I drove an hour out to Cass' house to grab him, then we headed into Queen Anne to find parking and get dinner. Obviously, I've been watching YouTube vids from all the previous shows. I was pretty knowledgeable about the setlist but didn't watch the shows in Denver earlier this week. I made a playlist for Cass and got on with my week.
Our seats were on Alex's side maybe not quite 1/4th of the way back and about 10 rows up from the floor. We weren't super close, but definitely not too far away. We got seated and waited for the show to start. Mike Musburger saw Cass and I and came to say hi for a few minutes. With all his drum history, this was his first time ever seeing Rush, so he was pretty excited.
They hit the lights around 7:45 and I got to watch the intro video that I hadn't spoiled for myself. After that, it was Xanadu and the show was on. Double-neck guitars out, arena sounding loud and bassy, Anika on fire and hit all the fills. Alex and Geddy sounding great as well. Really promising start!
The crowd was interesting. Floor was mostly standing and then in our area, Cass and I stood for most of the show. Luckily we were on the aisle, so there was no one directly behind us, and those that we might have blocked (as well as us) had to turn to the left to see the stage. From that vantage point, though I could see everything, I could barely see Anika's face. I've been enjoying watching her expressions during the videos, but the big screens above were great substitutes. I tried to get a few pix of her zoomed in, but they were meh.
That cymbal was my enemy
Xanadu finished, Geddy spoke, then it was Sprit of Radio. I know on other stops, they'd done either all of Moving Pictures or all of 2112 suite. I didn't know what they would do for night one, but I was ready for the ride. I think I shot some video of SoR, can't remember. But I liked what I heard. Next up was The Analog Kid, which simply ripped. I was playing air drums and missing hits, but man, it was so cool! After that it was Freewill, and I definitely recorded the solo section. I should watch it back sometime! They did Subdivisions after that and it was a strong start to the night.Here's a clip I shot of The Spirit of Radio.
I had brought a tissue in case I shed some tears. Maybe it's because I've seen so many of the songs already; I had gotten a bit choked up at times over the last few months watching the many videos. We both sat down during the Neil tribute to hear what he had to say. Then they hit us with Bravado, which was nice, if a little low on energy.
Speaking of crowd energy, most people in our area stayed seated. The woman directly next to me was on her phone most of the night, but I think she was there with her young adult son, who may have had sensory issues of some sort; he had headphones on the whole time and was also on his phone throughout the show. As soon as the last song ended, and before the encore, they were up and leaving their seats. But I digress. The crowd was appreciative, but seemed to be pretty chill, despite it being late on a Saturday night.
Loren Gold on keys started the next song. I know he'd been starting The Camera Eye, but I didn't think they'd play that unless they played Moving Pictures, so I was stumped for a minute. After a few more seconds, it was La Villa Strangiato that showed itself. Pretty freakin awesome and I just loved it.
Caravan, The Trees and Limelight closed out the first set. Caravan was fine; not my favorite tune by any means and I wish they had played Headlong Flight instead. The Trees was great. Alex on acoustic guitar was cool at the intro. I do wish Anika did my favorite drum fill coming out of the instrumental break before the last verse. And then, my favorite Rush song, Limelight. What can I say? Alex nailed the solo, Geddy did his alternate vocal melodies and crazy bass playing. And Anika was awesome. She's made it her own and I had to accept her accenting differently on the bass drum and also not playing my favorite drum fill going into the second chorus. But what a great first set! The fact that they played Limelight told me they weren't doing MP coming out of the intermission, so I knew it was going to be 2112.
The intermission was about 25 minutes. I got a bathroom break in before the line got too long and Cass and I just chopped it up for a bit. He was enjoying Anika's playing and just the entire experience. The lighting and visuals were all great, but I would've been happy with the giant video screen split into thirds, with a single shot of Alex, Geddy and Anika individually.
Breaktime ended with the countdown timer counting to zero, and then counting up to 2112. From there, it was about 20 minutes of all of it and it was glorious.
Someone at the show shot the whole thing. Here's the link.
From the end of 2112, there was no break. Anika started with the drums for Animate, and off they went. Geddy played a P bass and it was fine. Cool visuals, for sure.
Tried to get "ANIMATE" but got "ELEVATE" instead
Next up, I wasn't sure what song was coming next but Geddy busted out the teardrop bass. It's blue, it's ugly, and evidently it used to be a Fender P. It does have a bridge pickup, though, so who knows? And then I saw Alex on the acoustic and still couldn't figure it out. Geddy mentioned going back to 1977, which I thought was Hemispheres, but it was A Farewell to Kings, with Closer to the Heart. It was fine, I would've preferred nearly anything else, but it was fine.
They went back to 2112 again for the next song, A Passage to Bangkok. I was interested in listening to this because a reporter asked Anika about this song and she said the solo section was easy because she could chill and play a 4/4 beat. The boys, Geddy especially, does a shifting pattern that syncs with her but is different on every go-around. Sure enough, her part was pretty easy, it was cool to hear.
From this point, there were 6 more songs, 5 of which I love, one of which I don't. Here's a rapid-fire recap:
Time Stand Still: Aimee Mann on recorded backing vocals. Song sounded great, is one of my favorites.
YYZ: Big pop from the crowd when Anika started the morse code. The bass and drum battle in the middle was fun. The bass pads in the bridge seemed SUPER loud.
Anthem: spoken intro by Geddy, talking about meeting Neil for the first time and this song was one of the first they wrote together. Really beefy in drop-D.
Red Barchetta: another incredible song. Alex nailed the solo and all the rest. Geddy doing the super annoying outro solo super busy, but it is what it is now.
The Garden: I don't get the love other people have for this song. It's merely OK. I find it odd that some fans find Clockwork Angels as one of their best records. To each their own, I guess.
Tom Sawyer: of course, heard it a million times, but that didn't make the drum section any less awesome. Alex played the riff a little too long into the beginning of Anika's drum break, but he figured it out for the second run.
And that was that. The people next to me left, like I said. I had some more pictures before that, so here are some more.
Alex's shirt read "WE ARE IN ANIKA'S BAND"
The guys took a quick break and then came back out for an encore. I was hoping for Bytor and the Snow Dog but we got Finding My Way, which sounded pretty great. Working Man right after that and then Anika's bit at the end was to be filing her nails while the guys waited for a sec.
So happy to have gotten tickets last year and so glad that Cass' friend was willing to give up his seats for the show (he's a Kraken season ticket holder). I am thinking of going to show 2, if the ticket prices come down day of (tomorrow morning).
After the show, I stopped at the merch booth and grabbed a shirt and a hat for a cool $116. What a racket! But man, I knew if I didn't I'd be bummed.
That's enough recap for now. I may give it some more thoughts and words in the next few days.
The same night I played with Stereo Embers a few weeks ago, Sunset Grooves were also offered a show at the Fircrest Golf Club in Tacoma. I didn't want the rest of the mates to not get paid so I reached out to Dave S., who played bass in Point of Sail. Outside of a few messages on FB, I didn't know him but hooked him up with Dusty and crew. Anyway, at that gig, at which Dave was fine, they were offered this gig for a local insurance agency's yearly awards party.
Pay was good and I only had to rehearse once. I brought out the new P bass after I had fixed the input jack last week. It worked fine at rehearsal so I figured we'd be OK. I took off from work a few hours early, came home, took the dog out, then headed down with a 1:15 commute to Tacoma.
Got there, loaded in, and it was like playing in an MPR at work. We had a little stage and that was just fine. They gave us a ready room where we could dress, so that was cool. Before hand, we got to hit the restaurant and I got me a ribeye steak. The guy who hired us told us to order anything we wanted; I took him at his word. It was huge and delicious!
very tasty
After pounding that steak (I did share some with the mates), we got dressed and took the stage around 8pm. I didn't take many pictures but before we started, I did pretend I was the keyboard player.
So many notes
Here's my pedalboard, big deal.
Same old, same old, but I put my tuner back on because I don't love the tuner on the wireless
And then here's outside the windows to our stage right. Once it got dark, it was just black, so this was the best view.
There were better angles, but this is what I got
The gig was weird. Plenty of people, many of whom said how excited they were to see us. We played a few tunes and had a few dancers, but no one was ready to dance the whole time. During one song, Jen stepped on my DI cable and I tried to move it out of the way. When I did that, my bass went out. I still got signal to the wireless, but it wasn't transmitting from the pedalboard. I replugged at the snake and that seemed to help.
A few songs later, bass was dead. Still had the signal, but Dennis came up and swapped XLR cables for me, which seemed to fix the issue. The first set continued and it was... fine. The room was muggy and people were not super interested in us it seemed, so we finished the set and took a quick break.
At the second set, there were some dancers and people started getting into it. I felt weird on stage because it was sort of small and it was just weird energy; it wasn't the type of night to get too animated, it seemed.
Towards the last half of the set, the dancers stayed and some more people joined, so it started to hit its stride. We finished and Larry, the owner, wanted us to play our "favorite" song, but we were tapped out so we played Escape, which we skipped on the first set. It was fine.
Despite the lukewarm crowd, Larry and his leadership team seemed to really like us. They said they're doing it again in Dallas next year and who knows, maybe we'll get an invite. I won't hold my breath, but would be interesting if it happened.
That's it for gigs now. Cass and Robb have DJL in the next month or so, and Cass has Love Battery in December. Maybe I see if anyone needs a sub. In the meantime, I need to work on the Planets' website and see if I can keep that viable.
Maybe a few months ago, Tim reached out and asked if Embers wanted to get back together for a late summer gig. We got together in May to dust off some songs for our release party in June, and then was all done until earlier this month. We started getting together to rehearse for our reunion show, taking place last night.
Earlier this week, they said tickets were low and within the last day or so, the club was sold out! Two sell outs this year for me, that must be a first.
New dragon strap for the new bass
Saturday was spent playing with the new bass, testing out my new bass with my bass amps, heading to Guitar Center to buy a new strap for the bass, then waiting until it was time to head to Ballard for soundcheck as I was backlining my rig. So that meant leaving the house around 4:45 for a 5:30 arrival time.
Marci was coming, and I got her a guest spot, which was great as all sorts of people were hitting folks up for tickets. I had committed to getting Mike and Amy a couple passes because we love them and other issues, so my people were good. Had to do some gymnastics to get Ian in the room for photos as Will forgot to get him one. Luckily my new buds in Seola Station (Ruth) was able to make some magic happen as she purchased extras just in case she had people that wanted to go. Pro move!
Marci and I pulled up to the Sunset right behind Tim and Kay. I gave him a hug and quickly gave him an old Matchbox VW GTI I had. Since I no longer have a GTI, I figured he should have it as he bought one last year when he came into some $$. He and I both loaded in and then reparked our cars and we were good to go.
Imagine my surprise when I got there and Robb's little buddy, Chris, was there (sarcasm). I don't remember him in the previous Embers days, so this may have been his first show. He's just so squirmy, I don't. I am not trying to be mean; I just have no patience for him. As I was trying to get my amp on stage, he was just oddly in the way. Ugh.
Anyway, we set up for soundcheck. I brought my Avatar 212 and Orange Terror Bass. I was supplying bass backline stage right, by the bar and backstage entrance. I strapped up the new P bass and tried it out and immediately, low signal. It may have been the same input jack thing I had happen the other day. After jiggling it around, no change, so I busted out old Goldie and we got to work.
Soundcheck pic featuring the Professor
After soundcheck, Marci grabbed me to go to KAVU down the street, she wanted an opinion on a backpack she liked. She got it and then we went to dinner next door. Ran into Ben London there with his wife and son. He wasn't coming to the show as his son was leaving town the next day so we just said hi. After dinner, we grabbed a molten chocolate cake down the block and snapped a pic.
I was a bit antsy to get back to the club so I left Marci there to finish her treat and ran into Patrick, Kathy and Reb from Golden West. Having played with Kathy and Patrick before, it was nice to be on the same bill with them and their band. I had met Reb a few months ago at the Conor Byrne show and really liked her vibe and energy. Kathy snapped a pic!
After so many years of playing out, I'm finally feeling like I'm part of the scene. I know people, they know me and generally speaking, we like each other. It's really cool!
Finally I made it inside and got to catch a few songs by Seola Station. At soundcheck, when I thought I'd be offering my rig, I spoke with their bassist, Brian, who said he was gonna use his own rig as he likes being stage left and didn't want to move my stuff. Then he busts out the killer Mesa 12/15 mini stack and I figure that I'd want to use that if I had it too.
Epic rig!
Seola Station was cool. There's a description of their music as smoky and sultry, and that's pretty accurate. Ruth, the singer, was a knockout in heels, a slinky dress and really unique vocals. Low register, singing but almost spoken, very neat. Her band was tight and energetic as well. Really enjoyed what I saw and heard.
Seola Station
Marci and I did head backstage and chill for a bit, trying to get people to enjoy some cupcakes for Cass and Tim's birthdays. Her and I chopped it up with Patrick a bit, talking about backyard wildlife, of all things. I shared my Dodo the cat trauma from earlier this summer. It was just nice to chat and hang out and see our friends.
Hooray for cupcakes!
Hooray for Marci and I!
Pro stage plot diagram for Seola Station!
Golden West took the stage next, with Kim V on lead vocals, Patrick on slide, Kathy on lead guitar, Emily on rhythm guitar, Reb on bass and the great Aimee Zoe on drums. Watching her play was a joy, reminded me of my obsession with Anika Nilles. Same joy on her face as Anika's. Really cool! Reb played some great lines and the band was just fantastic. Marci and Emily talked for a bit before their set as she's from Cincinnati, so they talked about Riley's adventures out there, it was pretty funny.
Golden West!
During their set, I got to see a bunch of folks: Steve and Salena, Andi, Howie, Scott Woods, Pete Nordstrom, Dave Place, Lisa Gordon, Will Wiles, Dan Lancaster, Rob Dent, Ben Heege, Charles and Cindy, both Robb's sisters, Renee and Ruthie, Steve Schneider and Michelle from way back, maybe some others I'm forgetting. Just a love in, it was great!
Once GW got off the stage, we got setup and then had a band meeting like Tim likes to do. He gives a quick pep talk and then we jump back onstage and do our thing. All my stuff was working, from IEMs to wireless guitar and it was time to go. Hit the stage running with Game Changer, into Tomorrow, which we never played back in the day.
From Teddy Laabs
Both songs went pretty well. I could hear myself fine, it was the playing that was tough at first. I didn't really warm up and as soon as we started playing, I was just pumped. All the moving around makes it hard to pick accurately, but I think I was likely the only one that noticed. More missed notes than wrong notes, so that's good, I suppose.
For Cass' and Tim's birthdays, Robb and Darla bought some party favors and he passed them out to all the people, so after our 3rd song, Sideline, everyone sang them happy birthday and then blew the blowers. It was pretty sweet.
Happy Birthday to Cass & Tim!
Initially at practices, I was playing all the songs with pick, after never having done so in the past. It was fine, but on some of the slower songs, Break This Down, Pull, Road Song, I decided to go fingers. Same with Boom, though last night I switched to pick mid-song as it was just too fast and I couldn't keep up. I ended up doing Chimp with fingers as well, I think it just flows better.
Overall, pretty pleased with how we played. I think there were some clams here and there by all of us, but for our first show back, not too shabby. A bunch of great pix were taken, let's take a look. First up, Mike Mitchell's pix.
Next up, Howie Cohen's pix.
This might be my favorite picture of the night.
As of now, there are tons of pics of us but not a lot of videos. Funny thing, our friend Bob Mattson came out to shoot GoPro vids as he's done before. He got set up early and then went to dinner. Before long, Cass reached out to me to ask where Bob was. Apparently both SS and GW hired camera crews as well and they wanted the spots where Bob hid his cameras. He was kind enough to come back and accommodate them, but it was sort of a pain.
Speaking of videos, our pals Ted Laabs and Will Wiles posted vids. I'm expecting Bob's as well as Derrick's in the near future, as well as any more that may pop up.
As far as future SE shows go, nothing's in the books. We have talked about it and we feel good about more. As far as new music? Who knows? I know Tim has stuff he wants to bring in but we'll have to feel it out as a band and see how it is. I think we've all grown and if we can settle whatever happened in the past, there may be some hope. Especially if we can sell out shows on the regular? Maybe we play once or twice a year, make it a can't miss prop, vs a "we can catch them next month" type thing.
And now, that's a wrap on gigs. Nothing officially booked for me as of right now. Grooves may have something in a few weeks, more details on that soon, supposedly.
