Returning To The Stage

As many of you know, we haven't played live since July 19th. That's a pretty long layoff, as far as I'm concerned. The time has actually gone by, rather quickly though. We've been very busy, behind the scenes, and I was able to work in a family vacation to Arkansas. To see what we've been up to, you can check out my last couple of posts, in the archives.

This coming weekend, we will be returning to the stage, with a show at the Cowtown Bowling Palace, on Saturday, August 24th. We will be playing from 9:30pm to 12:30am. The cover charge is $10, but it includes all you can bowl for two hours, plus live music. That's a pretty cheap way to spend a Saturday night, if you ask me. The Cowtown Bowling Palace is located at 4333 River Oaks Blvd., Fort Worth, Texas.

This will also be the debut, for our new bass player, Brian Barton. Cisco, will also be bringing out the big drums, for the first time. We've had a lot of compliments on his percussion playing. The people we have talked to, think it's really neat, and different. Trust me though, you will enjoy him on full drums too. The full kit, just takes things to a whole other energy level and feel, in my opinion. Both Cisco and Brian, have been working very hard, and I really appreciate it. Roy has too. We will still be sequencing some of the keyboards, and using click tracks on occasion. Roy has had to make a lot of adjustments, on that end. He will also be playing quite a bit more live keyboards, then what he normally does. I'll say it again, I really appreciate all the work, that these three have put in.

I've actually had it the easiest. Not a lot has really changed on my end. The only issues, I seem to be having, are equipment related, ugh! I had a cable go out at practice, but it's hard for me to complain. The thing lasted me 4 or 5 years. It was more of an annoyance, then anything. I run four cables from my amp, to my pedal board, and through my guitar. I had to disconnect everything, and test each cable out, to find the guilty party. Then the footswitch, for my amp, started acting up. Luckily, I had a spare, and we were ok. And lastly, we discovered that my monitor is on it's last legs. Monitors, are the speakers that face the band. They are usually placed at the front of the stage. This is so the band members can hear everything. The only sound coming out of my monitor, is from the high end horn. The bass speaker is dead. I love new gear, as much as anyone, but I'm really getting tired of having to dump money into it. It seems like I need two, of every piece of gear. It's getting kind of annoying. Ok, end of rant. This week, I'll go pick up some new cables, and replace the monitor, when I can. Hopefully, my footswitches will hold out, too.

We had our final two rehearsals for the show, this past weekend, over at Roy's house. We've made several tweaks, with the song list. All the originals, of course, will still be present, but we've added a few, dropped a few, and brought one back from the dead, on the cover end. We also hope to add a new original song to the mix, in the coming weeks. We've also re-worked one of the covers, that we were considering dropping, plus several others. I'm really looking forward to playing all of these revamped songs.

Rehearsal went smooth, until Sunday afternoon. We had played 3 or 4 songs, and were really starting to get into the groove of things, when the doorbell rang. Can you guess who it was? If you guessed the police department, then you guessed correctly! The officer was very polite, and asked if he could come in. He went on to explain, that one of the neighbors had called in a noise complaint. He asked me to strum my guitar, to see how loud it was, and then said, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what I heard, when I was driving up here." All of us, including him, had a laugh. He hung out for a few more minutes. I think he was hoping that we would play a song, or something. He told us, that he hated to tell us to turn down, but he had no choice.

He left, we turned way down, and the rehearsal pretty much lost all of it's energy. What's funny, is that we were not even running our PA. It was all monitor, amps, and drums. We turned down so low, that Roy didn't even bother singing into the mike, most of the time. It turned into a mechanical, robotic rehearsal, for the rest of the afternoon. It was the strangest rehearsal, I have ever been a part of. Oh well, we did the best that we could do, under the circumstances. I feel confident, that we will be ok on Saturday night. Everyone in this group is great, about doing their homework. Would I like to have one more rehearsal? Yeah, I would, but it's not in the cards. Nothing we can do about it, so I'm not going to worry myself to death, over it.

Well, that's about all I have for now. If your in the area, on Saturday night, stop by Cowtown, meet Brian, check out the new show, and do some bowling! Thanks for reading, and I'll talk to ya soon!