Checkmates Re-Union King Edward Hall Lindfield

After several months off the road it was time to do the Checkmates re-union gig. Although I had done quite a bit of practice to backing tracks, I didn’t feel that match fit guitar or vocal wise. Nevertheless I ramped up the practice in the week before and was reasonably confident by the weekend. Jacqui and I spent the Friday afternoon with Dan and Michele dining at the Park Hotel Wymondham and I was all fired up for the gig on the Saturday? That was until I remembered it was a 40th Wedding Anniversary actually on the Sunday this year! Never mind – on Saturday I took the time to set all the gear up in the conservatory and make sure it was working. Next day we set off after lunch and had a good trip down arriving in Lindfield about 4:30pm. Jacqui and I stretched our legs nostalgically on Lindfield common for 20 mins or so then I parked up at the hall. The anniversary celebration was in full swing but Bryan and Carol welcomed me in and offered food. Raye was next to arrive and by then we had the curtains closed so we could set up on the stage without distracting the guests dining in the hall. We had about half the gear in when Graham arrived boasting a hernia – so I had to help him in with his bass amp which (mercifully) was just his Trace Elliott 2 x 10 combo. Set up went pretty well and I had the Mesa Lonestar as guitar amp and Bose L1 as PA all ready to go by about 6:30 pm. It was a smaller scale event than previous years with about 60 guests so we were aiming for a smaller sound. I had taken advantage of the test set up the previous day to set the T5 mic equalisers fairly flat (apart from some bass boost). Raye’s mic was quickly diagnosed as faulty with hardly any output so I set him up with my spare SM58 Beta. I also set up a SM58 for speeches! I left the Bose master about “5 to midnight” i.e. 45% of full power meaning that we were going to be relatively quiet compared to previous years. Once I got some volume on I went round the three mics and checked them all personally. No tweaking, other than volume, was needed. We ran through a couple of numbers behind the curtain - you couldn’t tell how it would sound in the hall but it reinforced the need to be on the quiet side to be safe. My MP3 player needed a bit of attention to get it to play the background music play list but I persevered and then we took a break for an hour of beer drinking and buffet indulgence before our 8pm debut. Jacqui had gone off to see one of her friends in the village but she was back by 7:30 pm. Raye’s missus Val had also arrived and Janice (Graham’s other half) came in about 7:45pm. The band gathered in the dressing room to don the green shirts and discuss the addition of the Anniversary Waltz as second number in the show; and the introduction of Summertime Blues and Walk Don’t Run into the repertoire. I didn’t have the music for Anniversary Waltz, but Graham did! So I copied the chords out in my spidery handwriting thinking that would do! It was soon show time and we gathered behind the curtains for Bryan’s introduction. As he finished we opened up with “Eyes” to a good reception from the 50 or so in at the start. This went reasonably OK. Interestingly, because Raye was using a decent mic, you could hear him quite strongly for a change. Only snag was he joined in on my harmony line rather than holding the lead line on the doo wappy doos. My harmoniser covered it up to an extent, but it meant that the 3rd above harmony was a little too pronounced in the mix. Also the echo was a bit strong? I quickly realised this was because we were running the T5 mixer relatively low, but the echo unit outputs into the analogue input straight into the Bose L1 which had been left at last New Years Eve volume! I made a few adjustments while trying to announce “Anniversary Waltz” and we set off into that with Bryan and Carol dutifully taking to the floor. Needless to say I couldn’t read my handwritten chords and had to busk it! The echo was still too heavy but I couldn’t get away from the mic to pull it down. Anyway, with the focus on Bryan and Carol, it all went down OK and I took the opportunity to fix the PA proper as Graham announced “Stand By Me”. This was going well until, as we approached the guitar solo, I realised this song wasn’t on my rehearsal list and I couldn’t remember the starting note for the solo. Never mind I thought; head for G and it will fall into place from there. So I went for the G at the right time and although it was in tune I could tell in the first few milliseconds it didn’t feel right? So I slid up until my fingers found the D it should have been. From then on the fingers remembered it well. Next up was “Heartbeat”. I had re-learned this during my time off to make the middle 8 link chords more like the record, but I hadn’t remembered to tell the others and I could see the guys were gonna do the old “doo wap” version. Well we hit both versions and it kind of seemed to work out OK – phew! As we picked and mixed our way through a selection of vintage material, it gradually gelled better and by the middle of the first set we were singing and playing well with a good balance. I did a great Shadows Walk inviting Bryan and Carol to join in on toy guitars with "Apache" and we played “Summertime Blues” as though it had always been in the repertoire. We brought the set to a close with “I Believe” which we bantered as being ‘Ibuleve the pain relief gel us old Checkmateers were advertising at the moment!’ Unfortunately Graham forgot the arrangement and in the confusion we ended up shortening it by a verse so it wasn’t quite the big finish we aimed for. Still the crowd was happy and we went off to a great round of applause. After a break for more food and speeches we came back on for set 2 in our blue shirts. We opened with “Lady is a Tramp” featuring Raye. I switched the key to A to suit but then promptly made the mistake of looking at the guitar finger board and losing my way a bit. I don’t think anyone noticed though and I nailed the solo! We played the end pretty much as Raye had asked for so he was a happy drummer. We then played through the Checkmates greatest hits (other than Eyes!). These I had rehearsed; and things went really well through “Slow boat” and “I Wonder whose Kissing Her Now”. “Red Sails” opened up well and, although I knew the solo inside out, I expected Graham to do it a verse later – so I muffed that. (Jacqui said she didn’t notice when I asked her later so maybe not too bad). The rest went well and we played a fine “Walk Don’t Run” considering we hadn’t done it before together! “Move It and All Shook Up” went well filling the dance floor. We just finished “Halfway to Paradise” when Raye caught my attention saying ‘time for “Drums”’ So, suitably announced by Graham and myself, off we went into that – it’s always amusingly different and this was no exception. Graham and I got in a muddle on the synchronised tom tom rhythms out on the floor, but we laughed it off! Then Raye had a bit of trouble getting on his back to play the bass guitar and tom tom. Graham and I finally got back on stage to play out the piece in good order and, even though it took Raye 3 attempts to catch his bounced stick, we earned a huge roar of appreciation as we finished. Time had marched on so Bryan suggested we cut our final set down if we wanted to. So we did about 30 minutes of mainly rock’n’roll starting with “Saw Her Standing There" (with Graham and myself wearing Beatle wigs) followed by a tight "Great Balls of Fire”. Next up was “Bye Bye Love” I was quite pleased with this because I worked some extra guitar riffs in the verses without distracting myself from the vocal too much. We did “Route 66” as a request for Val and followed with “Shakin All Over”. Then we slowed things down for “American Trilogy”. Graham couldn’t remember the start and we got a bit confused in the ensemble verse, but after that all went well. I even managed to switch to the flute sound for the solo successfully! We got a lot of shouts for ‘more’ as we finished so we encored with “Lucky old Sun – Early In The Morning” Raye went out front to play snare and cymbal for both numbers and we sped up nicely to a climactic finish – earning a great roar of appreciation. Raye shook hands with ‘his accompanying musicians Adrian and Graham’ and Bryan made his goodbye speech; then we were off to get changed. I was a bit achy after toting the Godin for about 2 and half hours, but it hadn’t been so bad that I’d had to pick up my reserve lightweight PRS Hollowbody. No time to relax as we set to packing up before we ran low on energy. Eventually we had the gear in the cars and said our goodbyes. Raye looked a bit shell shocked as he got off home but Graham and I were still buzzing and exchanged some thoughts about doing it again occasionally. Then it was in the car for the long run home. Actually that went very well. I stopped at the services for a toilet break but, that included, we did Lindfield to Bury St Edmunds in about 2 and half hours. Pretty tired and achy on the Monday as I got to work about 11 am. Finally, as I set about this blog I realised we hadn’t taken any photo’s - I had forgotten to give the camera to Jacqui!