It helped that Slim's had recently announced its closure and as a result, shows were being well attended anyway. When I saw a show there a few weeks ago, it was quite packed and great to be a part of. I expected this one would be the same and was not disappointed.
Prior to the show, last Sunday, I woke up and felt a weird pain in my left foot. Long story short, after a trip to urgent care, I was told that I had a "well-corticated lucency through the base of the third metatarsal on the oblique view." In layman's terms, I guess there's a tiny fracture on my middle toe. Fast forward to the end of the week and I have felt no pain since last Sunday. I wore an orthopedic boot during the workday all week, but had no pain other than the pain in the ass of wearing that boot.
Anyway, I had asked Pete Nordstrom to borrow his bass gear since I thought my foot might be dumb, but in hindsight, it was not necessary. That said, he has an Orange Bass Terror (as do I), so I knew how to dial it up for maximum good tones. Plus, he had a sweet Bergantino 212 (so light) and it was a nice paring.
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| Pete's Orange, Bergantino and my BASS. |
Showing up at the club, there were a lot of familiar faces: Mike and Amy, Lisa and Neil, Ted L., Ben and Brian from the Rallies, Jeff Barlow, Steve and Salena, Alan, Bob W., Steve N., Andi W., Dave and Paul from Pop Cycle, Chris E., Jimmy C., among others. Always good to see these folks and added bonus, more bodies in the door!
Even though it was a rock show, there were only us and Stag on the bill as bands. The opener was a DJ, which was actually quite cool as he played tunes we all knew, and it wasn't super loud, so people could talk and mingle beforehand. Right at 9, we took the stage and as always, I wish I had warmed up a bit. Robb wrote a setlist that started off with a couple bangers, and off we went.
I was a tiny bit concerned about my foot, but after those two songs, I realized it was fine. I didn't do any gymnastics but did my fair share of bouncing around. It ended up being fine, no pain, no nothing, all good.
The new G&L BASS (LB-100 body/L-2000 neck marked "BASS") performed excellently. Pete's rig was great as well, though I think I was pretty loud. Robb brought his two new amps, running in stereo and luckily those weren't blasted too much at me. My biggest gripe was the vocals; I couldn't hear myself really well and I think Robb couldn't hear himself at all. Either that or my own lack of hearing had me hearing things that weren't there. People said we sounded fine, so I guess there's that.
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| Pic by Mike Mitchell |
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| It's 2026, people need better cameras. :D |
We debuted a new song called the Mean Machine, that old SE bassist Ben Brunn wrote the lyrics to. It's our first new song since I think the Unraveled/Sit and Spin/Nomenclature trio from a few years ago. I hope there are more coming, as MM came up pretty quickly. It still needs some fleshing out, like adding more to the second verse, and figuring out transitions, but it has some legs and sounds like PITO.
Lots of fun on stage, lots of people enjoying our stuff. We had a couple flubs here and there, but nothing terrible. Robb did come in early on the 2nd verse of the Loud Silence, and Cass and I had to catch up to him, but we covered fine. I think Robb may have had one pop too many prior to us taking the stage, but it's all good.
We got off the stage and lots of kudos. Michael Markley, as he's said before, really loves my playing in a trio setting. Andrew K, the photographer, said he thought playing in Sunset Grooves elevated my playing. He said that in SE, my playing was much more subdued. I told him I played that way so I didn't intrude on Tim's stuff, but in PITO, that's more how I usually play. I don't know if he was goofing or not; he took pictures of us in the studio, so he has seen how I play, but he seemed genuinely surprised. Maybe he forgot?
Stag took the stage next and showed everyone how a really good band performs. All guys, Ben, John, Pete, Rob and Steve, are all so good at what they do individually. Put them together in a group? Really good vibes, that's for sure. They played a fun, loud and heroic set and we all left satisfied and better for it.
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| The Mighty Stag! |
Overall, we sold a bunch of records, gave away a handful, sold some shirts, and had a bunch of talk about doing more shows down the line. Always positive, but we'll see how it shakes out. It's usually a bunch of talk, but who knows? Let's let things happen how they happen. In the meantime, next up is our actual vinyl release at Sleight of Hand, but before that, in early March, I have 2 sub gigs with my old pal Greg Hoy, coming out from CO to play a few shows.
Stay tuned.
