How was your gig last night?

[Rosie C]

Our carol gig last Friday - this is our biggest gig of the year, with maybe 120-130 people. That's me in the top hat. Sorry, I'm not playing bass, but that was covered admirably my friend and former bass teacher. It went very well, everyone is keen to have us back next year which may be tricky, but not impossible!

 

Edited 12 hours ago by Rosie C

[wateroftyne]

Hexham Abbey last night - last gig of the year for my Eagles trib, and our first 'Unplugged and candlelit' show.

 

As you can imagine, it's a spectacular location with 'acoustic challenges'. We're lucky to have an amazing engineer - we kept the volume down, had speakers all around the audience with delays, and apparently it sounded spot-on.

 

Lots of new arrangements, and I'm continuing to wean myself on to IEMs, so it took me a couple of songs to fully settle into it. I used my usual Handbox head, my 66RI Jazz, and my little TKS cab, just to move a bit of air around the back of my legs.

 

It's been a great year for this band. They're an absolutely champion bunch of lads. Looking forward to a mix of electric and acoustic shows in 2026.

 

 

 

 

 

\

 

 

 

 

Edited 12 hours ago by wateroftyne

[Woodinblack]

Well, this was a bit of a change. We had our last gig before christmas today, a short 2 hour one on a sunday afternoon at one of our local pubs, a pub owned by the guy who gives us our free practice space. We were going to get the other christmas song sorted but the guitarist was ill on thursday, so we didn't.

I was looking forward to it - short, in the evening and local. The last two gigs hadn't been great, the one before last I had covid (didn't realise at the time, but felt really bad), then the last one my wife had a heart attack while I was away and ended up in A&E until 2 and visiting every day of the next week, still dealing with the fallout from that. So a chance for a gig that didn't have that would be great.

2 hours before we were ready to go and setup for the gig, got a message from the guitarist, who had said yesterday he was good for both christmas songs that he was too ill to come.

Quick panic, not enough time to arrange anything. Asked the drummer who is in another group, but they couldn't cover - we really didn't want to let this landlord down at this short notice.

The singer contacted the keyboard player who left about a year ago and he agreed to cover, so we quickly packed and headed down there, huddled over an iPad working out what we could play without the guitar. Turns out as it is only a 2 hour gig, we had more than enough songs we thought we could do ok.

The pub was heaving, wasn't really expecting that. Set up, the first 2 songs went through fine so got a bit more confidence and after about 5 songs people came to the front dancing. Had a brief 10 minute break and back on. Some of the songs were a bit.. creative and we did moondance and I think he was a fifth out from where i was, but you know, jazz! Some of the songs however went really well, and the last run of 5 (ie, last song and 2 encores) songs was just solid dancing from everywhere and we did nail them.

Packing up and the landlord came over, really happy with how it went, and loads of people thanking us for a great evening, so came away happy. And honestly even when things were going wrong in some songs, I enjoyed it just fine. In fact, I haven't enjoyed a gig as much for a while, it was just fun. Although maybe if i am going to play guitar on a song I should run through it at least once beforehand!

Oh - I played the bongo 5, the light up acrylic bass, a indie tribal guitar, all through the dwarf and a bam200 to the PA.

Shoes provided by solivair, my old pair that are broken, as my feet are still sensitive for how ripped apart they got trying to walk in my new pair!

[Norris]

 

Our last gig before Christmas was at the Stockingford Allotment Association Pavilion - or the "Piv" for short. We love playing there because it's always a great atmosphere. The place was rammed for our Sunday afternoon 4-6 spot.

 

 

Stingish bass into GT-6B multi-fx and thence into the trusty Rumble v3 500 combo. Black DMs.

 

I managed to get home in time for an early Christmas dinner in honour of a couple of family members that were passing through - one of them has been working in Australia for ages.

[dmccombe7]

10 hours ago, mep said:

@dmccombe7 Your Xmas gigs sound ace. I've never manged to get those sort of festive gigs in my bands, lots of other great ones for sure, but you can't beat a great party gig this time of year. 

Think the Glam thing just works really well at Xmas. Women seem to love the era.

Dave

[Stub Mandrel]

9 hours ago, wateroftyne said:

Hexham Abbey last night - last gig of the year for my Eagles trib, and our first 'Unplugged and candlelit' show.

 

As you can imagine, it's a spectacular location with 'acoustic challenges'. We're lucky to have an amazing engineer - we kept the volume down, had speakers all around the audience with delays, and apparently it sounded spot-on.

 

Lots of new arrangements, and I'm continuing to wean myself on to IEMs, so it took me a couple of songs to fully settle into it. I used my usual Handbox head, my 66RI Jazz, and my little TKS cab, just to move a bit of air around the back of my legs.

 

It's been a great year for this band. They're an absolutely champion bunch of lads. Looking forward to a mix of electric and acoustic shows in 2026.

 

 

 

 

 

\

 

 

 

 

 

Looks a cool venue. How did you tame the drums on stage? Surely you didn't actually get a drummer to tone it down?

[Greg Edwards69]

9 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

I was looking forward to it - short, in the evening and local. The last two gigs hadn't been great, the one before last I had covid (didn't realise at the time, but felt really bad), then the last one my wife had a heart attack while I was away and ended up in A&E until 2 and visiting every day of the next week, still dealing with the fallout from that. So a chance for a gig that didn't have that would be great.

Sorry to hear this news Woody, please give Sabby a hug from me. 

[Greg Edwards69]

I missed my second-ever gig on Saturday for reasons explained a couple of weeks ago. Some of you asked to be updated, so today is as good as any. I had a CT Prep scan on Friday to map out the affected area for radiotherapy and give you a few pretty tattoo dots (my first ever tats - not that I wanted any) so they can line you up in the machinery consistently every time they blast you with radiation. Radiotherapy and oral chemo start on Monday, 5th Jan, so at least we get to have a relatively normal Christmas with the family.

In the meantime, I need to make a few new habits in preperation of a 5-week, near-daily slog of hospital visits. I need to hydrate more, and turn up to sessions with a full bladder - so I'm trying to drink a pint of water first thing in the morning (easier said than done) and keep a water log with an app. Using hand cream daily, which I've never had to before, to mitigate the chances of neuropathy. And my diet has to change again to low fibre and low gas (to avoid trapped wind), which will make for a boring few weeks of food, certainly a challenge for a couple of food lovers such as me and my chef wife.

Good news is we have a gig next week that I fully intend to do. I just need to be sensible when it comes to mixing with people. The last thing I need is to catch a cold the week before starting treatment.

 

[wateroftyne]

2 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

 

Looks a cool venue. How did you tame the drums on stage? Surely you didn't actually get a drummer to tone it down?

 

He just used rods... thankfully he has a great touch.