Stillwater Spirits and Sounds, 2/28/18

Greetings fellow bassists and blog watchers, my friends,

This evening I had the pleasure of playing with the ANB at Stillwater Spirits and Sounds in Dana Point just off Pacific Coast Highway. It's a nice part of town, pretty dang close to the beach. I played here last month with the ANB.

I was able to park close to the backstage door.

At first I was told to set upon the other side of the drum kit.

Then Johnny arrived and loaded in his rig.

While Johnny loaded in I took a couple pictures out front. Here's the stage with the curtains closed.

A view of the room from the stage area.

Then Johnny told me Arnie had called and I was supposed to set up on stage left next to his keyboards. OK, no problem.

Here's Mike, our sound guy. He's not as pretty as Rachael but he did a great job.

Jason ordered a burger.

Johnny also ordered a burger. I ordered a salad, the "Dana Derby".

 Randy got there just a little later than the rest of us. But he's happy to be here.

Jason is glad to be here, even though he doesn't necessarily look it in this picture.

Arnie's got his hat on and he's ready to honky tonk.

Mike is being really great in dialing us in. I think Jason approves.

I stepped up to the bar to take advantage of the band's bar tab. Kaylie assists me in that venture.

Hey, look! We've got friends in the audience. True Willie himself is here.

So Arnie gets him up on stage to sing a few.

Well look at that! Dave is also here to play drums. It turns out that four of the five True Willie bandmates are in the house tonight.

We played "Always On My Mind", "On The Road Again", and "Whiskey River". The audience really enjoyed it.

 John plays the intro so I have a chance to snap a picture of him.

It was a great two-stepping crowd tonight. They love their old school country music and we tried our best to bring it. 

Let's hear it for Randy and Arnie! Yay!

At the end of the night John and Arnie count up our tips.

Well, look at that! We made tens of dollars!

While we load out, soundguy Mike does his best to clear the stage.

Arnie and I settle up the bar tab. (Well, you boys get paid two hundred dollars and you drank three hundred dollars worth of beer....) Here's a picture of the club closing around 10pm. It's an early gig.

 I walked around front just to take a picture.

My trusty Astro van was waiting patiently to take me home.

Thankfully he knew the way home. Since Mrs. BassCliff had parked on the street tonight I could back into the driveway to unload. Eazy-peazy.

Yes, it's bright tonight. It's almost a full moon. No wonder we had a ton of fun on a Wednesday night. My next gig is with True Willie on Saturday evening at a small theater in the OC. Until then, thanks for looking!


Thank you for your indulgence,

BassCliff

P.S. Someone walked up to the stage to get a picture of John. That's the bass player doing the photobombing.