Me and the True Willie Band had another spiffy event for the Santa Rosa Plateau Nature Education Foundation. We played behind the visitor center at the Santa Rosa Plateau in a rural town called Murietta, kind of near Temecula. It was a fund raiser with an art show and a concert. There were lots of generous sponsors, especially the local brewery and winery.
Traffic was kind of a mess getting down there but we made it on time for sound check. Johnny and I carpooled today. This is the entrance to the venue.
The is the Visitor Center, a nice facility that housed the art exhibits. The food, drinks, and stage were in the back.
I'm glad I left my dog at home. I backed down this driveway to get as close as I could to the stage.
I still had a bit of a schlep to the stage but our gear rolled pretty good on the hard packed dirt.
Johnny and I carpooled today. My small rig is in there somewhere, under John's four keyboards, three stands, sound module, mixer, etc. Since Johnny has a bad back (he needs surgery) I did most of the schlepping.
The sound company was all ready for us when we rolled up to the stage.
That tent to the right of the stage was our green room of sorts. It had coolers of drinks in there for us. We also had an office in the air conditioned visitor center where we could change.
Mike begins the arduous task of setting up. He brought only his Mesa Boogie today. He left all of his cool vintage amps at home because of the environment.
John is making sure he has enough room to set up all of his gear. He brings a lot of gear to the gig. He makes all the sounds.
This is Rob, our FOH. Rob has worked with T-Willie for years. Rob was the sound guy on the very first T-Willie gig I did last November, on election day.
This is Rob's view from his mixer.
T-Willie asks Rob, "In my monitors, can you make everything louder than everything else?"
This is Nick getting Dave's kit mic'd up.
See? I told you my small rig was under all that keyboard stuff, somewhere.
Here's my soundcheck selfie. The crowd started arriving really early to claim their spots.
This is just the big tent. The people were eventually spread out all over, spilling out both sides and back of the tent.
This is our guest artist for the evening, Bethany. She gets a chance to soundcheck too.
John seems like he's enjoying sound check. It was just a little difficult under that structure. The roof acted like a mirror and reflected the sound back down on us.
After soundcheck we retired to the visitor center where we could have a little supper before the show.
I had the turkey, bacon, avocado wrap and a freshly baked slice of carrot cake.
Let me introduce you to Andrea, our hostess. She made sure we were fed and had plenty of drink tickets to sample the local wine and barley pop.
Speaking of which, the local brewery, Garage Brewing Company, had a fine selection of their product. My favorite was the Marshmallow Milk Stout.
The place is really starting to fill up. There were probably 400-500 people stuffed onto the grounds.
We're about to start. The announcer is doing some announcing.
Here's my amp-selfie while another announcer announces more announcements.
Dave and I take a picture of each other.
Mike's got a beautiful 335 and he ain't afraid to use it.
John has two keyboards for his right hand and two keyboards for his left hand.
Minnie Pearl starts the show with a little comedy and then announces the band.
Then T-Willie takes the stage and we play our first set.
It was a really good, responsive crowd tonight. They might not look like it here, but they were very friendly.
Johnny "Magic Fingers" does his big piano number to start the second set. But I think this is the intro to "Always On My Mind".
Yes, "Always On My Mind". I know that because this picture of T-Willie is next in my camera. This song has a long intro where I don't play which gives me a chance to discreetly snap a couple of pictures.
Then Loretta Lynn joins us on stage for a couple of numbers.
She sang "Hey Loretta" and "Coal Miner's Daughter". Then for the second set we had Patsy Cline sit in with the band for a few numbers, "Crazy", "Walking After Midnight", and "San Antonio Rose".
Towards the end of the second set the crowd was up dancing, having a good time. Even after a couple of encores they wanted more. So we did a couple more.
Patsy joins me for a selfie.
After the show T-Willie gets mobbed by the paparazzi.
This young lady wanted a picture with Patsy and Willie.
Since nobody wanted a picture of the bass player I just packed up my gear and rolled it out to the van. Then I came back and got all of Johnny's stuff. I got a workout tonight.
We were packed up and on the way home at 10pm, pretty early for a weekend gig. I'm going to sign off now because I'm almost ten gigs behind in my blog. I've had so many gigs I can't post them quick enough. I'll try to get caught up in the next few days. Thanks for looking!
Thank you for your indulgence,
BassCliff
No comments:
Post a Comment