Runnin With Desire at Wild Wing Cafe

Runnin With Desire is, to those of you faithful readers, a U2/Van Halen 2-in-1 tribute act that originated with Martay and JT.  The band has morphed into a rather generic cover band, unfortunately.  Still, we are a great cover band.  For me, I want to go on record as stating that I'm definitely more of a U2 fan-boy, and that I would love to be a part of a U2 tribute act.  They have so many deep cuts that I absolutely love.  This band does not go in that direction.  Nonetheless, the music we play is top notch, thanks in part ot the wonderful vocals and showmanship of JT, the steely guitar of Mike, the big drums of Mark, and my own bass ostenatos, a la Adam Clayton and/or Michael Anthony.  Hey, it's what I signed up for!

Wild Wing Cafe can have it's pluses and minuses.  This particular night was a victim of the Georgia Bulldogs losing to the Clemson Tigers.  This meant that nobody had any party left in them.  The crowd was thin, but as the night wore on, folks did show up to make for a respectable group of audients.  The set list was much in line with the classic '80's rock that Sunset Strip (aka Hologram) would have played.  For all intents and purposes, it is the same band!  Wonder of wonders.  I brought along my NS/Stick guitar/bass touchboard as well as my tried and true Precision bass.  The Stick always means a second amp and pedalboard.  I am currently looking into some way to have only one set of pedals for the stereo guitar/bass signal, and thus one amp.  Most sound engineers just don't know how to deal with 2 channels from me.  It's particularly true with me when I'm playing jsut a 4-string for more than half of the show, so I am not pointing any fingers.  Ah, I've dealt with this for too long in the past without still having a full resolution.  I did recently acquire a nice little Boss LS-2 Line Selector, which could serve me as a mixer/combiner of the Stick signals after processing.  I think this might be 1 key to unlocking my pedal/amp quandary   I used the NS/Stick on Fly Me Courageous, Get On Your Boots, Where the Streets Have No Name, and a few others.  In the future, I might try to play the whole set on it - the switching is just too crazy.

Through rehearsal, it was brought to my attention that I wasn't playing the guitar break in Unchained correctly.  And so I wasn't.  I learned it, but it is not so easy.  Many Van Halen things so idiosyncratic to the brothers Van Halen.  The riff is something like this (notes only - assuming you're tuned down a half-step a la Eddie & the Boys - by the way, no 5 strings allowed for this kind of rawk!):

G    G G
G    G G  F
G    G F
G    G F

A    A A
A    A A  G
A    A G

A  G#  G  F

You can see it repeats the same notes in a row only 1 time!  And it's very syncopated.  Well, I'm happy to report that through repetition, I remembered it and nailed it with Mark - we had a moment there!  John did his homework!  There you go - take this inspiration and go practice something tricky you've been putting off!

The club's very good sound engineer.

JT

Mark making notes.

Getting my amps and pedals set up.

NS/Stick made it out of the house!

P-bass next to the Boogie (guitar amp for strings 1-4 of the NS/Stick).

Boogie on amp stand next to SWR GolLight 115.

Pedalboards: Boss MB-50 & GT-8.

Women on stage -it's a party now!

JT has a pedalboard for his vocals.

Mike's rig.