"Locked at the Top of the Four Seasons" in mid-August

Those words are from Hot In Herre by Nelly, of course.  A song that was requested by the bride and groom on this swanky night of fun and good times.  I like this room and the load in isn't too bad.  Plus, the venue treats us well with a large room and a good hot meal.  We didn't realize we were sharing it with the other vendors, namely the photographers.  We are a group of 9 including Jason, who runs sound and lights and gets here hours before the rest of us.  Gee, do you think he was hungry?  We all are famished!  The poor photographers don't stand a chance with us around!  Can't they chefs cook a little more chicken?  Oh well, survival of the fittest.

The big news this evening was the public debut of my restored double bass.  I wish I had taken at least 1 picture of it busted up.  My neck broke completely off.  It's not a pretty site and it's not the same as it was by any stretch, but it is glued back together.  And well, now it's also a bolt on!  If I could, I would slap a Peavey logo up on the scroll.  The key was buying the best glue I could find, letting it seep into the cracked area, wiping off the excess that oozed out when I pushed the neck into it's hopefully final position, and then clamping it with a deluxe $30 clamp.  I adjusted the clamp several times to ensure pressure was being applied in the right direction.  I had even tapped it with a hammer (with a towel to buffer).  Once satisfied with the position and alignment, I let it sit for nearly a week.  I wasn't in a hurry to test it.  I wanted the glue to be dry dry dry.  Then I went a drilled an increasingly large hole to drive a super long wood screw/bolt into the back of the heel.  Yep, a big no-no, but at this point what is the difference?  Then I went about replacing the tailpiece that "The Russian" removed when he examined my poor girl.  I got the strings back on and gradually got them (and the bridge) back to where they used to be.  The soundpost looked good,  The bridge has to be a bit closer to the fingerboard now, so that's a bit of a compromise.  I get a little buzz on A, like an internal resonance.  The action is a bit lower, so the tone is a little thinner and slap-style is more challenging.  I don't really have much slap technique on the upright, so I don't do that anyways.  I think one needs gut strings for that, at any rate.

So it held in place and I used it here at the Four Seasons with Platinum.  The first set was dinner music and dances, and we played nearly 2 hours straight.  What a way to bring it back to life!  I also got to try out my Ashly 31-band eq to roll out offending frequencies.  It worked great, but not as well as it did at home.  Not sure why.  The trick is to patch in the eq through the effects send and return on the back of my GK Fusion 550, which is still going strong after its main board and power board makeover back in June.  I also wanted to certain to play it again in the 2nd set for Jump Jive & Wail.  What a terrific track that is for upright.  Too bad I don't have those kind of slap chops, although I sure try.  After all of that, the electric stuff was easy breezy and non-descript.  The funk and rock went over well.  It was only 2 sets so we played long and hard this evening, with 3 weeks off until meeting again down in Ponte Vedra.