The venue is small, and the stage is even smaller. John gave us an idea of the size of the stage the other day at practice. "See the area of the brown rug. It's about that." The brown rug covers about half of our practice space, maybe a little less. Maybe 15 feet wide, eight feet deep. The rest is covered by the blue rug.
I'll be crammed into a corner, behind one of the stacks, with my saxophone set up under the piano. Because the place is so small, John has opted to forego a sound man, so you won't hear me, either. As usual, the guitars will get louder as the evening goes on, meanwhile no one will be there to turn up the keys, which will be coming through the P.A. I'll have my little practice amp on stage, but that's basically my monitor. It's the only way I can hear myself. My amp, hidden behind the stack next to me, cannot possibly compete with guitars and Mesa Boogie amps.
So while I hope you can make it, this one has a relatively low potential to not suck. We're only doing it because it's five minutes from John's house and he likes the place. Acoustic duos and trios play there, and are fine. I have no idea why he thinks it's a good idea for a six-piece rock and roll band to play there. I was pretty pessimistic about both of the places we've played so far, however, and all three (two at the same place) have turned out to be great gigs. So hopefully we won't suck.
Okay, we didn't suck. In fact, people seemed to really like us, which obviously is not a bad thing. Maybe I should just accept the fact that John is going to book us into crummy little places because that's all we can get (for now?) and stop being so pessimistic, because the fact is that we haven't had a bad gig yet. Every one has been well received and, I must admit, much more fun than I thought.
I wasn't too far off about the stage dimensions. 18 wide by 7.5 deep. Tight. Also, at one end was a statue of St. Patrick, and at my end -- I jive you not -- a bookshelf and some other crap that we were not allowed to move. Also, behind the stage was a big TV, which was left on all night. He killed the sound, but since one of the other two TVs in the room was down, he wanted to leave the big one on. Okay.
It was loud as fuck in there, as predicted, but my wife was there, and she says that yeah, the volume was insane, but the mix itself wasn't bad. You could hear everything. I asked if that included keyboards, and she said yes, in fact they might have been too loud in a few spots. Yes! I mean, no, not great that things were out of balance, but I do get a bit tired of playing for my own amusement. Because the place was tiny, John chose to forego a sound man, and as the guitars got louder, I just turned myself up, too.
Our drummer JT was late, as usual, so sound check was late and rushed, which is bad enough in a small room, but fatal if you don't have a sound man to adjust things as you go. I'd turned my keys down to 2 to warm up (which we all did while people were still trying to watch TV and stuff), and before I knew it, John had turned me up at the board to compensate, and that part of the sound check was done. Then we started the first song. I was therefore responsible for turning myself up a bit for solos, but there's a huge difference between 2 and 2.5 when the P.A. is multiplying everything. But in general, the mix was good, people danced, I got paid, and overall I had a great time, and I think so did everyone else. So we're four-for-four. I mean, I really don't think our band is capable of playing a gig that truly sucks, so I shouldn't be surprised. All things considered, we're getting pretty good.
I also met a very pretty girl named Jessica who told me I was great and had "mad skills". I also met her boyfriend Armand, and my wife was there and there was zero chance of anything happening anyway, but Jessica had beautiful hair and a great ass and it's important to remember why we're doing this.