Chris the bass, old bandmate from ReTrio, asked me If I could stand in at Hunstanton for their new band Coast - guitarist Glynn was off unwell. They would provide PA and I would only need to bring a guitar amp, mic and stand. Steve would do lead vocal and if I was up for it could I sing a couple as well. Fine I said.
Come the day I loaded up my big sounding but physically small Mesa Lonestar valve amp, Boss FX, OM6 mic and stand. And a music stand 'cos there were a couple of songs in the set list I wasn't familiar enough to busk. As well as the usual Godin XTSA, I took my Rickenbacker 620-12 to give it a live airing. Jacqui kindly agreed to accompany me and we set of for the North Norfolk coast at 6pm on a fine day.
Arriving at the gig I spotted Chris sorting the trolley to load in the gear and within a few minutes the gear was in, car parked and I was ordering drinks!
Set up was easy and my stuff worked OK. But the band had some problems with the PA monitors - in the end they settled for one monitor and we did Heartbeat as a sound check. Time was short so just had time to down a beer and then we got changed for the 9pm start. I would say the venue was about 70% full as we took to the stage.
We kicked off with "Heartbeat". I found it a bit odd with Steve singing because I am so used to singing this song and lots of my performance cues are tied into doing that. Despite the sound check, the guitar sound was a bit toppy and when I switched to clean lead it was more so and a little distorted as well. As the set progressed I decided to adjust amp levels to make it more power amp and less pre-amp but it didn't make much difference. But it was good enough to play the gig and I don't think the audience would have been bothered.
I picked up the Rickenbacker to do a 5 song Beatles / Searchers sequence. Now the toppy problem was exacerbated! Although it was interesting to play the Ricky live and it did sound very 60s, it wasn't really the sound I wanted and I wasn't happy with the 2 volume controls. The band was going down Okish with a relatively quiet audience but the show was a little disjointed in places as they worked out what to do next. I was familiar with every song but some of the arrangements were strange. I remember at one point playing "Albatross" which I jokingly renamed "Seagullross". I felt I played it well and we did finish to some good applause. We closed with "Runaround Sue. I had finished the set on the 6 string and, with nothing jangly coming up next set, I decided to pack the Ricky away. As I came off Jacqui told me the guitar needed to come up a bit so I had a good look at the amp settings before we resumed. I decided to take the treble down 10% and put up the mid 10%. The way tone controls work on the Mesa is strange - a reduction in treble seems to automatically boost mid and bass, so this was a more than subtle change!
As we got going with set 2 it was clear the changes had fixed the toppy distortion and I was now happy with the sound. I had to concentrate a bit 'cos some of Steve's arrangements were different from the record and I soon learned to keep an eye on where he was going with the song. (Chris and Ian had mentioned that Steve's arrangements change every night!) So there were a few mistakes and misunderstandings going on - but nothing too fatal. I got to sing "Penny Arcade" as a request and it went down well. A slowey followed:
The audience livened up for set 3 but the entertainments staff asked us to turn it down. The set was not as slick as it used to be in ReTrio but Steve does a good job of working the crowd. By now Steve's missus Julie had enjoyed a drink and was joining in on lots of the dancing. We approached the end doing "Johnny B Goode" which was interesting 'cos I could concentrate on guitar; but again the arrangement was not what I expected. We did try an encore with "Caroline" but it was a bit slower than it should have been. Mind you it suited the crowd at that time of night. As we finished Ian gave me a big hug and asked me to consider coming back - they missed the leadership! He asked Jacqui to work on me too. Pack up was easy and we were on the way home by 12:15 getting in about 1:40am. Tired the next day! Reflecting on things, its nice to be appreciated now I've gone but I'm pleased to be out of this set up. I need some new challenges and I like things to be slick. I had told Chris I'd be happy to dep with the boys again and he has already booked me to stand in for Steve in mid-December at Bramford so I'll need to keep in practice.
Come the day I loaded up my big sounding but physically small Mesa Lonestar valve amp, Boss FX, OM6 mic and stand. And a music stand 'cos there were a couple of songs in the set list I wasn't familiar enough to busk. As well as the usual Godin XTSA, I took my Rickenbacker 620-12 to give it a live airing. Jacqui kindly agreed to accompany me and we set of for the North Norfolk coast at 6pm on a fine day.
Arriving at the gig I spotted Chris sorting the trolley to load in the gear and within a few minutes the gear was in, car parked and I was ordering drinks!
Set up was easy and my stuff worked OK. But the band had some problems with the PA monitors - in the end they settled for one monitor and we did Heartbeat as a sound check. Time was short so just had time to down a beer and then we got changed for the 9pm start. I would say the venue was about 70% full as we took to the stage.
We kicked off with "Heartbeat". I found it a bit odd with Steve singing because I am so used to singing this song and lots of my performance cues are tied into doing that. Despite the sound check, the guitar sound was a bit toppy and when I switched to clean lead it was more so and a little distorted as well. As the set progressed I decided to adjust amp levels to make it more power amp and less pre-amp but it didn't make much difference. But it was good enough to play the gig and I don't think the audience would have been bothered.
As we got going with set 2 it was clear the changes had fixed the toppy distortion and I was now happy with the sound. I had to concentrate a bit 'cos some of Steve's arrangements were different from the record and I soon learned to keep an eye on where he was going with the song. (Chris and Ian had mentioned that Steve's arrangements change every night!) So there were a few mistakes and misunderstandings going on - but nothing too fatal. I got to sing "Penny Arcade" as a request and it went down well. A slowey followed:
