Memorial Day Show

[cnev]

Decided to start a new thread about this weekends upcoming show. It's a private outdoor party, right now they have 110+ that are coming so we should have a pretty good audience. This will be our first time playing three sets of music. Practices have been going pretty good so I don't expect any trainwrecks or anything like that but you never know.

Here's the proposed setlist: We are going to change them up a bit and the end with Ring of Fire, Beer drinkers and Keep away.

Not sure I'll be able to give as thorough an update as Tommy Guns but I'll try.

We still don't really have a name I thought we had agreed on Almost There but now they are backing off a bit so not sure what we are going to call the band. It's not a big deal for the party but once we start playing in bars we need a name we are going to stick with.

Back In The USSR Beatles
Good Better than Ezra
Jailbreak Thin Lizzy
Just What I Needed Cars
Cumbersome Seven Mary Three
We're An American Band Grand Funk
Another Thing Coming Judas Priest
Are You Gonna Go My Way Lenny Kravitz
First I Look At The Purse J. Geils Band
Crossroads Cream

Use Somebody Kings of Leon
White Room Cream
Kryptonite 3 Doors Down
Roadhouse Blues Doors
Plush Stone Temple Pilots
Day of the Eagle Robin Trower
Blue On Black Kenny Wayne Shepard
Born To Be Wild Steppenwolf
Beer Drinkers ZZ Top
Mustang Sally Wilson Pickett

Shimmer Fuel
Lonely Boy Black Keys
Hashpipe Weezer
Double Vision Foriegner
Machinehead Bush
Sex Type Thing Stone Temple Pilots
The Boys Are Back In Town Thin Lizzy
Keep Away Godsmack
In My Life Beatles
Ring Of Fire Social Distortion

[jwmartin]

Have fun and rock it out! Looks like a great set list. I heard from our guitar/singer Monday and we might be playing a private party on June 30th. It will be 4 bands each playing 2 hour sets at someone's house. Not sure how many people, but it will be a good test run for us as we are trying to book our first bar gig at the end of July. If we don't play that, we're probably going to play my 4th of July party, which will only be about 15 people. I'm working on the set list order now and that is a tough job.

[Nuno]

Great setlist. Have fun!

[Crow]

Good luck. (Where's the smiley for crossed fingers?)

[rparker]

I hope everything goes very well for you. I'm looking forward to the report and maybe someone's video/sound recording.

[Moonrider]

Break a leg! If you're not having too much fun, the audience needs to drink more!

[TRGuitar]

Go get 'em Chris!

[s1120]

Good luck!!!

[cnev]

Ok so I guess it's time for an update. This won't be a TommyGuns type update but I'll try and remember everything that happened.

So the gig was a private party up in a very rural area in northern CT. The house was set back from the street and there was someone outside near the street that waved us in. You drive up a long dirt road and up around the back of the house. when I started to pull around back I see about ten large RV's setup up on either side of the backyard. Pretty cool seems like a nice setup all ready.

As I pulled past the campers I was asked to stop there an unload. I could see a large tent setup in the back corner of the yard and the singer was already setting up. I had a ton of stuff, two amps, amp stands, 2 guitars, stands, PA speakers etc.

Took about an hour or so to get set up. They were running the power off generators and the one i was plugged into wasn't fired up so I couldn't tune up. Sat back and had a beer and waited for the rest of the guys. There were about 30 people there at the time.

The host gave us a sip of some homemade apple moonshine....tasted like a piece of apple pie with a kick...good stuff but that stuff can creep up on you quick.

Anyway all the guys showed up and we got set up and were ready about 5:30. They wanted to serve the food around 6 and then we'd start playing.

The spread they had was awesome all kinds of food including a new one for me, baked mac and cheese topped with jalepeno's.

So somewhere around 6:45 we were going to start. Side note during warmups one of the generators ran out of gas and had to be refilled I asked them to fill both before we started.

So we started with American Band. This is were this was much different from playing at the bar. There were all these bean bag games setup around the yard and people were playing games, hanging around their RV's etc., with only a handfulk watching us. Felt like it was a practice. There were like 72 people there in total when we started not sure how many if any more came.

We finish the first song to sporadic slaps since there were only a few people watching and Good.

So we play Good fine but it feels like we are lacking some mojo or energy.

We played the other songs up to Are you going my way OK but all had that something was missing feeling to them. we get are you gonna go my way and now I mess up. It wasn't train wreck type of messing up I wasn't hitting any wrong notes but for some reason I had some temporary brain fart and just couldn't get on that lick. I know it liek the back of my hand and it wasn't nerves not sure what happened but after about halfway I was back on it.

I knew there was a reason I mentioned the generator around the 4th or 5th song in the first set all my gear goes silent. Come to find out the generator ran out of gas...the same generator I asked them to be sure was filled before we started. Luckily once filled we were good to go.

When we played jailbreak I'm not sure what happened but when I turned on the sirens during the solo either they were to low or it didn't go on cuz you couldn't hear them. This wasn't a playing error but it does sound cool and adds to the song when it works.

We finally finished the first set pretty well with Crossroads.

Took about a 20 min break to hopefully get more people up and then we got started again.

Set 2 was a 100% improvement over Set 1 in terms of energy. For some reason Use Somebody still doesn't come out as good with this group of guys as it should but it was OK. The rest were all good, we skipped Mustang Sally and ended the second set with Born to be Wild which got some good applause.

Set 3 was by far the best of the 3 both in energy and just being tight.

We had changed the sets slightly and ended with Ring of fire, Beer Drinkers and Keep Away and we killed all of them. At this point as disappointing as it was we had maybe 20 people actually in the tent watching most were still wondering around.

Not much excitement. The good news was we got fed, got plenty of beer and a bonus we actually got $300 for the gig so all in all it was a good deal.

Bad points we weren't on or game for set 1 and we will need to fix that but on the bright side we did recover and end well and it was our first time performing 3 sets.

So we have a biker charity ride on June 24th as our next gig and hopefully we will kick it up a notch.

[TRGuitar]

Sounds like you did good! Those little glitches should take care of themselves as you do more shows. Hooking my gear to a generator would make me nervous though. Sounds like you had fun.

[rparker]

Well cool, man! Glad it went well. I'm betting that it will get better and better as time goes on.

[jwmartin]

Food, beer and $300? Sounds like a successful gig to me! I wouldn't worry too much about people not watching you directly. I'm sure they were still listening and enjoying.

[cnev]

Well we practiced Saturday and one of the guys brought the videos from the show and besides working on my stage presence I was pleasantly suprised that what I thought were bad mistakes didn't really come out that bad on the video. They weren't perfect but they weren't anywhere near as bad as I thought, which is good I was kind of ticked off at myself because I know allt he songs and there is nothing hard to play just had a couple Alzheimer moments or something.

The sound of the video is horrible though everything is slightly distorted and once the sun went down they are pretty dark but they were good to watch.

Don't know if it was the extra days off we had or what but practice Sat. probably was the best ever don't think we could have played the songs much better. Too bad we didn't play like that last week but we have a show in a couple weeks and it will be the same music so we should really be ready by then.

We are adding one new song Rocky Mountain Way - Godsmack maybe one more but that's it.

[almann1979]

Nice gig report!

Glad to see the gigs are starting to come thick and fast now, keep the reports coming

[cnev]

Thanks guys. I am still soooo pissed at myself for the two biggest mistakes I made and neither of them are anything hard that's what makes me mad.

I messed up the beginning of Are you gonna go my way. For some reason my head and hands weren't connected and I couldn't get my fingers to do the little signature riff/bend whatwever you want to call it. The good news was I wasn't playing the wrong thing I just wasn't playing anything. I finally got it but I just can't beleive I did that. We did that song at practice and it was right on.

The other was the little solo (if you call it that in Hashpipe) I kind of was in between frets for a second and you could hear the hesitation when I saw the video.

Oh well that's life beside looking like a total dweeb up there it was pretty good and since it was our real first full set gig I'd have to rate it as a succcess.

There will be more than a hundred people at the next gig which is a charity bike ride then they come back to the club after the ride for food, drink and music.