It was a busy weekend and it's not over yet! I played with the Michael Hart Band on Friday night. He sent me a text late Friday morning and I just happened to be available. I played Saturday night with the KRB but I'll open another thread for that gig. Then tonight (Monday) we're playing again at Disneyland at the Golden Horseshoe Saloon with Kellye Huff sitting in for Kelly Rae while she's on vacation. But I digress. On with Friday night's gig.
Like I said, I got late notice from Mike about his gig on Friday night. Even the drummer was new to the band. This is what you call your classic "pick up" band. I've always said if you've got a gig, you can put a band together. Most people try to put the band together first and waste a lot of time. But I digress...
Michael was so happy that I could do the gig that he even offered to drive. It was a good thing as Oxnard is 95 miles away from my house. I left work a little early and Mike came by to pick me up. We stopped for gas about halfway there. Ever hear the old joke about being a musician? You know, putting $5000 worth of gear into a $500 car to drive 100 miles for a $50 gig?
We caught at nice sunset as we got near Oxnard, near the coast here in the So. Cal.
The venue is located in The Collection at River Park, a large shopping mall in Oxnard.
We pull up to the rear of the venue to find our drummer, Eric, waiting. He's a solid drummer from a rock background, doesn't play a lot of country, but he got the set list and was able to work on it. I had to wing it.
We roll our gear in the back door and up this ramp to the stage.
It's a good sized stage with nice lighting and pretty good sound. The stage seemed huge with just the three of us. It's been a while since I've done a power trio.
There were line dance lessons going on while we were setting up.
The dance instructor, Kristal, got the crowd in a fun mood. Here she is in her short blond hair and red plaid top.
I brought my Guild just as a backup. I played my Carvin all night.
Eric sets up his drums as Jeff, the sound man, get the stage wired.
Mike is ready for his sound check. That's a '66 Twin Reverb that he's playing through.
This dufus is ready for his sound check too.
It looks like Eric is getting hungry. What is it about drummers chewing on their sticks?
There's a small but decent green room, with a restroom, right behind the stage. We're going over the set list.
OK, we are ready to get the night started. Here's my "amp selfie". I'm not exactly sure what Kristal is looking at but it seems she likes what she sees.
Eric is ready to go into "beast mode".
Mike is ready to put on the show.
On a break I wander out front to get a picture of the venue.
And a picture of the stage.
The room uses L'Acoustics gear. These little 8" monitors sound surprisingly good.
These were the arrays to either side of the stage.
In the picture of the stage above you may have noticed room for the subs under the stage. It was not a bad sounding room considering all the hard surfaces.
Here's Jeff pretending to be hard at work at the sound board.
Here's Kristal pretending to work even harder.
It thinned out toward the end of the night. We even got off a half hour early. Nice.
So we packed it up and made the long drive home.
The next night I had another gig but Michael Hart and his band were back to open for Jarrod Niemann. The room looked like this.
You can see Michael having a blast in front of all those people! Here's a Michael and Jarrod selfie.
It would have been fun to play there Saturday night but I had my own epic gig. I'll start another blog entry later. I hope all your weekend gigs went well. Thanks for looking.
Thank you for your indulgence,
BassCliff
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