Gig report - the good - the bad - and the rest of the story.....

Denverdave

Denverdave

Resident Ragamuffin
We played out last night at a club called Jammin' Joes. Not what I would call our best gig ever...it was a bit rough in spots. The club itself was decent, but it had a large stage with a good house PA and a lot of lights. Plus they did a multi-camera video shoot of the entire show into a digital system and will do a quick edit of the show for $150.00. Hopefully it comes out OK. If nothing else we can watch the disc and see what we need to do to improve as a band.

The good - Prages and Mrs P were in the audience for about half the night! They took a few pics so some may show up in the next week or so. They are on a plane back to WV as I type. We also got Prages up on stage and he played and sang a couple tunes while I sat in the audience. Another good thing is that this was probably our last show with the chick singer. We will be asking her to leave. I think she might have been tipped off because the drummer told everyone we needed to have a band meeting this week and she asked (repeatedly) if this was about her. And we didn't answer that question. After watching the band from the audience for a couple songs she just does not look right planted center stage doing nothing when she is not singing. Time to move on....

The bad - A couple near train wrecks. For some strange reason the other guitar player had his acoustic 1 full step up from where we normally play. So since we all tune 1/2 step down he was 1/2 step above standard. He launched into 'Night Moves' and no one really noticed it until I hit my first chord and it was wrong. it took a couple measures until I figure out where he was tuned and we winged it after that. Then the next set he started playing the acoustic intro to 'She Talks To Angels' - and he had not re-tuned yet so we had to stop him. Plus our bass player had two of this strings tuned 1/2 step above where they should have been for the first two songs. I biffed one of my leads pretty good as well...

:facepalm:

We just didn't really click very well last night. Hopefully they will have us back since I don't think we actually sucked. It was not a total disaster. As usual we didn't get paid jack (10% of the bar), and the crowd was on the smaller side. But not super small. We play again in two weeks. An outdoor show on a Saturday afternoon (3:embarrassed:0 - 7:embarrassed:0PM).
 
Probably more good than bad there. Watching yourselves on video will be great. That will be a great why to identify the area that need improvement. Its also good to hear the chick singer is on her way out. Everyone has a bad night.
 
The best thing is getting rid of the chick singer. The tuning thing is just something to address in rehearsal. Hopefully the guys who screwed that up will be embarrassed enough by it that they'll not forget again.
 
Mark Wein said:
The best thing is getting rid of the chick singer. The tuning thing is just something to address in rehearsal. Hopefully the guys who screwed that up will be embarrassed enough by it that they'll not forget again.
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+1

All in all, it doesn't sound too bad. But I'm sure that was pretty frustrating.
 
Mark Wein said:
The best thing is getting rid of the chick singer. The tuning thing is just something to address in rehearsal. Hopefully the guys who screwed that up will be embarrassed enough by it that they'll not forget again.
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I really don't know how the tuning thing happened. Everyone was sober too. I can rest assured tunings will be triple checked at the next show.

The gig was not actually that bad, but our drummer is a bit of a perfectionist and little stuff like that drives him absolutely nutso. He was very unhappy after the show...:embarrassed:
 
Why so much retuning? It just makes extra trouble for yourself. If you have a standard tuning for everything else are you doing it to accomodate a singer or?
 
That tuning thing sounds bizarre. One of those nights I guess...

Oh yeah, one of my pet peeves - singers who turns into statues when not singing. Either get busy doing something, or get off the stage.
Then again, I'm not a fan of chick singers in general - rarely works well. :embarrassed:
 
Here's my theory on the tuning thing...

You guys tune down 1/2 step. The bass player was probably using a pedal tuner and didn't notice that he tuned the A and D strings to standard. At least he had a good enough ear to know he was out and correct it. He actually started getting stuff corrected on the fly during the first song. The second song was where the D string threw him for a loop after he thought he had it sorted out on the A string.

As for She Talks To Angels...I don't know if the song is originally in open D or open E. I've played it both ways. Maybe he doesn't really know either. :shrug:

Overall, you guys sounded really good. Paula and I both agreed that while the chick singer sounded pretty good, she was the weak link. It was also nice that there were no music stands on stage for lyrics, though it was pretty obvious that both singers were still reading the lyrics off of a sheet on the floor.

Oh, and the sound guys sucked. I know that stage volume is always a battle, but these guys had the stage monitors jacked up on milk crates 3 feet away from the vocal mics and were pissed because they got feedback when they cranked the monitors. When I was on stage, I couldn't hear the other guitar player AT ALL, and I could barely hear myself. If they are gonna bitch about stage volume, the least they could do is pump some of you into the monitors.

Mixed Nuts cranks a lot louder than that on stage, and we just use little hot spot monitors for vocals and we usually have a much better stage mix. Plus, the sound guy kept getting nutty with the echo on the vocals and screwing everything up.

But that's my nit picking. Overall, I enjoyed hearing you guys a lot. Great set list, and other than a few technical problems, you guys played great.
 
This is why I HATE alternate tunings during live performances. One of my bands tunes down 1/2 step and that isn't so bad but when it comes to drop tunings and changing tuning during a show just makes me cringe. Someone will either not tune down or forget to retune after the song, a lot of times it's me. ;-(
 
Foo said:
This is why I HATE alternate tunings during live performances. One of my bands tunes down 1/2 step and that isn't so bad but when it comes to drop tunings and changing tuning during a show just makes me cringe. Someone will either not tune down or forget to retune after the song, a lot of times it's me. ;-(
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That's exactly why I always use several guitars, all in different tunings ready to go for whatever songs they'll be used on (usually one in E standard, open G and D standard).
 
Prages said:
Here's my theory on the tuning thing...

You guys tune down 1/2 step. The bass player was probably using a pedal tuner and didn't notice that he tuned the A and D strings to standard. At least he had a good enough ear to know he was out and correct it. He actually started getting stuff corrected on the fly during the first song. The second song was where the D string threw him for a loop after he thought he had it sorted out on the A string.

As for She Talks To Angels...I don't know if the song is originally in open D or open E. I've played it both ways. Maybe he doesn't really know either. :shrug:

Overall, you guys sounded really good. Paula and I both agreed that while the chick singer sounded pretty good, she was the weak link. It was also nice that there were no music stands on stage for lyrics, though it was pretty obvious that both singers were still reading the lyrics off of a sheet on the floor.

Oh, and the sound guys sucked. I know that stage volume is always a battle, but these guys had the stage monitors jacked up on milk crates 3 feet away from the vocal mics and were pissed because they got feedback when they cranked the monitors. When I was on stage, I couldn't hear the other guitar player AT ALL, and I could barely hear myself. If they are gonna bitch about stage volume, the least they could do is pump some of you into the monitors.

Mixed Nuts cranks a lot louder than that on stage, and we just use little hot spot monitors for vocals and we usually have a much better stage mix. Plus, the sound guy kept getting nutty with the echo on the vocals and screwing everything up.

But that's my nit picking. Overall, I enjoyed hearing you guys a lot. Great set list, and other than a few technical problems, you guys played great.
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I think you are dead on about Mark (bass player). An easy mistake to do. We normally to 'She Talks..." in 'E' and his acoustic is in open 'E'. I have no clue how he had it tuned - but I think he was in open 'F'. :shrug:

Yeah - the chick singer is not a bad singer - probably better than me, but the drama and the attitude combined with no stage presence just don't work. And not having here lyrics memorized for the ten songs she does. And two singers who just sing is one too many.

I could not hear John (other guitar player) the whole night either. I had no guitar in my monitor at all - mine or his. In fact they never asked anyone what they wanted in their monitor IIRC. I should have said something...

Thanks for the kind words though. I do think we are a good band once we get everything sorted out singer wise.

Oh - and the main reason me tune down a half step is to get a better bass response. It does help the vocals as well - but that is no the main reason.
 
There are songs that I have been tuned differently playing bass than the guitar. An example from what we are playing now--My Iron Lung(Radiohead) I stay in D#,G#,C#,F# and the guitar player tunes to G I believe. Having guitars tuned works pretty well. It seems like they usually need to be tweaked a little bit after sitting on a stand and going through temperature changes or whatever so it helps to be quick switching guitars and checking tuning. It seems like if there is very much of this sort of thing going on the audience can sometimes get impatient. We also try to stack songs in a block of songs that require the same tuning.
 
Some pics from Dave's gig.

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those are some cool pictures.


As far as the monitor mix goes, I'm not a fan of anything in the monitors other than vocals on smaller stages and definitely no effects. Just loud and dry vocals so I can really hear myself.
 
Dave.... here's a suggestion.


Get some pieces of black cloth... I've used black sheets, black pillow cases, etc.... and keep them in your gig rig boxes.

Then when you're using milk crates to prop up the monitors, you can drape the small black cloth over it before you set the monitor down so at least from the crowd it looks really clean. I've used similar things suspended by an unused boom to hide the horrendous snakes of cables going in and out of the amp racks as well. It prevents the stage from drawing attention away from the performers.
 
baimun said:
Dave.... here's a suggestion.


Get some pieces of black cloth... I've used black sheets, black pillow cases, etc.... and keep them in your gig rig boxes.

Then when you're using milk crates to prop up the monitors, you can drape the small black cloth over it before you set the monitor down so at least from the crowd it looks really clean. I've used similar things suspended by an unused boom to hide the horrendous snakes of cables going in and out of the amp racks as well. It prevents the stage from drawing attention away from the performers.
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we just bought fabric for Mrs W to make me a slipcover for my milk crate :embarrassed:

We found this stuff that is almost like the nylon they make ig bags out of so it should be pretty durable and then with the leftovers we'll make cable bag "sub pouches" to organize my cables.
 
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