One gas stop had a beer cave.
One stop had Mexican food.
Several stops required gas.
We were playing a charity event tied to The Players Championship PGA tournament. Nothing too stressful--a couple of sets in a big tent, with an air conditioned RV for a green room and BBQ for dinner. Things could be worse! We had Matt Lipkins from The Shadowboxers subbing for Nick. He did an outstanding job.
Soundcheck was long and tedious--nearly as difficult as the one we did a couple of weeks ago, except instead of a sound guy who wanted to get it right, we had the most apathetic monitor guy possible and a jackass of a FOH guy (who would ask "Is that how hard you're going to hit it on the gig?" several times). We've done a soundcheck before, thank you. Maybe if you'd turn our vocal mics on we could communicate with you instead of trying to yell across the tent.
I can't think of too many weird things. The main one would be that my EWI/laptop rig stuttered all through I Wish, scaring the absolute hell out of me. I think the culprit was my phone, which I'd plugged into the spare USB port on my laptop. It made MainStage (which I am using for EWI sounds) develop some seriously bad latency. I pulled the cable out and shut down iTunes (and iPhoto, which had also automatically opened), smacked the space bar a couple of times (the ultimate MainStage emergency fix), and it was fine for the rest of the gig. Perhaps in the future I should charge my phone elsewhere.
Dannells and I traded phrases during the solo on Use Me. We kept it going until he broke into The Entertainer.
When we did this gig last year, Monkey got something in his eye that scratched his cornea and nearly blinded him. That didn't happen this year. Maybe next year?
I made it home in time for my church gig. I really really need some clarinet reeds. If only there was a store ten minutes from my house...
Big fun at ye olde gig: The band leader decided that one of the singers wasn't loud enough, so she asked the vocalist for her opinion, then asked the drummer for his opinion. Then she told me to turn up the vocalist. I turned the vocalist up. Then she was too loud. I put it back where we started, and that fixed it. Uhhhhhhhhh.
