How's this for being out of touch and becoming of victim of suburbia's sprawl? I guess I knew that Park Bench moved back when the Buckhead strip was razed for high rises; I just didn't ever think about it much. Whenever I cut through from West Paces Ferry to Roswell Road, I seem to miss this nightclub in my surveying of the land. Well, here we were, on the back patio area of Park Bench. It was nice and spacious, with a decent raised stage and outdoor bar. David and the gang assembled a good crowd so that we were on it as far as representing. Farrel joined us for several tunes and we had a good sound.
David has so much to do to get us ready. He is our soundman and logistics coordinator. His passion for making it happen is a fine testament to his relaxed demeanor. I haven't seen him get upset or raise his voice, yet. We'll have to draw up a itinerary for patching the system together for the future. I hate that it all falls on him, and we all run through it. Remember, this is the band that uses no amps; no stage volume or monitor wedges even. It's a little unorthodox, but that gives us a bit of an edge as far as control over our sound and the ability to keep the volume way down in a club environment. I find it to be refreshing, especially since our mix is just a great sounding mix. David's judicious use of compression, reverb, delay, and even panning can give us a real nice stereo spread. The ear buds don't lie!
A quick aside: recently at a rehearsal, I briefly experimented with patching my NS/Stick into 2 channels on the board. This allowed me to pan the right-hand guitar side a bit to one side. It really made a big difference. I think bass and drums need to stay dead center, although the drums can have a bit of a spread with the kick and snare down the middle. It gives some nice perspective if we can utilize a bit of imaging. Hey, it's 2013 and if the rig is stereo, why not play with it a bit?
We had a small incident with somebody supposedly getting an adult beverage to an under-aged patron. Most of the venues we perform at are all-ages, as they are restaurants that serve alcohol as well. Park Bench is a bar and not much else. This makes it hard to host all-ages shows, as they do not wish to shoulder the liability. Can't blame them. Once again, David smoothed out the ruffled feathers and we proceeded to play a generous 2 hour set of our finest covers.
I brought out my NS WAV to have a slightly different vibe. It's big fun to rock out on the upright bass, albeit an electric upright. Even without the magnetic pickups of the higher-end models, it can deliver a solid bass tone. I do compress the signal, as I almost always do. I also have to be mindful of the high frequencies, which can squeal if not attenuated. It can just sound too clicky if I don't roll back the passive tone control. Lately I've started adjusting the treble on the Boss pre-amp. By the way, my Tech 21 Sans Amp Bass Driver is out of commission - no power. I called Tech 21 and spoke with a nice technician. He urged me to open it up and check the spring on the footswitch. It is a latching footswitch and if the spring is out of alignment, then that can cause the unit to not turn on. It does still operate in bypass mode, and the spring is in place. I think I have to send it up to them - $30 to repair it, from what I gather.
Which brings us to notes on the show itself. Some of these tunes are starting to feel real comfortable for all of us. I'm more confident singing here and there, particularly on Driver 8. I used to take that song for granted but the bass line and those vocals are so distinctive - it's a minor work of art. We debuted a couple of tunes: Junior's Farm by Sir Paul's other band Wings and Rod "The Mod" Stewart's Maggie May. I had great fun singing that nutty Macca lyric, which I did one time for karaoke with Walt about a year ago. Such a great rocker - unpretentious, and yet it yields a marvelous climactic coda; we milk it for all it's worth, complete with our string "section" (okay, 1 violin sounding like several). The latter track is a showcase for Farrel, who was in her element and sang with her characteristically strong upper range as if she was in Phillip's Arena. Speaking of Sir Paul, we also brought out Getting Better. It was good, and I believe it will continue to get better. We are still working on it, but it was fairly strong. What I need is more practice playing that melodic bass line and singing - I notice that Paul plays guitar when he performs it. It's tricky! Once again, I do believe Ira received the greatest applause for his turn at the mic, particularly on Box Full of Letters. Very confident. Karl played his fiddle lines with wondrous precision. I love it when he takes the lead. He really shined on the new ones and he continues to add more parts to the older repertoire. I got dark on us, which of course made for some challenging chart reading. No stand lights! Shameful! Sometimes you just have to let loose with what you really know in your head and heart. Sometimes it sounds better when you do, anyways. The audience really enjoyed it, and by the way, there was nobody inside when I finally departed. We had a great turnout and took our crowd with us...
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