A bit too up close and personal.
A local place in the next village that we hadn't played before so didn't really know much about it. Seemed to be a lot of space when we started but there was a pinch point between the door and the bar and my microphone stand!
So in the first half, the first hour there wasn't that much interaction, a few dancers, mostly of people we knew who came out because we were there, and applause from them, and a few other intersted crowd that just watched.
The last 15 minutes of the first half we tailed off the rock stuff and the crowd got more interested and interactive, as is generally the way. The second half was pretty well flat out the whole time and we had to retreat back a bit closer towards the wall as space became trickier. The guitarist put some small stools in front of his pedalboard to stop people from jumping on it! There was a security woman who thankfully kept pushing them back a bit when they were bashing into my microphone - the joys of pubs huh?
Still they all seemed to enjoy it and the barstaff seemed happy at the end of the day so its nice to open up new venues.
Usual problems, took a while to work out why no sound when I started, transmitter and receiver the wrong way round! Drummers drum lights burned out half way through, forgot to charge my page turner. On the plus side, sax player got a new wireless (nux sax thing instead of shure) and no longer got clicks and pops from it - a bit of feedback but probably at the moment it is still set for the shure so needs some adjustments. It is a lot easier to setup.