It was a rare night where things work out. I got to play 2 gigs in one night. It worked because we were able to start a little late on the latter job. Still< I made it there close to 10:00; a great time considering we ended the last tune of the first gig at 9:32. The earlier gig was downtown at the Capital City Club; the 2nd being at Padriac's in Vinings. A good mix of jazz 'n blues for the early show. One highlight, selection-wise, was the standard Things Ain't What They Used To Be, as penned by Mercer Ellington although we incorrectly attributed the tune to Duke. I bet Duke had a hand in it anyway. A great standard to feature piano on. I have a version of it by the Keith Jarrett Standards Trio, but I can't think who has recorded the definitive version. McCoy Tyner did a nice solo rendition, very reverberant. Well, it's a blues that everybody over 40 has heard, I would speculate. Nice melody and room to get busy. Beatles always goes over well in situations like this. We love to do Dear Prudence - my family thinks that is my favorite Beatles song, mainly because I told them it was a long time ago. A favorite Beatles song is like a favorite pair of underwear; eventually it gets a little threadbare and you gravitate to another that serves the purpose better. Still, just about anything off of The White Album (ironically titled The Beatles) holds its own rather well as well as far as tunes to cover. I never really get the impression that it was a bunch of solo recordings and not the group getting along as they had. It really feels like they were playing together in the studio - tracks like I'm So Tired, Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da, Savoy Truffle, Everybody's Got Something To Hide, Don't Pass Me By, Glass Onion - all sound like the Fab Four all grown up. Anyways, we ought to come up with a Beatles set for these gigs. We do Norwegian Wood, but there aren't too many others we throw down on. We are in the midst of getting a more recent demo package together (for the mothership group Sweetwater Junction), so that is the primary concern as of late. Get this, we're even planning a rehearsal for this Sunday! A first since since I've been with them.
Padriac's always feels like I had just left it the night before, even though it's been 2 solid months. I almost wasn't going to be here tonight, but luck saw its way to getting me here. We had a good crowd. We played a good amount of rock, nice but we lost some folks who might have enjoyed more dance-friendly material in the first set. Bill showed up to sit in with us on vocals in the 2nd set. Sounded clear and strong, as usual. I always want to play a bunch of Zeppelin when he shows up, since he has that range and we used to "get the led out" years ago at Billy's in Buckhead (anybody remember that joint?). We got some big tips for nice, compact versions of hits gone by - Hank Jr.'s Family Tradition comes to mind. We got through 3 of Martay's originals but not the "supposed to be played" Pumped Up Kicks. We rocked through past 1 a.m. - too much fun to give it up. Brent sounded strong. Martay finally got his tone dialed in, his fiddling about tempted me to start tweaking and tweezing my dials... One aspect of getting a sound right in the PA is overloading the convenient-yet-woefully-headroom-deficient powered mixer (a nice Mackie, but still not enough power) with great thumping kick drum. Those kick transients rob the RMS power from the vocals and such, so much so that it all ends in a distorted mess. Better, as I have believed for many years, to rock little speakers for mains and a phat powered sub to help with the kick and bass dilemma. We just had to bring down the kick a bit and it was better. Something that could be done at home before next time (using a drum machine and an a capella track from an iPod or whatever). Just food for thought. We do all this work and then let it sound trashy by not paying attention to the lighted meters - all red is gonna have some grit! No good pics - just too dark. Lights for the "stage area" would surely get us out of the dark!
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