As A Matter Of Fact, It's All Dark
09.22.06 (9:37 pm) [edit]Fun festival gig in front of several hundred people tonight. The rain was minor (maybe for three songs) and didn't make anyone leave. Until we were done, when it started raining like a FUCKBASTARD. Hell with it, we got our two and a half hours in...
Katie slept through part of it (she usually does, and it cracks me up that she falls asleep with a live band mere yards away) but woke up in time to thoroughly enjoy the last few songs.
Dennis was there. I hadn't seen him since he moved back east months ago. We had talked about doing our duo thing for a short set this weekend (the only time we'd played together was at this festival a few times) but it hadn't worked out. He was totally beside himself watching Katie. He was raving to me how beautiful she is. Hehe. I'm a proud daddy.
She's on the floor now in front of the TV, watching The Wizard Of Oz. Too bad I don't have a Floyd album with me to add into the soundtrack.
I played well (and had one of the better tones I've had in a while, which always makes me play better) and got deep into my goofball stage antics, but I've got some stuff planned for tomorrow that I hope causes the entire band to train wreck. I'm REALLY enjoying this stupid shit. We do one song where we "bring it on down" and end up lying on the floor, still playing quietly. I've taken to not getting back up when we kick back in, finishing the song off on my back. Tonight, I laid on my stomach with the bass next to me, playing over the top of the neck, then flipped over and hung half my body over the edge of the stage. It was STOOOOPID and people loved it.
On another song, the singer gets behind me and plays the right hand part while I keep a Peter Gunn riff going with the left. Then he reaches around and starts doing some atonal shit. Tonight I let the keyboardist bang on it, the drummer whacked all the open strings with a stick, and the guitarist just tried to avoid me. (Typical.) :) Then I yelled out for audience participation, and the drummer's brother jumped up and played the right hand part from five feet below the stage.
Utter bullshit (I yelled "Hello Cleveland!" and worked the Big Bottom riff into one spot - let's face it, I've totally jumped into the realm of Derek Small-isms) but loads of fun.
Bizarre rush of new gigs. We've been offered our first-ever corporate gig in a few weeks, at a BEAUTIFUL venue in Indianapolis (one of my Genesis-fan friends used to run sound there) and couldn't turn it down. Unfortunately, the singer has never taken a corporate gig and gave them a rate that was well below what we could have gotten. But it's still more than double our usual rate, we might be able to weasel more, and it might open some serious doors that if are develped quick enough, might just keep me around longer. I'm not into the drive or the way it cuts into weekend time, but one gig a month of this stuff will SAVE MY ASS. I don't expect anything, I'm still not really prepared to go on more than a few more months, but if it happens, I'm there. This could be the leap away from a 40-hour-week-+-everything -else-I'm-trying-to-cram- in that I've been looking for.
Loads of family stuff to work in tomorrow before the gig, M's last with us. This is at the same place where we did our "farewell" gig in 1998, the last I played with them until last year. It's going to be one hell of an emotional ride tomorrow. But I'm betting it'll be fuckin' fun.
Love,
Dougie