As I’ve probably already written here, I’m finally comfortable with my washboard playing enough to begin working on my nonexistent drum technique. Plus having a snare drum these last two months has also put more pressure on getting some decent bass drum action. So it’s been practice, practice and practice some more which may have been okay if I hadn’t overdone it; but I did; Thursday an unexpected pain in the knee added a high octane dose of anxiety to my stage fright. Still there is never much choice, if you can get out of bed than there it is…
The sound check went well, although as usual amplification changed our great [ ;-) ] acoustic sound into something different, and so off Dave and I went to find something edible; did you say pizza?
The concert was recorded through the table so hopefully we’ll receive a recording one day and I’ll be able to post a tune or two especially since we forgot to turn on the video camera during the whole first set… A real disappointment since most of my rhythm bone playing was done then and I did want to have a new bone video or two to post. Otherwise it went well, and late too since we played from 10pm to nearly 3am with just a couple of breaks.
I admit that by midnight I was avoiding hitting the Bass Drum with any power, which will probably sound terrible on the recording but at least brought its share of unexpected entertainment.
By then the crowd had metamorphose from folks that had come to hear us to those creatures who live the night with a desire to be banged on with pneumatic hammerings. Obviously I wasn’t delivering the goods, so it was fine with me when Dave encouraged a young lady to come replace me at the drums. Her rowdy boyfriends had been shouting her merits for some time…
By then Dave had also invited a guitar playing friend of his onstage to jam with him, which they where, if fact with the help the whiskey deity a lot of ground was being covered… This all changed as the young lass proceeded to beat the shit hell out of my little set! :-)
She really got them running back to form a straight line; fortunately for them it was hard to hear anything above the drums. Two – three songs later Dave asked me to come back but I must say I was enjoying the scene too much to really want to. Luckily another drummer stepped up to proposed his services. “Be my guest!”
I did join them for the last song or two though. Lot of fun really!