Friday at RSM was kinda medium. Started off with lots of people there, played OK, but about halfway through, the place was stone empty. I've never seen a café with literally nobody in it. Fortunately, it didn't look like it was our fault -- the waiting-for-dinner crowd always empties out when their tables come up, and the others just got finished with their studying or whatever and went on home. At least, that's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. In the last half hour, though, some more people "my age" showed up and were liking us pretty good, so it ended well.
Saturday was one for the books, though. We got there, and the helpful staff had brought out the amp and two speakers, on the stands. Nice. I got there first, and started setting up all my stuff, now including a notebook computer to snag a recording, adding to the complexity. Warren got there and started running all his wires, and, since the staff had *not* cleared us a space to play in, and we needed little tables, and, and, and -- anyway, we finally had everything in place at 8:10. I fired up the amp to start the sound level setting process, and, nothing. The power light on the amp glows, just barely, but no sound.
We screw around another 10 minutes swapping every conceivable component: cables, power cords and wall sockets, instruments, speakers, channels, jacks -- but nothing. We finally give up and I go home to fetch my amp.
While I'm gone, Warren finally flags down a store employee who looks at the amp and says, "Oh, this is the Dead One" and fetches the Live One from the store room. Warren takes the time to write "Dead" on a napkin and leave it on the Dead One, in hopes that no other band gets to have this experience...
By the time I get back with my amp, Warren's got everything set up and we were playing pretty soon thereafter -- "only" 50 minutes late.
The upside was that, by that time, the café was calm and quiet, and I do love playing in a quiet place. I can hear myself, and there's less distraction, so I can really perform. And the results were terrific. The gig the night before makes a great dress rehearsal, I felt good, I could hear good... The resultant recording is pretty darn good.
I got a few decent takes the night before, too, so I've implemented a new feature on the K&W website -- "Song of the Week". It'll be a live take of a song that we captured recently, with a link on the top (Schedule) page, so (maybe) people will see it. This week's song is "Desperado", which I've recently added to my book, and which is working out pretty well.
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