Friday, January 28, 2011

A New Year: 2011

It's 2011!  Exciting times and inspiration to improve myself in many ways.  Looking forward to making some new contacts and writing some this year, for a change.  NYE was celebrated on Jekyll Island with Platinum.  We were actually hired to play a wedding reception, but of course, it morphed into a NYE celebration as well.  The room was smallish, so that meant trouble for this band.  They brought the smaller Platinum owned PA system, which meant that the instruments were not going to run through the mains (other than keys & sax) and so we had a louder stage volume than normal.  This made everything louder than if we had brought the full PA!  It also meant I wasn't as loud since I only had my 12" combo.  That is never loud enough on these events!  Ugh!  Oh well, we had fun and played well.  Plus, we got to drink as part of the package.  And we did.  The groom had the largest bottle of Grand Marnier I've ever seen.  That stuff is potent.  The police were out in full force and stopped many people as we had to make our way over to St. Simons to the hotel accomodations.  I was fortunate to be riding with DW, who got us there safely as he is the sole teetotaler of the group.  I truly admire him for that.  He really has his act together in many ways and it's good for me to have people like him in my life.  Ah, well, needless to say, I didn't abstain, but hey, it was New Year's Eve and I had a DD...  The first gig of the year was with MartaY way up in Suwanee.  We played at Cinco's After 5 on PIB.  Thursday (during the big Snowpocalypse of early 2011) we were a duo (with drum machine) and then Friday Brent joined us to make it a trio.  Friday was much better and we had some partying married couples up front with us to make it a rock show.  I thought we did really well and this band has a lot to offer for a 3 piece.  We even broke out "Deacon Blues" late in the evening.  They served us the tasty salmon entre that MartaY has claimed to be the best thing on the menu, so I can't argue there.

JT emailed me about getting back with Running With Desire to play on St. Patrick's Day.  I am looking forward to being a solid Adam Clayton presence once again with the fellas.  This time it's Mark from Hologram on drums.  I tried to get Brent in on it, but his practice dates were set in stone and JT couldn't make them work.  I didn't think they would for me either, but I've since learned otherwise.  Binnie is trying to help out to minimize conflicts with her OT at nights.  Anyways, new tunes we are putting in as an all-U2 set will be I Still Haven't Found & Bullet the Blue Sky.  They should be worthwhile additions.

Got a new pickup for my upright - a Fishman Full Circle.  I love it, even though my bridge is non-adjustable now.  I found that I had holes drilled all the way through my bridge feet anyway, so I cut, sanded, and glued pieces from a paint stirrer stick to the bottoms of the feet.  That gave enough of a raise that I should be able to live with it as far as action goes.  The sound is loud and clear as a bell - actually a bit too much top end, but you can always take it away.  You can't add it, as the Realist just didn't have any highs, only hollow upper mids that were unusable.  The bottom is nice and fat too.  It seems good to roll off 1k & 4k on my Hartke head, so that's where I'm at for the moment.  A nice extra would be to grab the Bass Platinum EQ for sound sculpting.  I'll look into it...