Yeah, I played a show last night but the best part was not the gig, but pre-show.
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| Me and Cookie |
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| Cookie looking like Bella |
After slogging through an hour's worth of traffic due to freeway improvements, I dropped my stuff off and headed to the bar at the front of the Sunset to say hi to some friends. There were two dogs next to me and one of them was basically Bella in disguise. Her name was Cookie and she was quite sweet.
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| This is Bella in 2020 |
I got my fill of visiting with Bella's ghost and jumped on stage for sound check. I didn't bring a rig, only a couple basses (The Gold and the butter bass) and my pedals. One of the other bands (turns out it was Tango Alpha Tango from PDX) was sharing their SVT and 410 cab, so that was cool.
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| Our stage setup |
Despite that, the Ampeg sounded nice, the monitors for my BGVs were decent, but I asked for more. Trouble was, I got feedback, so I told Colin, our engineer, to leave the levels where they were at. And with that, we were off. Without a set list, of course. Luckily, we had an old one in my pedal case so we edited that and kicked it off.
Crowd was a little light, as it seems to be in Seattle when the show starts at 8:30, but lucky for us, they push fog in the club and it makes it hard to see anyone. We started with our song, Nomenclature, which is fast and kicks us off with some energy. It's a bit of a challenge to hit the ground running without warming up, but it went pretty well. At that point in the set, I could hear my vocals OK. As we continued, though, I had a harder time. Not sure why or what changed.
Anyway, on we went, it was pretty high energy and fun. I haven't been doing any big jumps lately as I always land off time and it throws me off. Plus there was a big support beam above my head and I didn't want to hit that. But, I did some medium jumps, only one or two, and it worked out ok.
No pictures yet, but there should be come coming soon and I'll put them up when they are posted.
Next up was Low Hums. I saw them last year before I went on the road with Forest Ray. I can't say I remembered much about them, but I thought there were more dudes. For this gig, it was a three-piece. Bassist played a P and what sounded like flats. He was super solid, not flashy, but definitely in the pocket and doing his thing. The guitarist had shades on (I just can't do it; hard enough to see without em in the dark) and was really cool with his effects and playing. And the drummer was on a righty kit playing lefty. He was also solid and loomed over his kit. They had some cool moments and I enjoyed the set.
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| Low Hums |
Overall, this band is a showcase for Nathan, the guitarist. He is a great singer, with cool stage presence, and is a shredder in the John Mayer sense of the word. Really good player and sort of knows it. His wife, Mirabai, on bass, was solid on her CS Jazz. I do wish she was up in the mix a bit as she was sort of drowned out by both guitars on either side of her. And the drummer was really epic. He was a joy to watch and really delivered a solid set.
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| Tango Alpha Tango |
And then someone else (full disclosure, drummer's wife, who tells it like it is) said after a hard week, seeing and hearing us was like church for her. She's seen a million club shows with Cass, but for whatever reason, this show really resonated with her, so that's cool.
All in all, a very enjoyable evening. I got to do what I love with people I love and get it back from the other bands. Can't wait to do it all again in November.
