Tag: Guitar

Post Gig Recap

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We survived another show last night. Barely. We have been lucky over the last year in that we haven’t had any technical difficulties at any of our shows. That lucky streak came to an end last night.

The last time we played at Racks in Plaistow was a couple of months ago. That night we noticed that one of the house PA speakers sounded like it was going to give up the fight. At some point after that it died. That wasn’t really an issue for us last night, but more on the PA later.

I was paranoid as hell last night. We set up all of our gear and then waited. During that wait time I was going nuts. What if we go for sound check and something is wrong. I need to go double check everything. Mike the bass player was feeling the same thing. It was odd. About 10 minutes before sound check we both went up on stage and checked everything out. His gear was fine. Mine? No.

I plugged in my guitar, turned everything on, and nothing. I tried changing the input on the amp. Nope. I plugged directly into the amp. That worked. Okay, so it’s somewhere on the signal chain. Ah ha! One of my overdrive pedals’ power cable was unplugged. Fixed. Just as we were ready for sound check, I was up and running. But why does everything sound so wrong? Oh crap, I was still plugged into the wrong channel on the amp. Fixed.

So we’re bombing through the first set. Everything is going fine. Then someone in the crowd says that Greg the singer’s microphone was cutting out intermittently. Okay. Mess with the speak, the board, the PA amp, the cables. Nothing helps. We even strung together a couple of mic cables to stretch across the stage to use in place of the cables the house had. It worked for one song and then we lost the PA completely. We actually blew a fuse on the power amp. What the hell do we do now? Mike the bass player and his gigantic bass amp rig to the rescue. We ran a 1/4″ cable from the headphone out on the mixing board into a second channel on his bass amp and we sang through that.

It sounded like… what… shit. That’s what it sounded like. That is how it always sounds when you run a vocal mic through a bass amp. It’s supposed to sound awful, that’s why no one does it. The important thing here is that it worked and the show went on. We were halfway through the first set and we were looking at the possibility of going home 2-3 hours early, but Mike’s big yellow bass amp (Big Bird) that weighs 20,000 pounds came through for us and we were able to play the rest of the show.

As for me personally, it went pretty well. I didn’t have any pain in my left hand to speak of. There was a little early on, but I got through it. By the end of the night my hands were protesting and the end of the show was much needed. I think we really went two songs too long for me, but I made it through. Once I got through my own little tech issues everything went fine. My OCD pedal is really noisy, especially when it follows the Tube Screamer. It’s really noticeable when we are practicing in an otherwise quiet room. Last night the noise floor was high enough that I could only hear it when I was listening for it, and I don’t think anyone else could hear it at all.

As for the crappy tone I’ve been getting at practice… I wanted to open things up at home and mess with EQ, but I didn’t. At the show I thought I would tweak on the fly but I didn’t have to. I thought the three overdrive chain worked really well. I thought I sounded pretty good. Not great, but good. I’m starting to think that maybe the issue is just the walls in Mike the Bass Player’s basement. Maybe it’s just the room effecting the tone. I don’t know. I do know that I was pretty happy with everything last night.

There were no other issues. No dropped picks or anything like that. I had the mic stand pick holder with four spares on it. That did not end up being needed, which is exactly the point. It’s there if you need it, but hopefully you don’t need it. I also had a glass slide. Why? Because the mic stand pick holder had a slide holder too, and if it’s there I should use it. I had no plans to play slide at all, but I did use it on the very last song of the night as a goofy attempt at being gimmicky. I don’t think anyone noticed.

One more item of note, the crowd was huge! Well, by our standards it was huge. Probably the biggest crowd yet! It was great! It was also pretty funny that almost everyone left after the second set. So big crowd for the first set, who thankfully sat patiently while we tried to fix the PA, then a bigger crowd for the second set, and then a tiny yet extremely enthusiastic crowd for the third set.

To sum up, it came within a whisker of being a total disaster but it ended up being a really fun night. Thanks, everyone!

Gig Day To Do List

Hello and welcome to June 3, 2017.  It is gig day.  The band is playing in Plaistow again and I need to write a to-do list for myself.

  • Decide which guitar will be the #2 for the night.  It’s always been the ES-335, but tonight I am about 56% set on it being the Fender Strat.  With the exception of Tempest Fero’s first couple of appearances back in 1988, when my guitar was a very cheap Hondo strat copy, I have never played a non-Gibson guitar in front of people.  There were a couple of times when I played my friend Larry’s Epiphone, but that is still a Gibson product.  Will tonight be my first time with a Fender?  Will I take it but not use it?  I have no idea yet.
  • Restring two guitars.
  • Velcro the Tube Screamer Mini pedal to the board.  Right now it’s just sitting there, not tied down at all.  That could be a problem come show time.
  • Set everything up at home for a warm up/practice/find a way to tame the mid range nonsense in my tone session.  Possibly use my new A/B/Y switch to let me play with my Fender Deluxe Reverb and my Fender Bassbreaker amps at the same time.  I don’t expect to do that at the show, I just want to do it because it’s awesome.
  • Pack everything up, including the box of picks, the mic stand pick holding device, and the glass slide.  I don’t have any reason to play slide tonight, but the pick holding device is also a slide holding device, so I am taking it with me.
  • Take a shower.  Very important.
  • Go to Mike the Bass Player’s house and pick up the stuff I didn’t take with me after last weekend’s practice.
  • Go to the bar.
  • Unload the car and set everything up.  Will there be a Fender guitar?  I still haven’t decided.
  • Soundcheck… maybe.
  • Play the show, all three sets.
  • Pack up the gear and load it back into the car.
  • Get paid (assuming we are still getting paid).
  • Go home.
  • Unload the car.
  • Go to bed and hope to sleep for 12 hour straight, but realistically only sleep for maybe four hours.
  • Wake up tomorrow and call it a successful gig.

No problem!

Strat-Tastic Practice

Band practice tonight.  I took my Fender Strat instead of one my Gibsons.  Mike the Bass Player asked me what I’ve been listening to.  I laughed, yeah I’ve been listening to the new Robin Trower record.  He’s a Strat guy.  Funny how that happens.  As of right now I am planning to take the strat to the next gig as the 2nd guitar.  Let’s see if I stick to that.

Two practices in a row I’ve been fuzz box free.  Tube Screamer into OCD has been my dirt, with a Soul Food as a volume boost for leads.  I’m not convinced it’s the way to go.  We’ll see.

ADDENDUM: I swear these effin’ hearthis.at links used to pull in the embedded player.  I even went to the band’s website and looked at the source code for a post where it worked and it is literally exactly the same as this post, but this time it didn’t work.  The hell, wordpress?

Major Guitar Geek Out Moment

I just had a guitar geek moment.  Like, a major league nerd-o-rama guitar geek moment.

I bought an AB/Y switch recently and finally got around to test driving it.  I dug out my 27 year old Fender Stage amp (though I didn’t dust it off, as you can see in the clip)  and paired it up with my new little practice amp and BAM, two amps at once.  Then I put a phaser on one amp but not the other and BAM, a wet/dry rig.  Can you believe it?

Please forgive the video in portrait mode, I hate that but I was balancing the phone against the box the new switch came in.  Sorry.  Also, forgive the mess, as always.

Superstition

You know this song, I am sure of it:

 

Are you aware that this is not the original recording of this song?  Stevie Wonder wrote Superstition for Jeff Beck.  The story, as I heard it (I don’t know if it’s true or not), is that Beck played on one of Stevie’s records and Stevie wrote him the song as payment for the session.  Beck had just started a new band and used the song as the centerpiece for their first album.

The band was Beck, Bogart, Appice (aka BBA) and despite the fact that it might have been the most talented trio in human history, their album is pretty crappy.  Superstition is by far the best track, but even it is a bit on the weak side.

 

Regardless of the quality of the recording, it’s an awesome riff and a monster groove and Jeff Beck is a god.  When I was a kid I had a cassette tape full of songs that I loved to play along with when I was locked in my bedroom playing my guitar.  Beck’s version of Superstition was absolutely on that tape.  I could totally play it in my sleep.

Fast forward about 30 years to modern times.  Two weeks ago at a band practice, the four of us sat around throwing out ideas for songs to learn.  Someone suggested Superstition.  They were thinking Stevie Wonder.  I said yes, thinking BBA.  Over the last few days I have taken to re-learning the song.

Oh my goodness.

I don’t know how I used to play this song.  It was tying my fingers in knots.  What a mess! I was playing around with both versions, as well as the Stevie Ray Vaughan version, just trying to make some coherent sense out of the whole thing and damn was it rough! When we played it at rehearsal tonight it was okay, but I scared myself for a minute there.

So I guess that answers the unanswerable question… am I a better guitar player today then I was when I was a kid?  That would be a solid NO.

Speaking of Stevie Ray Vaughan, I changed up the dirt section of my pedal board.  I took out the green Big Muff and added a Tube Screamer (Stevie Ray used Tube Screamers… that’s why I said speaking of Stevie, get it?).  I used to have my Fulltone OCD as a boost followed by the green Bass Big Muff followed by an EHX Soul Food for a volume boost for leads. Now it’s the Tube Screamer as a boost into the OCD as the dirt source, and the Soul Food stays as the volume boost.  It sounded okay, but I need to bring the board and the amp home for some detailed tweaking before the June 3rd gig.

You are fascinated.

A Little Hero Worship

I promise I didn’t buy either of my Fulltone pedals because Robin Trower uses them.  Well… the wah pedal I did… and someday I’ll probably get a deja-vibe too… but the OCD, nope.  I picked that over the Trower signature model.  There, I told you!

 

And just to prove the point…

Musical Stuff

Band practice was a bust last night.  Mike’s bass was slightly damaged during his cellar flood a couple of weeks ago.  It’s in the shop.  We are hopeful it will survive, but maybe a little part of us is also hopeful that it won’t survive and he’ll be forced to buy that Rickenbacker 4001 he’s been dreaming of since high school.  I brought my cheapo-ebay special Squire P-Bass so he could use it if needed, but my bass is actually in worse shape than his.  Playing in tune was out of the question, so we sat around for two hours throwing out ideas for new songs to cover.

I was listening to a podcast on the drive home tonight.  It’s put out by the fine folks at CD Baby and it’s called DIY Musician Podcast.  The topic this week is, Is your age an obstacle to music success.  I guess, and the podcast agreed, that the answer to that question depends on how you define success.  Is success being able to make music full time?  Is success being able to tour the world?  Is success being able to bang groupies while doing blow off a passed out hooker’s behind like an 80’s hair metal band?  Not for me.

If I get to define what success is for me, then I am an unbelievably successful musician.  I’m a couple of weeks shy of my 46th birthday and I played four gigs in the last year.  That’s more than most of my bands played during their entire lifetime back during my 20’s.  If I remember correctly, the next gig will tie Lizardfish for the most gigs ever played by any band I’ve been in.  Break Even played five.  I’m really stretching my memory here, but I think the band I played in in High School might have done eight or nine.  However, four were with the one main line up.  The four or five others were with variations on that lineup.  The band Mike and I had with Maria the drummer as well as a number of different singers was by far the best band for my taste as it was the only one that was all original, but it only played two gigs.  El Pez Lagarto has played four gigs since I joined, and has three more booked.  That’s amazing to me.  In my eyes that makes us supremely successful!  Now if we could just start doing the occasional original song.  That would be icing on the cake.

I am going to start mic’ing up the room during band practices again and trying to make decent sounding rehearsal tapes.  I haven’t mentioned it to the band yet, but I think I might want to try recording a show as well.  All the more reason to start slipping in original songs.  How about an EP of original music titled, Live at Racks: Bootleg.  I see a hit in our future.  Now I just need to get those songs written and rehearsed and my little idea for recording a show needs to be practical and the band has to go along with it.  No problem.  (yes, problems.  everywhere problems.)

Steve Hackett has a new album.  It’s on Spotify.  After me posting all of my crappy songs back in February, here is an example of what a real guitar player sounds like.

Enjoy.

Two Amps

I don’t have an A/B switch, or an A/B/Y switch, but I do have a DoD Flanger with a stereo output.  I’ve never used it with two amps though.  I’ve always wanted to play with it.  I have both of my tube amps at home right now, a 22 watt Fender Deluxe Reverb and a 15 watt Fender Bassbreaker.  This weekend might be time to experiment a little.  Two Fender amps kinda defeats the purpose, but they do sound very different so it won’t be a total loss.

Here are a couple of videos, for research purposes…

 

Boy Scout Fail aka Gig Recap

The band played out last night. It was our fourth show at Racks Bar in Plaistow, NH. Overall it was a decent show. The two day long snow storm kept a lot of people away so the turnout was lower than we’ve gotten at previous shows. Also, I think the success of the first three shows has left me a little over confident.

Mike the bass player owns one bass guitar. I own a cheap bass too and I’ve brought it to all of our shows so Mike would have a back up. I forgot to bring it last night. That was dumb of me. That was one thing that I look back on and wish I could do over.

There was one other thing that I felt was a bad move done in the spirit of over confidence. Picks. At every gig I’ve ever done in my entire life I have had a pick in my right hand and a bunch of spare picks in my pocket. In some cases there were picks taped to my microphone stand too.

Last night during one of the first couple of songs it occurred to me that I didn’t have any spare picks on me. I had a box full of them in one of my guitar cases, but nothing up on stage with me. I told myself that before the second set started I would fill up my pocket with spares.

A couple of songs into the second set it dawned on my that I never grabbed that box of picks. I started getting nervous. What the hell am I going to do if I drop this pick and can’t find it? There was another pick with my second guitar, I could grab that one if I needed to. Still, that would suck. I told myself I’d get that box out of my Les Paul case before the third set.

Fast forward to the third set. Did I get those picks out of the case? Of course not. Sure enough, we were playing one song that has a great solo section where I always try to come as close as physically possible to shredding like a demon. As the moment approached, I stepped on the pedal I was using as a volume boost for solos and…

Whoosh, out of my hand went the pick. I knew it was going to happen eventually, and there it was. Fortunately it landed right at my feet and didn’t get lost, but I had to finger pick through the rest of the song. I lost my chance to shred like a madman and then I had to get down on my knees and pick the stupid thing up. I should have just been able to pull another pick out of my pocket and keep going like nothing happened.

I did screw up a lot last night. There were some small miscues all through the first two sets. The third set… I train-wrecked a little. The other guys held it together but I was off the rails once or twice. I think I know what happened to me. We had a lot of snow overnight Friday and I was planning on getting up pretty early to dig out so that we could drive up to see my step daughter perform with the all-state choir in Concord, NH at 1:30. The stress of it all must have popped me awake at about 3:30 am. I couldn’t get back to sleep no matter what I did. So when the third set came around I was at about the 20 hour mark. I didn’t feel tired. There is too much adrenaline pumping for that, but I think I was really mentally fatigued. Things that I usually do without a second thought suddenly escaped me. Guitar parts that I usually nail became challenging, or I just flat out forgot them. It pissed me off, but I took out my frustration on a couple of solos and it got better. Still, stupid snow storm.

We booked two more shows for later in the year so we have three booked now. Every show we’ve done and every one we have booked has been at the same bar. That’s not really a good sign, but I am too old to care about such things. My days of seeing music as a career are so far gone that I can barely remember when it was an actual thing.

The next show is in early June. I promise I will have spare picks at all times.