It was rather desolate. You know the crowd will be thin when Marty and I both park close to the front door. The few tables that were there were not there for us. Too bad We tried to remain inspired with the sparse crowd. We actually had the best mix onstage of any time we've played there. It sounded supremely tight. I had a small revelation concerning some slap technique: utilizing the thumb more for those quick 16th-note thumps versus a thumb and then a pop. It sounds so much more funky to hit just the low note. Save the pop for the occasional accent, not for every call and response. More on that later. Most real players already do this. I have some slap issues to still iron out, I suppose.
Yeah, our balance was great and we had some nice confidence going on. I think it was several factors:
a. Brent's kick drum was mic'ed and fairly high in the mix
b. My bass was clear but not too loud or boomy
c. Martay's guitar amp was mic'ed, but mixed low into the PA
d. The vocals were loud, and we had monitors
e. We had some near perfect tempos (tempi?) and Brent kept them very steady
f. Um, no dancing girls means no distractions?
On my amp, I think it sounds better to have the attenuation switch off, meaning a high gain input. I was previously thinking that this simply made my signal too loud. It steals a lot of the tone with the pad in place, to my ears. No hair, no balls, whatever you want to call it. Better to not run the master volume very high. Only issue there is that any adjustment makes a big difference, as the master is set on 1 or maybe 2.. The wireless performed really well. I think it works better upside down, so that the output jack is on top when connected to my strap. Just have to use the little bungee chord to secure it to the strap, as the hook is inverted.
We ended up not playing a second set. Ernie stuck us with the tab, since we didn't bring many people in and we took a break for the rest of the night. Can't say I could argue with him. Too bad I wasn't able to fill in for Fuji at Pastis. That would have been a much better crowd. I asked Marty to ask for the odd-numbered months for next year. Late December is always a bust. Sometimes late August can be as well. Great to hang with Cliff. Wanted him to sing with us. Maybe next year.
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| Cliff is a good friend of the band. |
Getting ready for Christmas, and then 2 gigs to close the year out:
Saturday December 29: Absynthe Makes The Art Garfunkel at Java Monkey Facebook Event Page
Monday December 31: New Years Eve with Platinum V (a small, house-trained subset of Platinum featuring the prodigious performing talents of Dianna Crawford. It's a closed event at Atlanta Athletic Club in Johns Creek (no apostrophe). I still say look it up and come crash the party. All right, that may not work.
I will try to give more notices through some sort of calendar or just random posts. Until then, here's mud in yer eye!
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