Me and the True Willie Band played a really nice senior retirement community clubhouse at Palmia in Mission Viejo. It's a great community with great people who were really a pleasure for whom to perform.
My evening started with a drive down to southeast Orange County made pleasant by the clearing rainstorm and the light traffic.
The Palmia community was quite lovely. Here's the entrance.
The clubhouse was right inside the main gate to the left. I like it when I don't have to go driving all over the place to find the venue.
Dang it! I was last to arrive again. You see John and Dave unloading by the ballroom door. I went ahead and just grabbed the nearest parking spot and rolled my rig into the room.
Here's a shot of the stage from the FOH console. Our friend Chris is running sound for us today. He's there on stage wearing the cap. He's a great guy to work with. We're all doing a loosely choreographed setup dance.
We are getting closer to actually soundchecking. I see the big screen monitors are active. Most of our gear is in place. We'll probably start wringing out the monitors in a minute.
It was a small room, a little over 200 people, so we all brought our small gear. You've seen mine before, the Carvin LB76, Fender JBS, GK MB500, and Carvin RL210.
Here's John dialing in his sounds. Unfortunately he had one of his keyboards stolen earlier in the week. Now he has to configure all of his sounds on three keyboards for a while, until he picks up another keyboard.
OK, it looks like we are dangerously close to actually playing a tune to see how we are going to sound. Mike (git) sets up his new tablet on a TV tray borrowed from the venue. I think Dave (drums) is looking for his drum key. Roger (TW) is strumming some chords and John (keys) is noodling.
This is Roger's PA system, with pretty nice Yamaha active components. He brought one sub and a couple of 15" 2-way speakers for mains plus four 10" floor monitors. It's plenty for this room.
Dave is playing peek-a-boo during sound check.
Mike tends to joke around a lot with various character voices (Monty Python type) but he can be very serious when he has to be. He's an excellent player and really played his derriere off tonight.
After soundcheck we retired to our green room and enjoyed the hospitality. We had some sandwich wraps, chips, pretzels, sodas, water, coffee, and chocolate covered Donetts.
And cookies! It's too bad I gave up desserts for Lent. But it serves as a reminder.
This is part of the main lobby that leads into the ballroom where we will be performing.
The crowd begins to arrive. It was a sellout this evening.
We've recently added a few new tunes to our repertoire. Willie Nelson has a discography of over 120 albums, has written or co-written over 330 songs, and covered countless others. For this show one of the songs we've added is "Seven Spanish Angels". Guess who's singing the Ray Charles part.
The True Willie Band takes the stage and this is the packed house that we're playing for.
John is ready to tickle his ivories, or plastic, as the case may be.
Mike is ready to light up his pretty tobacco burst ES335.
Dave is done playing peek-a-boo and is ready to put on the show.
Let me grab a shot of Dave's drum head with the TW logo.
Here's my selfie in front of the audience just before the lights go down.
This is Bob, who made a few announcements and introduced the band.
Then it was on with the show! I tell you what, this guy looks like and sounds like Willie Nelson.
In addition to paying tribute to the veterans in the house, tonight we payed special tribute tonight to a resident, Mr. White, who was 101 years old. We sang another new one for us, "I'm Gonna Live Forever".
It was a fantastic show. We played a couple of encores. We got a standing ovation. Then we had fun at the meet-and-greet.
Oops, a couple of the guys can't hold still.
This sweet lady had the most adorable British accent and she was more than happy to take a selfie with me.
Then we had to get to work and get all of our junk off the stage. Somehow this dance isn't as fun as the first one.
I was pulling out of the parking lot at 10pm with only an hour drive home and a few extra bills in my pocket. They've already booked us back here next spring. It's a nice room full of friendly people and we had a ton of fun playing for them. I'm looking forward to it.
Mrs. Drummer took some video tonight. I'll see if I can get a copy. She tried to grab the new tunes. I'll share if I can. As always, thanks for looking in on my gig!
Thank you for your indulgence,
BassCliff
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