Gig 1 of 5 in 3 weeks is done.
After meeting Greg Hoy on Wednesday and playing through his songs once, we took our act to Tacoma, where the New Frontier Lounge awaited on Thursday night. My old mate from high school, Dave, was driving through horrid rush hour traffic to pick me up to go an additional 30 miles to the City of Destiny.
For about 5-6 years, I made the trek to Tacoma to play with the Lund Bros. 80 miles round trip about once a week. And these days I complain about a 36 mile rounder on Sunday nights. I'm a big baby.
We got to the NFL and basically sat around and waited as we were the 4th band out of 4 acts to take the stage. It was fine to hang out; Greg is a really cool dude and one of Dave's old friends, Kord, came by and we had a nice chatty crew to talk to.
Greg, it turns out, is from the Bay Area now, but Western PA originally. He has been doing the DIY tours for 5-6 years now, funding them from tech money he made and is making. I don't think he's doing it by calling old friends last minute for places to stay like last year's experience with Forest Ray. Greg has money and is spending it on hotels and food and the like.
In terms of food, he bought us all dinner, and for once, I took a picture.
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| A hot dog and a whole bunch of tots. Good eatin' |
Greg is traveling with another musician, who is a multi-instrumentalist playing to tracks on a laptop. That guy, Rich, opened for us, though he had a different stage name. He is from Brooklyn and did some cool loungey numbers to get the night started.
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Rich from Brooklyn. Not a great picture, admittedly
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Once Rich finished up, a duo called Hotels got up there. Guy on bass, woman on vocals. More computer loops, but it was overall a more engaging experience than Rich. The bass sounded great and the player was very adept at what he did. He made his complicated playing sound quite simple and elegant. Very nice.
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Hotels
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Following Hotels was a youngish band, college age, maybe? They were a four piece and they had a nice cohesive sound. Their musicianship was top shelf, but their performance was a little bit low energy. Not much stage presence or movement. They sounded a little Coldplay-ish to me and they did it well. They also brought a good amount of people for a Thursday night. Also, I don't remember their name and I'm too lazy to look it up. Something like Matt and the Monsters. I have no idea.
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| Matt and the Monsters? Who knows? |
Rounding it up was
Greg Hoy and the Boys, featuring me and Dave as the Boys. What little I know about Greg is what I wrote above. However, what I didn't know was how funny and charismatic he was. He is super friendly and accommodating as well. I think he's quite grateful that Dave and I are playing with him and I have enjoyed hanging with him the past two nights.
The sound guy had my vocals dialed in pretty well so I did my best to sing along. I played my P (which I'm sort of starting to fall for...) through Dave's Ampeg combo. I did have a compressor and preamp pedal engaged and was approached by two members of Matt and the Monsters, who told me my bass sounded huge. Then again, the sound guy did have that room dialed in nice; all the basses sounded great!
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| P purchased in Tacoma, playing a gig in Tacoma |
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Nice little Ampeg 15" combo
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It was interesting playing with Dave. I had not played with him or heard him play since high school. He cut his chops in a local band called Inflatable Soule in the 90's, that had a nice following. He branched out to NYC after that, where he met Greg. He's bounced around in other bands and got into jazz and less rock type bands.
Greg's music is power pop/indie pop and the songs are pretty basic but quite catchy. Usually a verse and a chorus and an occasional bridge. As a trio, when Greg soloed, I'd try to make some noise to fill in the space and hoped Dave would do the same, but he had really dull "studio" cymbals, so some of that additional noise was not there. He also played with a light touch, but overall, we played well and it was a lot of fun.
We do it all again tonight, but I am double dipping, sitting in with Dave's band, the Greenwood Music Collective. One of the members I rehearsed with, Jack, is out due to a family emergency, so we scrapped his songs and will add a few covers with Michela (Kelly), the other member of GMC. She has a gorgeous singing voice and it will be fun to play with her on stage.
For those that do the Facebook thing, the Blue Moon does stream their performances, so you can watch here:
Livestream
