A Cozy Reception at Druid Hills Golf Club for the End of June

After too many weekends, I was able to get back to the heart of the musical matter - that being the delicious, sanctified grooves of Sweetwater Junction.  Once again, it was the eternally youthful collection of musically strong cohorts and their vast songbook.  We were playing at a wedding reception (oh really, the astute reader rolls her eyes) at Druid Hills Golf Club.  From the picture above, with Brian the Strat Cat procuring his stunt tones, it doesn't look much like the ballroom that I remember.  Surprise, the reception was in the lounge area.  Cocktails were enjoyed (not by us) in the adjacent bar area, but this glorified bar was where the party was going to go down.  The load in was via the front steps and the main entrance to the club.  I never mind a little legwork to get it done.  It's always a surprise that place like these don't provide some other form of service entrance

With dinner served early on, we played a light jazz set.  I squeezed my upright onto the cozy stage area.  I have been working on achieving a better upright tone.  Funny that I always call it upright here but at home and in general I think of it as double bass.  One thing I did was make certain that the pickup wheel on the Full Circle was oriented correctly.  It hadn't been that last time out at Fernbank, which is why the tone was so choked.  I had forgotten about that crucial detail.  The jack wire should be perpendicular to the bridge, towards the endpin for maximum clarity.  So anyway, I had played with the Boss Bass EQ pedal , which is 7 bands.  That pedal helps a bit with feedback issues, but with only 7 bands it can rob too much tone from the signal.  I remembered my Stick preamp system with the Rane AC-13, which is a stereo acoustic preamp.  With those 10 Mega Ohm inputs and the generous EQ, I was able to get a nice clear tone, at the expense of some hiss.  It worked well.  I think ultimately I will try to get a nice 31-band eq.  The ability to notch out those offending frequencies without destroying the tone is a major key to good upright sound with plenty of headroom.  Our set included Dan leading us through a splendid Dear Prudence.  Other fine selections were a brisk walk with Freddie Freeloader, a funkified-in-four All Blues, and a Bossa take on Chitlins Con Carne.  Hey, we also did the Bill Evans' "tune" Peace Piece.  Even Chris joined in on this one.  The vamp, something like CMaj9 to G7sus4(no 5) is a cool trance.  Is it the birth of modal jazz?  It came out just months before Kind of Blue.  Fun to get into that vibe, but might be better to do it like Bill did, solo piano.  I'm all for different textures.  Maybe do a guitar feature also.  Just no bass solo!  With the wedding party table only a few feet directly in front of us, we had to play whisper quiet.  It was less than ideal to ask us to play while they almost ate their dinner in our laps.  We kept it low, that's for certain.  My concerns of feedback from the upright were all for naught (now if only I could avoid squeeling from the P-bass!).

We enjoyed a great hot meal of chicken, potatoes, and veggies.  It was very tasty.  Then we sat around for a good spell.  They gave speeches and cut the cake.  The table in front of us was removed and then I packed up my upright.  Our main set turned out to be only 75 minutes.  It was much of the usual dance stuff that we do.  They didn't ask for any particular slant on the evening.  The funk medley with Play That Funky Music --> Superstition --> I Wish was particularly slamming.  One tune we tried at soundcheck was Could You Be Loved.  We had all worked on it and the vocal harmonies sounded great, with Dan taking the lower D and me heading up to high A.  I had a good transcription of the bass line - I think I've shared it before here but here's another chance to grab it:

Another one we tried was In Your Eyes.  Mark has the drum groove tight, which is the essence of many Peter Gabriel tunes.  I brought my Stick to try it on, although TLev didn't play Stick on it originally.  I still have it in the Baritone Matched Reciprocal tuning, with the 6th string tuned low B flat.  Slowly getting used to it, and love have the extra range down below.  In fact, the opening low B for this tune sounded great!  Can't do that with standard tuning.  Well, we played through it and discussed the various sections, but neither of these were brought out during the celebration.  Ah, maybe next time.  It was over at 10, which certainly was early.  With the load out and all of our stuff, I still didn't leave the place until about 11:15.  A fun night for all.