amount of dry pass through, but I thought I’d do that at home. Also I had used the Bose parametric equaliser to take a lot of the sound below 60hz off the guitar to reduce the boomyness at G that we had experienced last time at this gig. Because of all the change, we elected to do a quick sound check with a section of “Here I Go Again”. Nige took himself out front a bit and reported that it all sounded fine. Dave still has a bad throat so warned us he might need to bottle out on some songs and Nige was suffering from a bit of bloat so he wouldn’t be rushing around. We took a break for a water and lime (preceded by a beer) and we were let into the dressing room. This had been locked because it was full of bridal dresses for a display the next day. The girl who unlocked the room took one look at the band and said in no uncertain terms “no trying these dresses on boys” – as if we would! Jenny’s sister and husband Alan arrived (Alan is a great pedal steel player but currently plays guitar in his own rock and roll trio). One of Nigel’s music contacts, Clive, showed up to see the band with a view to putting some bookings our way. Also Tabby a female singer friend of Nige had arrived to support the band and get his advice on a prospective band she was going to join. We elected to wear pink and the room was filling up nicely so off we went into set 1 at about 8:20pm. Dave was a bit nervy but we got off to a generally good start with a good on-stage sound. However, by the time we got to “Heartbeat” I realised I had forgotten the words. Unbelievable after all the years I have played it – it’s probably a combination of being out with the Checkmates the week before and general brain degeneration. Somehow I fudged it through, but it rattled me a bit. Carrying on we generally followed the set list and the guitar changes OK; but this week (whilst I remembered Cliff), I forgot to call a slowey. Still we got an encouragingly good response from the Tyneside crowd for pretty much everything we did – warts and all. Highlights included an interesting bunch of people up and dancing the Shadows walk with the blow up guitars and, despite a bit of a false start, I thought “How Long” went well. We even had a few dancers going in some of the numbers. We played through to finish with “I Believe” and Dave’s voice just held up just enough to complete it. Despite my misgivings on the nerves, feedback from people was good and Clive seemed very open to using the band; in fact he elected to stay through most of set 2 which he didn’t need to! We started up set 2 in the white shirts kicking off with the Searchers medley. I was going to continue with the 12 string through the Eagles and “Do It Again”, but I wasn’t too happy with the sound on the night and switched back to 6 string. Another brain cell had gone ‘cos I couldn’t play one little riff in “Lying Eyes” right, but I thought we sang it OK. After “Alice” and “Under the Moon of Love”, Dave made a good call to miss out “Beautiful Sunday and “Yellow River” and we got into “Halfway” and “Sweet Caroline” which went well before he did the Elvis bit. That left us some time to do the “Bay City Rollers” and “Crazy Little Thing” which both went well with this audience, before we finished with “Shake Rattle and Roll” and “Love is all Around”. By the time we got on for set 3 we only had about 30 minutes to do so we opened up with a request for “Can’t Get Enough” only marred by my forgetting the solo and having to improvise a bit – but it went down well. Then we rattled through the party dance to “Locomotion” getting a bit of dance interest at times. We tried out the Spencer Davis pair a bit slower and got the best result yet in my opinion. even though Nige had to take over from Dave in “Keep On Running as his voice gave out. We finished off with “Pretty Woman” with Dave saying goodbye from the band and, due to the thunderous applause from the 20 or so left, we went back on to encore with “Wonderful Tonight”. The management seemed pleased and I thought we had had a good night overall; Nige had been very steady and made up for mine and Dave’s nervy errors and coughing fits. It was a bit chilly out as we loaded up and I ran into some fog patches on the way back, but I made good time getting in at 1:45 am; the next day we had a lovely sunny Sunday with temperatures up to 23 degrees in the afternoon, went for a walk by the river at West Stow.

King Edward Hall Lindfield Sussex

Another reunion night with the Checkmates. Jacqui and I ran down early Saturday so we could spend some time with old friends and neighbours Jenny and Miles. They were kind enough to treat us to lunch and drink so the afternoon soon whizzed by. We checked in the Birch Hotel at 4pm and had a little doze before I set off for the gig at 5 ish. Met up with Raye at the hall and he had already set his kit up earlier in the day. I was using the old Checkmates PA with the EVSX300s and my Mesa Lonestar (heavier gear than the Foot Tapper’s Bose’s) and I was in the middle of unloading when Graham rolled up with his boy Adam who was assisting as road / stage manager for the night. Got set up without incident and I was pleased to see everything worked except Raye’s mic which needed a bit of attention to the connector. I adjusted the PA a bit to bring down some of the boomy bottom, the usual story - boomy on stage but fine out front. Then we did a bit of a sound check / rehearsal for half an hour. We remembered most of the Checkmates songs quite well, but a few of the more complex other songs (e.g. FBI, American Trilogy) needed a bit of discussion. Adam thought the balance was a bit vocal heavy, but I had already decided to use the Mesa on its high voltage setting when the hall filled up and I knew that would take care of the guitar sound. Graham had plenty of “uuumph “ left in his Trace Elliot – so we were set to go. Richard (Raye’s biographer) arrived and we all had time for brief chat before the ladies arrived in a taxi about 7:30pm. Then it was get the beers in and get ready for the show. Got on to play about 8:30pm and things went generally smoothly musically - the odd forgotten arrangement or wrong tempo but nothing fatal! But we got a great response for just about everything we did but especially Apache (with the Shadows walk) and “Wipe Out” for which Raye brought up one of his jazz drummer mates to ably assist - it brought the house down. In the break Adam advised that the sound was good and the reaction we got from many folks we knew was also great. Going back on we did the most of the Checkmates hits and “Let There Be Drums” which finished with Carol (one of the organisers) who was dressed up as a nurse with a massive syringe, reviving. Raye after his exertions! Well he got a hell of a response to that with a long standing ovation. When we got going again we did a bit of dancey stuff and finished off the night with “Lucky Old Sun” to another standing ovation, so we encored with “Early in the Morning” with Raye coming out front and just playing snare drum and cymbal. We could have played on, but the hall had to be closed by 1am, so we took a final bow and left the stage happy but exhausted. Took a while to get packed up and Raye was well tired out. Adam did sterling work helping to pack up and move the gear. I was very impressed with Adam’s help throughout the night and I wasn’t surprised to hear that he was planning to do a course on sound engineering and he had had quite a bit of experience stage managing the local Battle of the Bands competitions. We were out the hall by 12:30am. It was raining hard by the time we had a farewell group hug. Jacqui and I were soon back at the hotel so we had a drink before turning in. I think it was the last drink which didn’t agree with J ‘cos she was a bit off colour the next day. Drove back to Bury in rain most the way.

Photo Shoot Cromer

We met up for a photo shoot with Eric in Cromer in the afternoon. He worked very patiently with us and took about 30 shots, early views are very promising and no doubt Nige will work some magic on them for the web site and general marketing collateral. Dave clearly very unwell on the day but he posed gamely and looked fine on the early rushes.

Wymondham Central Hall

Kenny and Caroline’s wedding. We had to cancel practice in the week because we all felt rough with colds and infections, but I was feeling a lot better as I set out on a sunny afternoon for this gig. Went through to the A11 via Garbolisham and had a good run over to Wymondham arriving at 6:20pm after one false turn. Introduced myself to Kenny and Caroline and I was shown to the band dressing room labelled “Superstars Dressing Room for Dave Lemmon and the Foottappers”! . Kenny is the leader of Kenny and the Strollers and I was introduced to his guitarist Mickey as they opened up the back fire door so we could get easyish access to the stage. I had just started to unload when Dave rolled up. There are steps and some narrow stairs to negotiate to get the gear on stage. We had all our gear in by the time Nigel appeared, he’d had a late start and a couple of wrong turnings. It’s a big stage, so we set up well forward, avoiding the props for the children’s entertainer. By the time he finished his show we were ready to power up. I had set up the radio mic (sharing an input with the synth) and everything worked first time. It was a good job I did set the radio mic up because the house system wasn’t working. Although it was a very mixed audience, Nige and I set the volume on the Boses one notch higher because it was such a big hall. We didn’t bother with a sound check and by the time we got changed it was showtime. We ran through the usual first set. It started OK, I thought the sound was good and we soon had some people up and dancing and we got some applause in all the right places. The oldies and slowies went down as well as the faster numbers and the show was generally well paced and relaxed. Dave and I got a bit mixed up with the running order and the use of 12 string, but we just carried on:- I ended up playing Mr Tambourine Man, the Hollies and the Beatles on 6 string. I thought we did a fine version of “How Long” - I got the start of the guitar solo right at last and we got a warm round of applause. We got Kenny and Mickey up to dance to “Apache” with the rubber blow up guitars (rubbercasters). Got into the rock’n’roll and Dave elected again to choose “Shake Rattle and Roll” as the third piece; and again I was a bit out of practice and messed up the guitar solo but I hope no one noticed! Finished off with both “Three Times a Lady” and “I Believe” which both went down well with this mixed audience. In the break we had time for a bit of hog roast and a water and lime. Went back on for set 2 starting up with “Hotel California”, I momentarily forgot some of the words but soon got back in synch; but (thank goodness) I got the guitar solo right! Then we were into the Searchers - a good rendition. We got Caroline’s father up next to sing “Oh Boy”; I thought we did a good job – he sang it well and we were very together and harmonised nicely on the answer backs. Departing from the usual order, Dave dedicated the next song “Sweet Caroline” to the bride. Dedicating “Alice” to one of the bridesmaids, we ploughed on through the rest of set 2 to finish with the Elvis bit. Took a longish break for more water and lime and then we were up for a final bash at 10:50ish. A lot of the audience had gone home by then but we started up the party dance sequence with “500 Miles”. I looked round and Nigel had disappeared. So I kept on waffling away until he reappeared in a kilt with a plastic backside hanging out! What a sight – at the end Dave and I couldn’t resist having a look up his kilt but all I can say is it was very dark up there!! Getting back on with the show, we carried on the sequence from “Amarillo” through to “Locomotion”. The few that were left danced gamely. Then we did a short version of “Unchained” and I think it was at this point we did a fair rendition of “The Wonder of You” requested by Mickey and dedicated to Kenny. We finished off with “Pretty Woman and Wonderful Tonight” stopping at exactly 11:30 pm. Kenny and Caroline were very pleased with our performance and I thought we had done well – weddings are notoriously difficult for bands, because predictably people get drunk and then they can be hard to please and easy to anger!. But this was about the most civilised wedding I’ve done in my career. Nigel is starting to fit into the banter now and Dave was on good form on the night. A lot of my minor lyric and guitar forgetting mistakes are down to not practicing at home just lately with being in Spain and other domestic distractions, but I’m sure I can fix that soon. Then it was a long pack and load up. The only trouble with our current set up is that it needs lots of leads plugging in. My plan to overcome this is to have a stage box coming out of the reverb rack which Nigel and I will plug the Bose and all the other ancillaries into. After a group hug I had a quiet run home getting back at 1am. The weather is great for the end of September and on the Sunday Jacqui and I went for a long walk (about 6 miles there and back) to a pub at Thurston. I think that might have contributed to my knee getting painful on the Monday and me ending up at the chiropractors on Tuesday with an inflamed ligament.

Ipswich Conservative Club

Easy drive over for me. I allowed 50 mins to include a stop at Ipswich Asda to fuel up at their very low price of 106.9 p per litre and then carried on in pleasant sunshine and still got to the gig ahead of Dave and Nigel. Dave had come thru central Ipswich and had had a hard time navigating. Nige and I had come over the Orwell bridge and the gig was only a few turnings off the A14. We loaded in thru the front door and it’s a very nice concert room: well furnished and decorated, low ceiling, big dance floor and dry acoustics, lots of room for the band – we thought our kind of club! We set up steadily but as the room was filling up we agreed again not to bother with a sound check. We had time for a quick beer before getting changed in the office where we met Steve (the concert sec’). He wasn’t staying ‘cos he didn’t feel too well but he wished us luck and arranged our payment for the night. The room looked reasonably full, but the barman said there weren’t many in, however, he thought they would like 60’s 70’s. So off we went in an optimistic mood to open up or with an hour and a bit set 1. I had been nursing a cold and was suitably drugged up for this performance, but I still sounded very nasal and felt a bit rough so I was taking it steady and avoiding some vocal pieces. I thought the sound was very good from the off and we got polite applause through the first half of the set. They weren’t dancing much but some seemed to be listening and tapping along to the music. Towards the end of the set the response to the medleys was a bit muted but I think it was a case of the audience were here to socialise and the band is doing a good job of playing background music - so not much response. But the band is appreciated for that we hope! We had a few dancing to the rock’n’roll section and (unusually) Dave called for “Shake Rattle and Roll”; but the dancers were tired by then and soon drifted off! Overall, musically and showmanshipwise I thought we were fine. I had the odd difficult singing bit to back away from, but we bantered away in a relaxed manner, finishing off with “3 Times a Lady” which I thought went well. After a short break, we only had half an hour for Set 2 before the bingo. We started with the “Searchers Medley” then into the “Eagles”. Audience reaction turned out to be similar to set 1, occasionally we would get a couple of dancers up and some applause here and there; they liked the “Eagles” and there was a bit of sing a long to “Alice” but we never really broke thru the whole audience’s reserve. Even Elvis got a muted response. We finished off with “Sweet Caroline” which did get a bit of sing a long and arm waving response. After bingo we went on for set 3 armed with a request Nigel had received from some girls in the corner who said they would dance a bit if we did “Twist and Shout”. We started up with “ 500 Miles” and “Amarillo” then did “Twist and Shout” with Nigel singing it well; but only two girls got up and danced! Anyway we carried on thru our party dance sequence to “Locomotion” getting a bit more response and few dancers here and there. I looked round and Nigel was sporting a straw in his ear as were the girls – some kind of Madonna lookalike fashion craze? Dave called for “Alright Now” which did get some applause. So far it seemed we couldn’t find the secret to making the audience tick. We got a good response to “Unchained and American Trilogy” as we slowed things down. Dave volunteered to sing “Dance the Night Away” and that got a reasonable amount of dance floor filled. Then we tried the Spencer Davis sequence, still too fast in my opinion, but it got little reaction. Finally we hit on “Shang a Lang” and the dance floor filled up – it turns out they were all closet Bay City Rollers fans! Although we were scratching round for material at this point, non of us could remember to fit in some of the new songs e.g. “Can’t Get Enough”, “Wonder of You”, “Blue Bayou” or some of the many reserve songs. But it was close to time to finish so we started to wind down with “Pretty Woman” and signed off with “Wonderful Tonight”. Surprisingly we were asked to do an encore and we finished with “Under The Sun”. All in all it had been a relaxed night on stage, but the audience had been hard work and a few mistakes crept in. Dave said the man in charge seemed happy enough and suggested Dave contact the concert sec’ to line up some more appearances. I think we underestimated how reserved a Conservative club audience would be compared to holiday parks and working men’s clubs. Took me a while to pack up as I was feeling a bit slow with the cold, but the others helped me out with the gear and load up. After dishing out the colas, we set off in convoy to find the A14. Had an easy run home, Dave dropped off the convoy on the A140 and Nige on the A1088; I was home by 1:30 and soon fast asleep. But my cold took a turn for the worse the next day and Nigel started to suffer so we ended up cancelling practice in the week.

Practice at Skeyton

Had a great time in Spain, but Jacqui and I both went down with colds on our return, so practice was going to be more about progressing Dave and Nige’s vocals than mine. It was a nice sunny day (rare in England this year) and I made good time to the hall. Not much traffic on the road - probably indicates the UK economy is waning! Anyway we got set up, compared our various ailments and set to work on “The Wonder of You” featuring Dave as Elvis and Nige and me as his Jordinettes girly backing. Nige had done a very good job of arranging this piece and we soon got to grips with it – some homework to do on the guitar solo and ending, but we planned to give it an airing on Saturday. We sketched out the concept of an Elvis tribute 10 minutes starting with a standup CC Rider/Mystery Train into “Just Can’t Help” then Dave coming onto the kit to do “ Just Can’t Help Believing/Suspicious Minds before rounding off with “Wonder of You”. Then we ran thru “Shine” a couple of times. It is coming together instrumentally but still needs some work on the backing vocals – one more practice session I think. Then we worked through Dave’s Orbison tribute with “Blue Bayou”. Again Nige and I are singing like a couple of girls and we got this together enough for a go on Saturday. Finished off with a run thru “How Long” and “Can’t Get Enough” for an early finish. Easy run home but things are starting to look a bit Autumnal.

Lowestoft Ex- Servicemen’s club

Jacqui was at the ballet in London with her young friend Olwen; so I fed myself and left home at 5:15pm to enjoy a steady run over to Lowestoft, arriving just before 7pm and just ahead of Dave and Jen. There wasn’t a lot of room in the car park so we had to use the overflow yard after we unloaded. It had been very rainy and the car park was a bit flooded. Nigel arrived as we were looking at the logistics of getting the gear on. The good news was the Bose towers just fitted in heightwise. The not so good news was it would be too cramped for 2 guitars and the reverb, so we decided to set up as Foot Tappers lite – Nige and I would need to control the reverb on each Bose by hand (mind you even with conventional gear I remember it was too cramped for 2 guitars). So we got set up but didn’t bother with a sound check, we just agreed amongst ourselves to keep the volume down at the beginning. Had a beer and watched Jenny play bingo - she didn’t win again! Then it was time to get changed = more not so good news. The changing room was being used for a retirement party, so we would have to make do with the toilet! Well Dave had a look in and said “No Way”; so we elected to get changed in the corridor leading to the toilet, this attracted a bit of attention from passing ladies and one gent; but we completed the exercise relatively discretely. Went on to play set 1 just before 9pm and did a longish set including a bit of 50’s sing-a-long, banter and “3 Times a Lady” which went down well with the elder generation there. After an hour we had only just got thru The Hollies and Beatles medleys so we finished up with “I Believe” which was my good call, ‘cos the dance floor was soon packed and they were singing along well and gave us a good round of applause. Dave and Nige joined the smokers in the break and got some good positive comments on the band. Went on for the second set starting with “How Long” which was nicely paced and, despite some small mistakes, I could see it had people bopping in their seats even if they weren’t dancing. We moved on to the Searchers medley and the dance floor soon got busy again. In fact as we got to the Yellow River 70’s medley in middle of the set the dance floor was packed and after a much sung-along “Halfway to Lowestoft” Dave made a good call to bring in “Sweet Caroline” ahead of the ‘Elvis in the building’ routine. Got them all bopping again with the “Bay City – Crazy Little Thing” sequence. Dave and Nige picked up their swapped vocals well in “Shang a Lang” (it sounded just as good as when Nige did the lead). Then it was time to close down with “Love is All Around” - in my opinion that was about the best we had done the second set for several months. In the break Nige and Dave got some more favourable comments then it was time to do the third set (without a shirt change). The audience had changed a bit, some of the oldies had gone home and some youngies (well; under 45s!) had arrived. We opened up with a “request” for “Can’t Get Enough”, which went well for a first airing. I got off to a false start ‘cos I couldn’t hear Dave’s count in but we did the right thing and just winged into a restart. The guitar sound needs a bit more work and I made a mistake a beginning of the solo but we managed to play it at a reasonable volume and you could see there was some resonance with the audience who were bopping along to this quite danceable piece even if they didn’t know it. Played straight thru the party dance sequence to “Hi Ho” and kept them dancing all the way. Dave made another good call with “Unchained” and then it was time to wrap up with “Pretty Woman”. We got such a good response that we encored with a couple of verses of “Wonderful Tonight” trying to strike a balance between playing a bit more and finishing reasonably on time. In hindsight it might have been better to play the whole song ‘cos there were still some (disappointed) shouts for more. We took the risk of getting changed in the foyer by the stairs; this worked without complaint or being mobbed by groupies. Pack up was slow and it was raining as we loaded up. In fact a squall blew up driving the rain into the cars as we were loading up – it all got a bit damp. Had an uneventful ride home, getting in about 1:45am on a showery night. I’m off to Spain for a week now so I hope the boys keep out of trouble.