How was your gig last night?

[yorks5stringer]

Played Pilton WMC and Village Hall last night with the Bad Cowboys. Told to arrive  at 7.00 as PA would be provided. Massive PA, helpful crew and the wall was posted with all the enclosed. Pilton  is the nearest Village to Glastonbury, for those who are unaware. Gig went well and at the end this nice chap with white hair was very keen to be photographed with us. He's in the middle, I'm on the left: apparently he's some local celebrity, I'm not......

[Rich]

9 hours ago, FinnDave said:

The pub's OK, just the people who run it...

Good grief, that's a real horror story  makes me glad they're not getting many bookings.

We had grief from some of the punters too. They found it highly amusing when the hag told us to eff off, and a couple of them joined in in that special "hyuck hyuck, yeah gwarn, f'koff" way that only a cerebrally challenged sister-lover can manage.

Edited March 18, 2018 by Rich

[steantval]

9 hours ago, FinnDave said:

The pub's OK, just the people who run it... Full story - she turned up towards the end of our gig there last year, called me over when we'd finished, paid up, all very official, signed a receipt, and we got on with the load out. Few minutes later, she was asking who was 'in charge' of the band, so I stepped forward and she informed me (not unpleasantly) that we were 'the wrong sort of band' for her pub. I told we can't be everybody's cuppa, and she said she wouldn't be booking us again. I said something about that being fine and she left me alone. Then she started on our drummer who had just had words with the guitarist (they've known each other forever, and it's like an ongoing family argument!) and walked back into the bar to collect more drums and was effing and blinding about the guitarist. Landlady shouted at him 'Can you not swear in my pub', he apologised, and carried on getting ready to leave. 

Then the guitarist walked in (pleasant, affable chap) and she had a go at him 'and this one doesn't even know where he is' (on account of him leaning over to ask me what the name of the pub was when thanking the (small) audience for coming alone at the end), and he tried to explain, but she went off on one, started about his colour (he's from St Helena) and a couple of minutes later, when I was putting the last of my gear away she was shouting at all of us 'get the f... out of my f...ing pub and never come f...ing back. I so nearly said 'Can you not swear in your pub', but the guitarist was anxious to leave, which is why the cymbals got left behind (drummer travels with guitarist). Next day, I heard from the pub that 'a member of the band had assaulted an elderly lady with some musical equipment' and broken her hand. They told me it was 'all on CCTV and the footage is in the hands of the police'. No one in the band had any idea what she was talking about, local friend didn't think the pub had any CCTV, and we never heard from the police. 

Absolute nightmare of a gig, but the strange thing was that she didn't kick off until after she'd paid us!

It's not really a bad venue, just very badly run. Would be a good place to play with different people running it.

 

Old Chinese saying “ a pub is only as good as the people who run it”

[Bluewine]

I needed a good gig under my belt and I got it last night.

Intelligent, well behaved packed crowd from 7:00- 11:00.

We play Ariba's a half a dozen times a year. We're always booked on NYE, St. Paddy's and Holloween.

Great sounding room. Low ceiling , carpeted floor and we play right in front of the bar.

I was tired and unenthusiastic on my 15 minute commute.Apon my arrival I got into character ( the happy fun, no worries cheerleader ) and after hearing the crowd give us several rounds of well deserved roaring applaud I was energized and was reminded why I love this business. And I get paid to do it, go figure.

Blue

[martthebass]

Got snowed off unfortunately......got within a couple of miles of the place after a 1 hour drive through a blizzard only to have to turn back at the last hurdle.  Never mind, British Summer Time starts next week! 

[cheddatom]

It was my first ever gig playing to a backing track on Saturday night. I was really nervous about the technology going wrong. I'd got myself a bit worked up even though all the rehearsals had gone fine. I'd forgotten the right files so had to race back to the studio in the snow. It turns out I'm rubbish at driving in the snow - or at least I am when I'm panicking about getting back to the gig in time. Anyway, I got the tracks and set it all up and it seemed like everything was OK. Unfortunately the USB lead waggled its way out of the audio interface during the first rack. It took until the 3rd song before I realised and fixed it. To make matters worse I'd left my snare turned off for the first song of the set. All this put me off massively and I played the rest of the set with a bright red face

It turns out that no-one even noticed these monumental pink torpedo-ups and we went down really well! So thank flip for ignorant punters

[seashell]

Two little gigs this weekend, Sat and Sun night.  Snow and ice on the roads. I was surprised they weren't cancelled and even more surprised that both of them were really well attended.  Nothing stops Brummie music lovers from getting out it seems :-)

Saturday gig - a little spot at a Country and Americana evening.  This is with my number 2 band, who are a lovely bunch of chaps but anashamed hobbyists.  Banjo player who is usually very reliable had been celebrating Paddy's Day all afternoon and was feeling quite mellow, shall we say. He was playing all the same songs as the rest of us, but not quite at the same time.  Nevertheless it all seemed to go down quite well.  A friend of mine in the audience said to me afterwards 'Well done for keeping that all together Shell. I don't know how you knew where they were going to go next, you must be telepathic!'  I took that as a compliment, as he is an excellent musician himself.

Sunday gig with my number 1 band. A much more professional outfit who do mainly 50's and 60's covers. The challenge this time was to rise to the top of my game, as they are all really good musicians.  We do some quite fast and furious songs like 'The Letter', 'Claudette' and 'Rip it Up'. My fingers are a blur, haha!  Then I can relax on the trippier bass lines like 'Days' and 'Itchy Coo Park'.  Had  a load of fun and it went really well.

The thing with both these bands is that they were originally acoustic trios who asked me to just guest on a couple of numbers that would benefit from a bit of bass.  Before long I was a permanent member of both bands and playing the full set. The moral of this story being, keep your eye out for any opportunity, you never know how these things will develop 

 

 

[bassace]

We took a trio to an old(ish) folks home in Oxford last night. Nice gig and they were very hospitable. Just after the interval the sax player knocked his glass over getting his alto off its stand. And when packing up I did my usual trick of forgetting to unplug my lead and dragging it across my glass. As someone remarked, the only incontinent people were the bloody band!

[cheddatom]

I did two gigs on Saturday night. First was an all day festival thing. I love the sound of the drums in this room, it's a big semi-hollow stage, quite high up, and a big room with high ceiling. Unfortunately the sound has always been rubbish once the PA is going and Saturday was no exception. The bass guitarist might as well have just let all his open strings ring, that's what it sounded like from the behind the kit anyway. Impossible to lock into! 

The 2nd gig was a 50th birthday party. It's a bit weird playing originals at a birthday party but it seemed to go down well. The PA was tiny so I really had to hold back, but that was fine. It was a lot more fun than the first gig anyway. I could hear the bass guitar for a start!

[Callumjord]

Played two shows over the weekend, Saturday night was spent in a bar in Nairn, very small stage so had to rip off some "key" pedals off my pedal board. Guitarists were wasting a lot of time between songs which was annoying. Anyway, some new songs we played went down very well and some other songs that normally go down well didnt. anyway, was packed up and home by 2am, of course the clocks went forward so was actually 3am. Had to be up for 7am to get ready and set up for a wedding fayre at 9am. First one out the band there so hauled all of my equipment and PA in. Managed to setup as much as I could before everyone else turned up. Realized I then forgot the stuff we have for show on our table, table cloth's laptop/monitor/speakers showing our video reel. Was packed up and home by 4.30pm. Sat down on the sofa and crashed out. All in all it was a good weekend, however it did highlight some area's I need to focus on. 

Oh, forgot to mention, my main amp broke on friday night so was lucky enough to borrow my dads old Laney RB9 which saw me through the weekend. Was an awesome sounding amp as well. 

[BigRedX]

Friday with In Isolation supporting Scant Regard (ex-Rachel Stamp) at The Maze in Nottingham.

First gig with my Helix > FRFR powered speaker set up. And very well it went too! A couple of the patches will require a bit more tweaking, but it was a lot simpler to set up and seemed to be easier to get a good balance on stage between the bass and the other instruments. I set up the FRFR as a wedge pointing sideways across the stage and got a great on-stage mix, without being too loud.

I think all my conventional bass and guitar amplification will be up for sale vey soon.

[phil.c60]

Good gig Saturday night at a venue we play regularly. It's a well known live music venue and in recent years it has been 2 gigs a year due to the pressure of bands wanting to play there, but this year I got the "we have so many blues based bands I'll give you only one and we'll see how it goes" which was disappointing, but.........It was busy, crowd loved us, bar staff loved us,  we played well and were really on it plus the guy who books the bands came to watch the first set so I called him this morning and he instantly magic'd up another date for us in August. And when I had to go back to him and rearrange after a date clash (don't even go there) he called me back within an hour and had juggled things to fit us in on a date we could do. Can't ask for more from a gig really, happy pub, happy crowd, another booking. Only slight downer was the drunk (very) lady who during the second half: kept tried to get on stage with us, gyrated backwards towards the stage at one point so it caught her behind the ankles and she sat on the mike stand, kept whirling her scarf around and lassoed a bottle from the bar with it which exploded on the floor, you get the picture.  I actually shouted at her in her ear to F$$$ Off at one point when she tried to shove me out of the way so she could get on the stage, which is unusual for me I'm normally quite calm and cheerful but it was the umpteenth time she'd tried it. That's why I play a Fender - so I could fend 'er off with it!

[mcnach]

33 minutes ago, phil.c60 said:

Good gig Saturday night at a venue we play regularly. It's a well known live music venue and in recent years it has been 2 gigs a year due to the pressure of bands wanting to play there, but this year I got the "we have so many blues based bands I'll give you only one and we'll see how it goes" which was disappointing, but.........It was busy, crowd loved us, bar staff loved us,  we played well and were really on it plus the guy who books the bands came to watch the first set so I called him this morning and he instantly magic'd up another date for us in August. And when I had to go back to him and rearrange after a date clash (don't even go there) he called me back within an hour and had juggled things to fit us in on a date we could do. Can't ask for more from a gig really, happy pub, happy crowd, another booking. Only slight downer was the drunk (very) lady who during the second half: kept tried to get on stage with us, gyrated backwards towards the stage at one point so it caught her behind the ankles and she sat on the mike stand, kept whirling her scarf around and lassoed a bottle from the bar with it which exploded on the floor, you get the picture.  I actually shouted at her in her ear to F$$$ Off at one point when she tried to shove me out of the way so she could get on the stage, which is unusual for me I'm normally quite calm and cheerful but it was the umpteenth time she'd tried it. That's why I play a Fender - so I could fend 'er off with it!

 

I play a Stingray but it was useful on Saturday to... give someone annoying a little tap on the head with  

 

[Bluewine]

On 3/26/2018 at 12:27, phil.c60 said:

Good gig Saturday night at a venue we play regularly. It's a well known live music venue and in recent years it has been 2 gigs a year due to the pressure of bands wanting to play there, but this year I got the "we have so many blues based bands I'll give you only one and we'll see how it goes" which was disappointing, but.........It was busy, crowd loved us, bar staff loved us,  we played well and were really on it plus the guy who books the bands came to watch the first set so I called him this morning and he instantly magic'd up another date for us in August. And when I had to go back to him and rearrange after a date clash (don't even go there) he called me back within an hour and had juggled things to fit us in on a date we could do. Can't ask for more from a gig really, happy pub, happy crowd, another booking. 

Nice story, and nice that the management understood the impact your band had on their business.

I've seen it where a band is really good they have the crowd engaged and buying premium drinks all bight.

Some owner can't connect the dots. They can't see when a significant portion of the business is driven by the band,

Blue

[T-Bay]

Last minute booking at a place we have played a couple of times before. Due to work and illness in the band we haven’t played together since our last gig at the back end of January. We could only manage half an hour before the gig but all played incredibly well. As the last time we ended up playing half as long again as we planned as we were enjoying ourselves so much. By the end we were just shouting out stuff we hadn’t played by then and going for it which seemed to go down well. And a repeat booking for the summer. We did have one punter make us laugh, their friend is getting married next week so they asked if we could play a Bruno Mars song (really not our style) and was surprised we couldn’t learn it there and then.

[Leonard Smalls]

We did a last minute fill-in at Percy's in Whitchurch, Shropshire last night - 1st gig there and only our 3rd gig overall supported by proper tight metallers Elyrean.

The venue is excellent, full of odd curios - like a pair of stuffed tigers and a lit stained glass window behind the stage. And the stage is effectively out side, so was a bit chilly - I wore my leather jacket and wasn't sweaty by the end of it...

However, we played well - couple of minor frunk-ups but not so as the audience noticed, and the venue liked us enough to offer a better paid Saturday night spot in the future. As it was we still got paid (for doing originals!) which made a 120 mile round trip in pouring rain, arriving home at 2am, well worth while.

[FinnDave]

Couldn't post last night as we had a power cut when I got home so no internet. Finally got power back and hour or so ago. 

Played a country pub outside Abingdon last night, didn't look too promising  - small room, pouring with rain, but in fact went very well and had a good turn out. Playing with Witney/Eynsham band The Mighty Cadillacs, which now includes half the Wirebirds (bass & guitar) and it was gratifying to have a few people there who came along because they wanted to see the Wirebirds guys in action as well as Cadillacs' fans. 

Really good gig, no hassles, no arguments, just good fun, good music and good company.  And only 15 mins from home!

Resting today, then a 400 mile round trip to play my first Grateful Dudes gig tomorrow.

Edited March 31, 2018 by FinnDave

[lurksalot]

42 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

We did a last minute fill-in at Percy's in Whitchurch, Shropshire last night - 1st gig there and only our 3rd gig overall supported by proper tight metallers Elyrean.

The venue is excellent, full of odd curios - like a pair of stuffed tigers and a lit stained glass window behind the stage. And the stage is effectively out side, so was a bit chilly - I wore my leather jacket and wasn't sweaty by the end of it...

However, we played well - couple of minor frunk-ups but not so as the audience noticed, and the venue liked us enough to offer a better paid Saturday night spot in the future. As it was we still got paid (for doing originals!) which made a 120 mile round trip in pouring rain, arriving home at 2am, well worth while.

Sounds great , I was hoping to come down for this with Mike , but grandkids and dads taxi service got in the way , I'll look out for the next one 

[Dad3353]

38 minutes ago, FinnDave said:

...my first Grateful Dudes gig tomorrow.

Knock 'em Dead, Dave; knock 'em Dead. 

[FinnDave]

15 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

Knock 'em Dead, Dave; knock 'em Dead. 

I'll do my best, reporting back here Monday!

[peteb]

56 minutes ago, FinnDave said:

Couldn't post last night as we had a power cut when I got home so no internet. Finally got power back and hour or so ago. 

Played a country pub outside Abingdon last night, didn't look too promising  - small room, pouring with rain, but in fact went very well and had a good turn out. Playing with Witney/Eynsham band The Mighty Cadillacs, which now includes half the Wirebirds (bass & guitar) and it was gratifying to have a few people there who came along became they wanted to see the Wirebirds guys in action as well as Cadillacs' fans. 

Really good gig, no hassles, no arguments, just good fun, good music and good company.  And only 15 mins from home!

Resting today, then a 400 mile round trip to play my first Grateful Dudes gig tomorrow.

Is that the gig at Hebden Bridge Trades??

[FinnDave]

1 minute ago, peteb said:

Is that the gig at Hebden Bridge Trades??

Yep, that's the one.

[peteb]

Just now, FinnDave said:

Yep, that's the one.

Great club venue - have a good one 

[FinnDave]

1 minute ago, peteb said:

Great club venue - have a good one 

Thanks, Pete. I've never been there, but heard plenty of good things about it. My first time with this band, too, but the only thing that's worrying me is the drive up! Once I'm there, it'll go too quickly, I'm sure of that. 

[Leonard Smalls]

1 hour ago, lurksalot said:

I was hoping to come down for this with Mike ,, I'll look out for the next one 

Shame y'all couldn't come...

Next 2 are 11th May at Paradiddles in Worcester and 19th May all-dayer Royal Bedding benefit at The Grapes in Hereford - both a bit of a hike from you!

Trying to get a gig at Telford's Warehouse or the Live Rooms if they'll have us - unless you know any more likely Chester venues?