Tribute Night - Live at the fred: Running With Desire Opens For Departure

The supremely talented Journey tribute band Departure contacted JT and asked for our U2 tribute to open up for them down in Peachtree City at The Frederick Brown Jr. Amphitheater, ie "the fred" (no caps, please - I'm telling you that's how it's printed on these fancy posters).  I was looking forward to playing our U2 set with JT, Martay, and Sam.  Departure are a great group of guys who can play the music of Journey and make a great show of it perhaps better than the real deal.  They have a lot going for them, and stage presence is a big part of it.  Also, as an old fan, I was quick to note that they will play older faves that featured Gregg Rolie on lead vocals and his trademark piano and organ playing.  Since Gregg left the band, those tunes have been removed from the setlist of Journey.  I'm thinking of Feeling That Way, Anytime, and Just the Same Way; there may be a few more as well.  Plus, they do Oh Sherrie, which of course was a Steve Perry solo number.  Don't remember if The Party's Over was on their list; I always liked that tune.  Such innocent pop, with top-notch musicianship.  The vocals were spot on, and the musicianship was tight and flashy.  I enjoyed their performance.  A guy handed me an ice cold Sierra Nevada from his cooler.  It tasted like heaven.  I thanked him profusely.  I learned a bit from their showmanship as well.  For instance, I need to spread my legs farther apart!  (insert lol here).  It was nice to talk with them a bit.  They are just regular guys doing what we're doing, if on a larger scale.  Nice to not encounter big egos.

View from the concession tables

We hung out down front, stage left.

Backing up to earlier in the evening now.  I got there a bit on the late side, like after soundcheck would have been.  It came down to meeting with my Step-Mom, who came to my rescue to help with Spencer and Jack.  Then hitting the road on a Friday afternoon to travel to Peachtree City is just never a quick jaunt.  Horrendous traffic.  The bands have a townhouse-type setup for the green room, complete with showers and a large changing room lined with makeup mirrors.  They had massive coolers full of beers and a bottle of Jägermeister floating on top of the icey bath.  There were multiple trays of pasta in the fridge, along with coldcuts and such for our dinner.  I was starving, but didn't eat until after our performance.  Got there with just enough time to plug in my pedalboards and make it right.  Had a bad cable (once again) but figured it out.  We were playing exclusively U2 music as the opening act, so I brought my NS/Stick as well as my Fender Precision to trigger some other sounds besides just bass.  It worked well, but my sounds on Get On Your Boots are really never loud enough.  It didn't help that the bass amp I was using (a Markbass, so it was quality) was set for Departure's bassist.  The cab sounded like the horn was blown or disconnected.  His bass must be active with the bass and treble dimed.  For my tone and needs, it was thin.  Oh well.

Sam Owens at soundcheck

3 selfies

Soundcheck

Green Room

Showtime

Wish we could have incorporated JT's pre-recorded keyboard intro for Where The Streets Have No Name.  I like that we do it all live with no tracks, but that epic keyboard prelude "walk-on track" would make it sweet.  I would be able to come in as just the bassist without having to switch my octave and flange off from my intro "synth" patch.  All in all, it was a good mix.  My vocals were loud in my monitor and I could here everything.  It's such a different feeling to play on a wide outdoor stage such as this, compared to the cramped confines of Martay's basement where we're in a claustrophobic circle.  We sounded good and the audience response was incredible.  Great to get that rush from immediate feedback like that.  It's reaffirming as to why we do this.  They really loved With Or Without You, which shouldn't be a surprise.  We haven't played that one lately, so I'm glad we readied it.  In God's Country was another one we had worked on, but something was a little strange there.  To Martay's credit, he's having to cover an intense acoustic rhythm guitar, Eno-processed layered guitars, and upper-extremity lead Edge-ness, while navigating some unusal chord changes on a deep cut.  That's a big sonic hole to fill.  I wanted to cop those dead-string rhythmic clunks (they're in there), but the bass line needs the fatness of a pluck, not a tap.  It came off okay, but on a gig such as this, there is no room for tentative playing.  U2 music is "Stadium Largeness".  We finished by going past our allotted hour, but we had to play Vertigo.  It was big and strong, and I think all involved understood that we had to finish with it.

Crystal "The Weekend Warrior" Swygert from FUN 101.1 fm welcomed us to the stage.

Running With Desire

J.T. Vox

Bathed in lights

Berning Edge

Sam in action

Cool stage shot with backlights

...and here's the setlist we played, distilled down to what we thought could fit into an hour.  It ran over, but only by 5 minutes.  We have more to choose from, so perhaps we will vary it up a bit for next time.

Where The Streets Have No Name

Mysterious Ways

Beautiful Day

Get On Your Boots

One

New Year's Day

Pride

Desire

In God's Country

With Or Without You

Bullet The Blue Sky

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Gloria

I Will Follow

Vertigo

Lastly, here's a mention of our little band found on tripadvisor.com.  It's a review of the concvert venue (who takes the time to write those?), but it was nice for them to mention us by name and give us props as well.

“Fun place to be, especially with friends!”

Reviewed September 29, 2013

We got to see Departure - a Journey tribute band & Running With Desire - a U2 tribute band, which were both very good.  The music was great and the weather was beautiful.  My only issues were that the parking lot and area around the amphitheater could've been better lit.  And you could make an area for golf cart parking alone instead of taking up regular size spaces because you would be able to fit more people that way.  They could enforce the no smoking area a little better but that wasn't extremely bad.