It's been a long day full of driving, playing, driving, flying, more driving, and now I'm near sleeping. Me and the ANB played in Ventura for their Boots and Brews Country Festival.
John and I carpooled. He picked me up a little before 10:30am and stopped by his cigar shop on the way out of town.
We headed toward Ventura.
John likes he WAYZ app on his phone. It's usually pretty good. The Wayz app told us the 101 was pretty dang crowded so it took us over on the 118 instead, through some almost bucolic scenery. It was a lovely drive this morning.
I guess you could say we came in the back way to town. We were scheduled to arrive at 1pm and we were a few minutes early.
We loaded our gear in behind the stage at one corner of the square. This guy was not about to let us in until we got our badges. It's a slight inconvenience but I was glad to see the security was taken seriously.
After we got our badges a small army of stage crew helped carry our gear. We didn't have a whole lot because we were using the backline generously offered by Sundance Head's band.
Arnie and Amanda scope out the happenings backstage.
Now it's my turn to take a selfie with Amanda to show off my "All Access" pass.
The stage was a real cluster with three bands' worth of gear up there. The drum kit for Deana Carter and Montgomery Gentry was on a roller riser. The Sundance kit was in the middle and used for the two "local" acts.
Alexandria Corn and her band were doing a quick soundcheck. That big purple monster is the bass rig. We'll get a better look in a second.
Here it is, the big purple people eater, or purple "fridge", I guess you'd call it. A Demeter preamp, Crown power amp, and an 8x10 Ampeg cabinet. That bass belongs to Alex's bass player.
This is Alexandria Corn and her band just before they start their set.
Here they are performing their combination of covers and original material.
Can a drummer be too cute to fire? (That's a joke for my TalkBass.com bass forum buddies.)
After their set, Alex was kind enough to take a selfie with an old country bass player. They had a fun set and sounded good. Alexandria Corn is cute and talented.
This is Sundance Head, winner of a recent season of "The Voice". He's a real down-home kind of guy.
Sundance and his bass player left their axes out in the sun to get warmed up. Nice strap there, Sundance!
Amanda and the boys went out to Arnie's truck to go over some harmony parts on our new original material. We did four songs in our set that were not covers.
Amanda and John are ready to put on the show.
After Alex and her band cleared the stage we all got set up as quickly as possible and actually got a pretty good monitor check. I could hear everything I needed to.
Jimmy, one of the excellent stage/sound crew, makes sure Jason has everything he needs in his ears.
John takes a moment with Austin to discuss a recent yeast gene study that raises questions about the evolutionary origin of human chromosomes.
Randy and I could both hear everything we needed.
Here's a stage selfie during our quick soundcheck. We had to leave the stage so the announcer could announce us.
I grabbed a picture of Amanda in front of the growing crowd just before we were done with our soundcheck.
The fellow running the monitor board was sharp. He quickly and thoroughly dialed us in.
We cleared the stage to let the announcer do his thing. He's from a local country radio station.
The boys in the band are backstage just chomping at the bit.
I didn't really have a chance to take pictures during our set. Here's a shot of the crowd from my vantage point.
Some of the ladies were dancing to the music. It was a fun atmosphere.
We played for exactly an hour. John and I were off the stage and headed to his car before the last note was done ringing in the reverb. We made a quick getaway to catch a flight at LAX to Houston for our True Willie gig. The gig is actually near Livingston at the Naskila Gaming Center. I'll be back to tell you all about that one. Thanks for looking!
Thank you for your indulgence,
BassCliff
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