How was your gig last night?

[Al Krow]

 

There's something so energising about an audience up and dancing and loving your music! LA Mixtrax (@lamixtrax) • Instagram photos and videos

 

Had a couple of great back to back gigs on Friday and Sat night, at two different venues, both of which left me and my crew with a happy grin on our faces. Could have been a disaster last night with our drummer having a flat tyre! But he managed to set up double quick, and we started our sets with only a 15 minute delay, and made up the time by taking a shorter break.

 

Our PA/sound set-up is relatively simple: 2 x RCF 912As (no backline) which delivers a meaty low end without needing a sub, but is not as good as the higher-end RCF 932A's for mids so we probably will think of upgrading at some point this year. The band had a few line-up changes at the start of the year and we no longer have a keys player; so it's now a pretty basic instrumental trio of guitar, drums and bass with female vox fronting, but we're starting to figure out how to fill out the sound e.g. by making sure that any doubling-up of bass and guitar lines are kept to a minimum or me occasionally adding a little octave or synth when the guitarist is solo'ing.

 

The current line-up all use IEMs (wasn't the case previously: guitarists, in particular, seem to much prefer their amps and backline to IEMs, whereas singers seem to love them - maybe because it shuts out the guitarists' amps? 😅). The band are all starting to appreciate the flexibility provided by our A&H CQ desk to give them their own personal monitor feeds and I'm sure this has been key in IEMs now working so well for us.

 

I love the work that has been put in by the new band members to get on top of 5 hours of set material which allows us to keep things fresh/varied at our residencies for both us and our audiences, and we're all getting rewarded by the reception we've been getting when things fall into place, as they seemed to on Fri and Sat night.

 

 

Edited 18 hours ago by Al Krow

[msb]

18 hours ago, Bluewine said:

 

The Vista King. Try loading onto the 2nd deck of a touring boat on Lake Michigan.  

 

Daryl

 

 

We used to do the odd gig on a harbour tour boat. Lurching around on the boat was always fun , sometimes the power was iffy , and it could be packed.
One night after loading out the drummer noticed some movement by the dock and cried out   “Hey ! A squirrel!” 

[Buddster]

Gig yesterday afternoon. Multi band outdoors community event. Nothing special to report about the gig, but it seems the pa guy was kinda stitched up as to the nature of the event. 

So we took along our Soundcraft Ui24 which we use for gigs (which we run a silent stage). We also use this for rehearsals with IEMs. So we all plugged into that as normal (Roland Electric drum kit), gave him a stereo feed with our ipad for mixing and took our aux feeds as normal. 

Worked a treat. Great sound on the IEMs and had a hassle free fun gig. 

Win win 

[Norris]

We had a lovely day yesterday. It was a VE80 celebration organised by the local council and the Royal British Legion branch. It started off at 2:30 with the Leicester Big Band.

 

 

The decorations were fantastic and the room was packed. After that was a ukelele band in the other room (I was, erm, too busy to go and watch them 😜)

 

So the evening was then split between our guitarist's brother's Beatles tribute band and us. We shared kit - most of it ours. I didn't get any photos of us, but shot these 3 that I've chucked together in a collage...

 

I was quite pleased with that set of shots

 

Usual Sire into Rumble. More importantly footwear were my custom suede Converse

[Norris]

Oh, I forgot to say that the left-handed guitarist in the middle was playing a left-handed guitar, but strung right-handed! 🤯

[bassbiscuits]

1 hour ago, Norris said:

Oh, I forgot to say that the left-handed guitarist in the middle was playing a left-handed guitar, but strung right-handed! 🤯

Good rhythm section there - Rick and Joe. 

[bassbiscuits]

Just back from playing a solo gig at VE celebration in a local pub beer garden. Personal best - 3mins door to door from my house yay!

Scorching hot afternoon but my acoustic guitar miraculously stayed in tune despite the heat (I took a big cloth to cover my kit when not in use).
 

First time there but it went down well enough for the gaffer to ask me about coming back, so that’s a win. 

 

Edited 15 hours ago by bassbiscuits

[Bluewine]

10 hours ago, msb said:

 

We used to do the odd gig on a harbour tour boat. Lurching around on the boat was always fun , sometimes the power was iffy , and it could be packed.
One night after loading out the drummer noticed some movement by the dock and cried out   “Hey ! A squirrel!” 

Agreed on the iffy power. And yes usually packed and alot of cocktails flowing.

 

Daryl

[BigRedX]

Played The Lending Room in Leeds on Saturday supporting The Faces Of Sarah.

 

It's a decent-sized venue with a great PA and lighting system, but is upstairs from a student pub. Every time, no matter what time of year, I have been here, the pub downstairs has been rammed full of students all in fancy dress getting very drunk. It's a complete contrast to the audience upstairs. A slightly smaller crowd than usual, but still very appreciative. Plenty of people down the front dancing. Fewer problems than two weeks ago. The footswitch problem appears to have been solved by a different choice of footwear and the wireless bug stayed firmly attached to my bass. However our singer managed to forget the words to the second verse of a different song to last time. Still sold a decent amount of T-shirts and CDs afterwards. We're close to selling out of copies of "Lost Souls", we have two gigs coming up in a fortnight's time and after those they may well all be gone.

 

As usual gig photos courtesy of Oh My Goth:

 

 

Next gigs are in two week's time first on Saturday 24th May in Bradford at the 1-12 Club as part of the ReVamped event and then on Sunday 25th in Nottingham at The Chapel as part of the Dot-To-Dot Festival.

[Muzz]

Played an end-of-season outdoor festival at a local(ish) footy club; you know the thing - bouncy castles, ropey burgers, BYOB, a charity raffle, generally a family day out on the pitch, with a proper stage, unfortunately facing into the sun, so it was verrrry hot (the drummer/PA engineer's iPad shut down at one point because he'd left it on the stage in the sun and it overheated), but a good day. Mostly singers with backing tracks, a couple of solo acoustic types, we closed it out for an hour at half seven. 

 

I'd brought my QSC 12.2 just in case the cobbled-together PA wasn't up to much bottom end, and it's a good job I did, as one of the (12") subs (we had 2 x 12" full range cabs each side, too) sharted itself just before we went on, so I brought the QSC up to the front on my side (where the bust sub was) and didn't go through the desk. Made it loud onstage on my side, but I went out front with my wireless and blimey charlie o'reilly that QSC can generate some bass; lots of it even a good way from the stage. Admittedly we weren't at Knebworth levels of volume, but lots of people said how well it all sounded, and I'd never have imagined playing an outside venue with one bass cab and being heard more than 40ft from the stage against a miked-up drummer, guitar and vocals in the PA. Extraordinary. It didn't break a sweat, either, and was on about 75% volume, with 50% more (linear) input from the Stomp to come, too; clean (Stomp patch dependent) and very nice...as I say, the onstage sound was naturally bass-heavy on my side, but it was the overall amount of sound the thing is capable of which surprised me - I can't think of a full stack rig I've ever used that would've made more, and that's including an Ampeg fridge and SVT...