How was your gig last night?

[Len_derby]

The second gig of the weekend yesterday for Top Deck. At the Great Northern pub, Langley Mill in Derbyshire. A nice old pub overlooking what was an important meeting place of three canals back in the day. The so-called Great Northern Basin. We played outside on a raised wooden stage area. Thankfully with some shade. A jolly Bank Holiday crowd, that included several children. So, we avoided using some of our jokes. 
 

 

 

[kiat]

On 24/08/2025 at 22:51, cetera said:

Played a Wedding gig in the beautiful Surrey Hills yesterday. Packed with beautiful, horsey ladies in flowing summer dresses and, doh, their dumb other halves in polo shirts and tight trousers ending mid calf with NO socks and loafers... 🤦‍♂️

 

Played my Betsy with the GK Legacy and LFSys Monaco so sounded fab as usual.👍😎

 

Spent most of the night fending off huge hornets that liked the lights above our heads, which kinda ruined our performance vibe a little though.....!! 🐝🐝🐝🐝

 

 

Nice to see a B3 in operation!  For size reasons I'm trialling a GP-5 but I do miss the option with my B3 of setting up 3 effects in a patch (compressor, chorus, octave) and switching between them or in combo very easily.  Great pics!  I need to raise my game! 🤪

[dmccombe7]

21 hours ago, casapete said:

It’s a fairly budget system comprising two passive bins with internal crossovers linked to two

10 inch passive tops. We use a Yamaha EM512SC to power these, 2x500 watts. It all works okay,

but does need upgrading. Did a gig recently where we used in house QSC powered 12 inch cabs

and it sounded great. Ideally would like something to handle acoustic guitar, acoustic / electric bass as

well as 2 vocal mikes, probably powered cabs like your Mackies or similar. RCF stuff gets lots of 

recommendations on here too, so will have to start looking.

We use QSC gear belonging to our drummer and i have to admit its the best i've heard and used.

For smaller gigs we use 12" cabs but i think they have a 2" compression driver but they handle all vocals and acoustic guitar. I've also heard of bass players using these as bass cabs rather than bass amps as they are full range cabs.

For anything bigger we use his 3 way 15" cabs but they can cope with anything really but are quite big and a tad heavy. He puts his drums thru these.

He also has the sub woofers but we very rarely need them.

QSC kit is exceptionally good IME.

Dave

Edited 23 hours ago by dmccombe7

[dmccombe7]

20 hours ago, kiat said:

Think it's my first post of a gig, so here goes! 

 

Overview: I was asked to dep Friday afternoon for 2 gigs at the weekend, by a band a mate is in, but I'd never rehearsed with them. 30+ songs in the set, most were familiar too me as a listener, but I'd not played 80% of them before. Charts of a sort** were provided as PDFs. Tablets fine on stage. I'm not a fluent notation reader. Many non-original keys and arrangements. Cue, intensive learning over 24 hours.

It was a very challenging couple of gigs, lots of things that could go wrong, did go wrong with songs, gear, tech, etc. Learnt again to hang in there, trust my ears, play for the band and get through it. Overall a great experience.

 

 

Venue: A big bar in Skegness

Band: an 8-piece Soul & Motown covers band

Structure: 2 Sets of 15 songs each, plus encores. 9pm start. 

Pay: not enough 🤣

Gear: 5-string Jazz (Lakland Skyline JO5) wireless to my pedalboard, out to my amp (Ampeg BA-210v2) and DI to the band mixer for IEMs.

 

 

** Mostly lyrics with chords, tab or notation snippets of key riffs, a few songs only with full notation, some without any, some with a fingered key (say A), but drop Eb, so output key is really Ab so necessary to transpose on the fly, silent parts not consistently shown, key changes, etc..

Well done and respect from me for taking that on. I couldn't do it and i've been playing for 40+ yrs.

Like how you've labelled the pic with whats on your pedal board. Good idea.

Dave

Edited 23 hours ago by dmccombe7

[Greg Edwards69]

Private party in Southend on Sunday evening. It was for friends of one of our singers throwing a party before emigrating to Australia, so lots of Australian theme decorations, hats and inflatables in the venue. The venue itself is called ‘The Lounge Club’, a beautiful jazz bar with a decent well equipped stage area (including hidden power outlets), great lighting and green room - we were truly spoiled. The club has a mix of jazz and soul acts usually, with a number of tribute acts, so it quite fun to bring some heavier rock to the place.

 

We brought our own PA, but the club owner said we could go through their house system, so we just run a couple of xlr leads out of our mixer direct to their patch bay and let them control the volume. Said system consisted of two huge subs either side of the stage and a couple of large tops flown from the ceiling. Quite a bit pokier than our megreat 12” tops and single 12” sub.  Personally, I feel it needed a centre fill, but apparently it sounded great further away from the stage. I think they were calibrated a bit on the bossier side (as proven when the DJ played music when we took a break and finished - almost painfully loud and you could feel the bass in you stomach), I had to run the hpf on our mixer up to 90hz to stop it overwhelming the mix - it could possibly have gone even higher. As such I was worried that my IEM mix would be lacking, but it sounded fine with the subs filling in the low end.

 

First set was a little lacking in audience participation, but by the time we kicked off the second set set everyone was sufficiently fuelled for a proper party. Really enjoyed this one.  Just looking out to see a large club full of dancers throwing balloon and inflatables around was a sight to behold. It reminded my of the good old Top of the Pops days in the 70s and 80s.

 

We had some lovely comments and gave our plenty of business cards, including the couple who booked us who said we were better than the £5k band they booked for their wedding.  We really ought to be charging more for these events. Hopefully the venue will be able to recommend us to anyone else who wants to book a rock, pop and party band!

 

Next stop, this Thursday at the Cricketers in Southend. A double header with another local covers band, in aid of the RNLI. Should be an interesting night.

[Woodinblack]

29 minutes ago, Greg Edwards69 said:

 It reminded my of the good old Top of the Pops days in the 70s and 80s.

 

Keep an eye on the DJ then!

[Stub Mandrel]

1 hour ago, Greg Edwards69 said:

£5k band they booked for their wedding.

 

You could book some name bands for that.

[dmccombe7]

Yep good wedding bands are expensive these days but it can be a very long day for a wedding band between setting up before the event and a lot of hanging about for the meal, speeches etc. 

I guess that's why they charge so much.

Wedding band thing just isn't for me. My ideal gig is turn up, plug in, sound check, gig, paid, go home preferably 1-3 miles from home. 😂

 

Dave

[Greg Edwards69]

46 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

Yep good wedding bands are expensive these days but it can be a very long day for a wedding band between setting up before the event and a lot of hanging about for the meal, speeches etc. 

I guess that's why they charge so much.

Wedding band thing just isn't for me. My ideal gig is turn up, plug in, sound check, gig, paid, go home preferably 1-3 miles from home. 😂

 

Dave

We've played a number of weddings over the years - often for family members or friends of friends, so we've rarely charged big bucks.  But yes, they're usually a long day, typically around 12 hours from leaving and getting back home (even longer if we're invited as guests as well) - certainly longer than a regular day at work. I think the longest we did was 22 hours after leaving home at 6 in the morning for a wedding in Cambridgeshire for a morning set up. Didn't get home until 4 in the morning because the soundman's vehicle broke down on the motorway.

 

This does mean there's often a bit of to-and-fro when negotiating for weddings, as they don't understand that they're paying for more than just 2 hours of music.

Edited 10 hours ago by Greg Edwards69

[borntohang]

12 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

 

You could book some name bands for that.

'Wedding' is Latin for 'stick a zero on the end'. 

 

All contractors and services for weddings charge high amounts, and it's because it makes people insane and you charge extra to deal with the hassle. For example, our wedding last weekend we were booked to turn up at 6, play the first dance at 8 and then do an hour, catering provided between 9-10, then second set till 11 and nice easy load out for venue close at midnight.

 

What actually happened is we turned up at 6 and the speeches were still going, then after rushing to get set up for 7.30 the couple decided they were taking 'golden hour' photos; first dance got pushed back twice, ended up happening at 9 and they had sent the wrong tune through so we had to busk the one they wanted, then instead of two 60 minutes plus a dinner break things were running so late that we had to play through to be done at 11.30 and rush the gear out.

 

Afterwards they sent a message to the agent that they had a good time but complained that we played for too long instead of breaking the sets up. What can you do. 🤷‍♂️

[dmccombe7]

4 hours ago, Greg Edwards69 said:

We've played a number of weddings over the years - often for family members or friends of friends, so we've rarely charged big bucks.  But yes, they're usually a long day, typically around 12 hours from leaving and getting back home (even longer if we're invited as guests as well) - certainly longer than a regular day at work. I think the longest we did was 22 hours after leaving home at 6 in the morning for a wedding in Cambridgeshire for a morning set up. Didn't get home until 4 in the morning because the soundman's vehicle broke down on the motorway.

 

This does mean there's often a bit of to-and-fro when negotiating for weddings, as they don't understand that they're paying for more than just 2 hours of music.

I'm usually 10-12 hr day with the Glam band and we only play a max of 2.5hrs these days.

Dave

[ezbass]

My gig this coming weekend will probably be a total of 8 hours and it’s only 30mins or so away. However, my longest ever from leaving home to getting home was around 46 hours! We were a southeast based band and did a wedding gig in Quimper, Brittany. It was an absolute blast.

[kiat]

6 hours ago, borntohang said:

'Wedding' is Latin for 'stick a zero on the end'. 

🤣 Classic.

 

This thread is making me think twice about being so enthusiastic for wedding band work!