Morning.
It’s been a few days since the River Rooms gig but honestly its take a while for it all to sink into place and me to blog – so here goes.
Interesting gig this one, on the professional circuit and all that so it is a subtle but significant step up for us and one we were ready and looking forward to. It’s the little differences, example – load in isn’t into the corner of a pub at 19:00 but onto a 4 foot elevated stage at 17:00 before the punters get in. Soundcheck is done to closed doors and then the band disappear until they go on stage, which isn’t 21:00 but 22:15 – damn near bedtime!!
I picked Little Dave up who had been busking in the area went back to mind for a coffee.
So then we turned up, waited in the carpark for a while (ahem) but loaded in an up. The sound engineer (Craig) was excellent as was the lighting guy (Tim) who had spent the afternoon googling us and downloaded Pyschedelic images for his 2 projector screens either side of the stage – proper commitment to the cause.
Soundcheck included Bass amp explosions, and nice rug, up to 3 bass amps and a generally good onstage sound. Featuring for the 3rd time only my ACS ear defenders which worked a treat I have to say. The only drawback with them is that it can hide dynamics a little, so that when we need to go quiet (on the fly) I am sometimes blasting out at full volume until I receive the Paddington Bear stare and back of the swell.
The band went home for tea (another weird one), I actually had tea, which in itself is a first for me. I returned to the venue first to see what the attendance was like. I booked the gig in the first place so felt a little more pressure on me to ensure that it was going to be a good one. My hopes had been dashed by the owner as he lets us in when he said “ooh this weather (sunny) doesn’t help us much and what with the World Cup and Glastonbury this weekend…
So, its was 20:45 and I did a quick headcount whilst drinking my only shandy of what was going to be a very long night. Yup, 30 people. Not bad in itself but the venue was only 9% full. Oh dear. Come 21:00 40 people. Oh dear.
Then, I got carried away with technical issues; arranging Little Dave’s radio pack monitors, discussing the lighting setlist with Tim, attempting to record the gig off the desk + ambient mic’s, trying to stop Timmy playing bass on stage at full volume before the gig started (waaaay before the gig started!) and arranging setlists with the DJ (songs not to play basically!!)
It was 21:45 all of a sudden and you know what, it was busy. Ish. The Stourbridge News was there, Members from DC Fontana and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin too and other musicians (we have a habit of attracting muso’s and I can’t for the life of me think why).
So, at 22:00 we huddle of into our dressing room (I know –Dressing room!) and get changed and in my case do some star jumps and warm up the vocal chords. The message came to us that “after the next song your on” and we let Canadian Dave who had the furthest to walk go on stage on his own and break out the weird noises from his Juno 60 synth for a minute or two before we got onstage ourselves – sets the scene a bit.
Then we pile on – it was busy! You could see the audience. This was good.
We had a setlist and because the lighting guy had a copy we pretty much stuck to the set – people who know us will know that this is a very unlikely event. The first 2 or 3 songs were a little tentative and I made a few howlers but once we got back into the whole concept of the big gig we really rose to the occasion. The two Dave’s grew in stature and the gig was a rip roaring success.
165 people in the end and only a handful of them were friends and family. This means that we actually have fans now and we are delighted by their support – thank you guys and girls. A couple of notable dancers too and next time we will get Amanda Dance Commander™ on stage with us I hope. We played for nearly 2.5 hours, far too long, and even though the voices were broken by then we really enjoyed it.
Then – 2 hours of watching people drink and dance before we could set down! Got in around 02:30 and with no alcohol in the house went to bed at 03:00 and didn’t sleep until the daughter kindly got me out of bed at 08:19.
The venue just called, they are still getting people in saying how good the event was! They were impressed we pulled in so many people under difficult circumstances and want us back there again – January 28th in fact. Put it in your diaries!! The facebook group has slowly expanded all week too and that is pretty impressive considering we didn’t even mention it.
A huge thanks to the venue, so professional with so little attitude, The bar staff were excellent sports, wearing GreenHeadMan badges for the evening and Mark, Craig and Tim were superb. Cant wait to do it again and again and again..
…and maybe even get that recoding to actually work next time..
Nick
