Merton

Got home at 3am from a wonderful Katy Hurt gig in Sheffield at Greystones, with the wonderful Joe Martin in support. Last date for 2023, we started messing around with 3 new songs in the green room and they point to a bright 2024 if we can finish them off. Receptive crowd, singing along to all the songs, even found myself signing things at the end which is a bit novel for the “new bloke” but very cool. Zoot Funky 4 was the weapon of choice, through my TE1200 and a pair of Two10S cabs. Sounded blimmin marvellous. Knackered now after a day at work and a hard yoga session just now 🤣

I’ll have my 5 string short scale unlined fretless

Can’t see one on the list but if anyone has a Sandberg Lionel and can bring it along I’d be most grateful ☺️

No longer seeing Vega tonight. Something going on with one of the band members. Hope it’s not as serious as it sounds from their message 😕

Katy Hurt and The Jackson Line at Sutton’s Sound Lounge. A wicked little cafe/bar/venue with a great vibe, a great bunch of guys running it and unfortunately last night a dicky PA. One monitor was swapped and then the replacement failed during our set, at least one PA too went as well. Poor sound man Jono was having a night to forget! And I managed to unplug the lead from my bass to pedalboard between tuning and hitting the first note of the first song about 30s later, cue embarrassing scuffling around.. Apart from that, what a fun night. The Jackson Line, much like Gasoline and Matches last week, are a lovely bunch of people and play some great songs with amazing tight vocal harmonies. And despite our technical and idiot bassist gremlins we had a blast. Old and new songs played to die hard and new fans, a really cool vibe onstage and between band and audience. One to remember for a while! The Jackson Line: Katy Hurt and her idiotic bassist:

One of my colleagues saw them last night in Nottingham, he loved it! I’m seeing Vega on Saturday in London then Those Damn Crows on Tuesday. Both will be ace 😎

I’ve never really struggled with it tbh - as most of my other basses are 32” this keeps me on my toes and I have to be a bit more accurate especially as I go higher up the neck!

I’ve got one. Albeit quite niche as made for me by a good friend, but it’s epic.

Yeah def similar - we’re possibly a little more raw live but I’d say we compliment each other quite well. Katy’s got a fantastic ear for a catchy hook. We’re down in Sutton on Friday, albeit a bit of a trek for you. Will keep you in the loop for future gigs edited for spelling mistakes and now to add a cool pic:

Long day yesterday. Left Surrey 10.30am, drove to Manchester (well, Steve our drummer did, I sat and talked in the passenger seat), quick lit stop via Nicki McBrain’s Drum One and onto Gullivers in Manchester for soundcheck A self-promoted Katy Hurt gig with Gasoline and Matches providing first class support. (Great songs, vocal harmonies, guitar solos, musicianship, lovely people). Not a huge number of ticket sales sadly - that’s the problem with a last-minute self-promoted gig 😆 A fair bit of walk up though, so the room’s atmosphere certainly didn’t feel lacking by the time we hit the stage at 9. Just under 90 minutes later we’d had an absolute blast, played two new songs which went great given we’d only run them both once in soundcheck, and the crowd were marvellous. Used my Zoot P5, TE Elf and Barefaced Two10; onstage bass was immense and the lovely sound guy did a superb job with monitoring and FOH. Finished up, packed away, back on the road 11.10pm and home 3.15am. Very glad when the boss decided to get up at 7.30am to make a cuppa and then sit in bed noisily drinking it 😒 But a great day! Roll on Friday 13th in Sutton for more of the same, only significantly closer to home 😎

Nice and simple. Two ACG Finns (the 4 as a backup) -> Wireless to HX Effects -> Trace Elliot TE1200 and Barefaced Two10S I love this rig!

We’ve ended up with a tablet which we use for the main mix, but everyone downloaded Mixing Station to their phone so they can control their IEM mix themselves. Also allows for multiple redundancy, or in the case of last night, muting crap singers from the comfort of the bar area 😂

Average. The keys player in my function band has a fairly healthy 50K+ following on TikTok and so put on a “TikTok Creators” event. The first “creator” was shy and didn’t want to play in front of people so asked to go in as soon as doors opened (yes I know….) The second was great at pretending to be Michael Buble and trying to pass it off as his own. The third had a massive meltdown when she realised she’d left her phone in the UberX she’d taken from London to this leafy Surrey village, and refused to perform until she had it otherwise how could she possibly live stream it…? So we played our first set to keep momentum, which went great. Halfway through that she waltzed into the room and proclaimed at the top of her voice to everyone that everything was now ok, she had her phone and we could all relax. When she did eventually come on to perform she absolutely killed the energy we’d built up with her cod-karaoke versions of Amy Winehouse, Adele, Radiohead… and then a song she said she’d written herself to finish off, which was Radiohead all over again with different lyrics 😂 So a massive diva and more than a bit of a Richard to almost everyone involved in arranging the event, which was a shame. We then went back on to try and build up the energy, which to be fair we achieved pretty well. Halfway through this set, diva realised she needed her bag of bits* which she’d left at the back of the stage and tried walking on to get it. * a Sainsbury’s bag, with god knows what in it as she used our mic/ stand etc… To top it all off, aside from the histrionics and on the music itself I played like an absolute donkey for the second set so didn’t really come away feeling particularly happy about the whole thing 😅 Still, thanks to another complicated vocalist situation we played a gig with someone we hadn’t seen for about 8/9 years and she was ace! Postscript: But… TikTok and “creators”. What an utterly bizarre thing that is. We literally had a room full of people on their phones all evening talking to their followers, commentating on all that they saw, getting in peoples faces and generally trying to “create content”. One woman was still going long after midnight as we were packing away the PA, then followed us out to the car park as we loaded the van. It feels to me an entirely vacuous pursuit. Live in the moment and enjoy the music, stop streaming every damn second of your life in the hope that someone is watching. I would say no-one cares but they seem to have people following it, so what does it say about those guys. Remarkable and slightly depressing that the world has given us a technology that allows us to sit at home and watch the immensely dull exploits of people via a tiny screen rather than go out and EXPERIENCE things.

I told the band and Gab (the guitarist) said he’d pay to see that band … I reminded him he could carry on being paid to be in it 😄

Thanks! Signal path is pretty simple: Zoot Funkmeister -> HX Effects with a smidge of “tube” compression and the SansAmp sim -> Trace Elliot TE1200 DI’d pre-EQ into the PA. Sounded rather lovely I have to say. Sorry to those without Instagram, you’ll just have to imagine how awesome we are 😆

A little footage for you all to watch/ignore as you see fit https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cxi2ve-M-dp/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Awesome. A relatively last-minute booking for Katy Hurt at Buck’n’Bull London - essentially they put on Country/Americana themed nights and forgot they needed a band! A sold out show at Phantom Peaks in Surrey Quays (what an absolute pig to get to!) and an amazing crowd. The only spoilers were me messing up a couple of tunes (I blame jet lag) and my rig cutting out during our encore. Some investigation needed today - I think it’s a dodgy input socket to my pedalboard. Bur other than that, what an immense night it was. We have footage from at least 3 angles and hopefully we can get a live video of a song or two from it 🤓

I second what @Frank Blank says! Just think, you can try out the new Trace head if you come along..

Sandberg Lionel Electra range 😀

It’ll be incredibly heavy, and IMO there are much better modern cabs out there. With that in mind, the amp may be worth it with lighter cabs but personally I’d not go for it…