This week a gig fell into the collective lap of my "church" side band, Pedagogy (terrible name, I know). This is the keyboard-bass-drums trio doing the praise band director's (Joel's) material. We got a last-minute show for Saturday night earlier this week. We'd only played one show so far, over the summer at a college youth barbecue. I and the 19-year-old drummer have played club gigs before with other bands, but oddly Joel (mid-to-late 20's I'm guessing?) has only done Christian coffeehouses and stuff, never an actual bar-type club gig, even though he had this band back where he used to live.
So we practiced Friday night. Joel threw 2 new covers at me (I don't listen to the same type music he does, so I'd never heard either of them before) for the Saturday show. Tried practicing with my DiY 2x10 and old 60W Sunn head but it sounded horrible. Resolved to use 200W solid state Crate for next practice and show. One of the church's monitors actually started literally smoking, and Joel blew up one of his keyboard amps.
It was pretty loud.
Saturday we had a church praise band practice at 11:30 in the Sanctuary. After praise band, the director, the drummer and I went over to the Fellowship Hall for another Pedagogy practice. This time I played through the 8x10 Ampeg SVT cab and the Crate. Vast improvement sound-wise. Nothing blew up, though we were still pretty loud.
Show was set for 10 p.m. Went to the show at 9 with my daughter, who doubles as roadie and designated driver. Tiny little room, I've played it once or twice before. I played my Peavey T-40 for the first time at a gig. Sounded great, a bit heavy on the shoulder after an hour. A bunch of the church college youth group came, and our singer's mom, haha. Set went well enough, a couple of my friends showed up late and missed us by almost a half hour. The house gave us $10 (yes, ten) and a $20 bar tab. Since our drummer is too young to drink, that meant 3 beers for me and a coke for my daughter.
Hung around for a little of the next band's set. They were a couple aging white hippie guys on guitar and bass, and somewhat younger black guy on drums. Kind of bluesy-jammy type stuff. The guitarist used a stereo rig with a Fat Strat into two Peavey 1x12's. Bassist was especially good, played a Fender P-J with a painted headstock, didn't know the changes by rote, was following the guitarist's hands. They covered the Stones' "Dead Flowers." Got home about midnight, but couldn't fall asleep for another couple hours.
A friend from the church praise band took some pics, which pretty much give new meaning to "crappy." My daughter took a couple too, but haven't had a chance to upload them yet.
Here are a few of the slightly less crappy pics (the drummer for the second band set his crap right in front of me, that's the obstruction visible in some of the pics):
This is my daughter/roadie/designated driver in the audience:
Who is that sexy old dude?
Yeah, that's what she was thinking, I'm sure.
Subject: Side band club debut (w/crappy pics: T-40 content!) 
Mon Jan 11, 2010 11:37 am
