Gig 1 of 2 on this day. We were booked a few months ago after I had already had a gig booked with Planets. Luckily, it was early enough that I could do both.
Marci and I left around 12:30 and, on the way up north, drove by her new school for a minute. Then it was another 20 minutes or so to the Snohomish air field, where the Block party was held.
For the show, I brought the gold L1K and the yellow P. No rig, as they had a Fender amp and cab available for my use. We parked and walked to the "backstage" area, which was a tent behind the stage. We were the first ones there and got a chance hang for a few. We met up with the backstage manager, a guy named Tex, who hooked us up with backstage bracelets and cash for food at the food trucks.
Marci and I walked around and checked things out. As we did, the clouds started to thin out a little; it was cloudy and cool when we showed up, but it started warming up for sure. Before long, Marci was overheating a little, so we got some food (meh popcorn chicken) and headed to the backstage area to eat.
By this time, the rest of the band had showed up, so we all hung out for a bit.
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| Walking in with my roadie |
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| Backstage with the bandmates |
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| The Fender amp was failing and the Aguilar was the backup |
I didn't use the Fender and chose to go direct instead. We all had IEMs, except for Eric, as usual. We gave our devices to the sound crew and sat back to wait for them to get set up. It seemed to take a minute longer than usual. The previous band went a little long, and then by the time we were ready, it was 10 minutes past our start time and the sound guys were still messing around.
They had some people announce something and then they announced us, but we weren't ready. So we stood around trying to get things going. Eventually, the guy got audio going, so we started, but our levels were all weird.
I had Marci sit by the audio tent as there was shade there and she was roasting out in the open air. She said the sound guy, Ted (ironically), was muttering that we had too many IEMs and he was "doing all he could" to get them working. Overall, it worked fine for me.
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| My view from the stage. Marci ended up to the right of the tent. |
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| Before starting the show |
Once we were dialed in, I felt pretty good about things. The front of the stage was in the sun, so I kept going back towards Dusty and Eric to stay cool. Luckily, there was a nice cool breeze coming from the north (stage right), so that felt pretty good.
My wireless rig worked great. I'm starting to fall in love with the freedom, and since I adjusted the input, it's been working perfectly. It's a little fussy to get the transmitter on my strap, but once it's dialed, we're good. I do wish the cord was a little shorter, there's a lot of it that just hangs when I wear it.
Had a good time playing through the songs. There were a few people dancing, plenty of people watching, and if the first band was any indicator, we should have sounded pretty good out front.
Despite the monitor issues, I think we played decent. As always, there were some vocal issues throughout, but we made it through.
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| Forgot to get a picture with Dusty! |
The Snohomish people gave us all 2 guest passes, so I got Marci in and also Daniel from work. I got to give 5 more away as no one else had people come, so I gave them to Cy from Cupcake. She said she had a bunch of people going anyway, so I got them to her. They did come, but long after we played; they wanted to see Queen Mother. Sort of annoying, but whatever, free tix are cool. Glad to save them some cash.
I packed up, talked to Daniel for a few, said hi to Kathy, Richard and Patrick from Wild Rumours, then headed home to drop Marci off, where she made me a PBJ for dinner. After that, it was time to go to Ballard.
