Since I have a few minutes at my desk while eating lunch I thought I'd post up another gig from last week. Me and the ANB (as a quartet) played at the Old Crow Smokehouse in Huntington Beach, one of our regular spots.
The evening began for me with a nice long drive from San Bernardino where I had been visiting my Dad all day. But traffic wasn't bad so it took only a little over two hours.
The Old Crow Smokehouse is located in a high end shopping center called Pacific City. There are folks sunning themselves and lolly gagging about here on the patio facing Pacific Coast Highway.
I park underground, unload, and make my way to the elevator. You can't miss it.
Here I am upstairs about to enter the venue. It's quite a change of scenery from San Bernardino.
It was such a long drive I had to use the little bass player's room. What did I find on the wall?
After that pause, Brandi, the bar manager, knew that I was ready for some refreshment. I enjoyed a Patsy, a nice stout.
While I was enjoying my Patsy I got a text from John asking to help schlep his gear. What's a bass player to do? I brought my cart down and lent a hand.
Jason starts setting up. At the end of the night I thanked Jason for not making me wear ear plugs. He kept a lid on it tonight pretty well.
There was a good crowd for supper. The food here is really tasty.
I'm going to have to try the chicken sometime. It must've been on special tonight as this guy was cooking up a bunch.
Arnie and Jason continue their setup dance under a myriad of sporting events.
Since it was so crowded in there, John and I sat at the bar and had our supper. I enjoyed a nice combo with beef brisket, pulled pork, and sausage. The Beer BBQ sauce is the bomb.
After supper I went down to my dressing room (my trusty Astro van) and noticed Venus chasing the Moon across the evening sky. Pretty cool.
Here I am back in front of the joint with a shirt I haven't worn in a while.
John and I use our regular gear.
Jason uses his little Breakbeats kit and Arnie uses his larger Little Walter setup.
It looks like we are all set up and sound checked.
It's pretty cool that this venue turns off the sports behind the band and let us put up the band logo.
And there's a special guest in the house! A friend and fellow bass player is in the neighborhood and decided to stop by. I love it when Grant shows up. We like coming to each other's gigs.
Jason may look like he's relaxing but he's really laying it down.
Arnie likes to kick off the set with a George or Merle song.
John brought only two keyboards tonight but he has no trouble making all the sounds necessary.
Can you see Grant in this picture?
We play two long sets at this venue between 9:30pm and 12:30am. For the second set we had a guest artist. Anastasia, one of the servers and karaoke stars here, got up and sang a couple with us. She's quite good and has a nice stage presence.
She brought the house down and the rest of the night was pandemonium.
Everyone was having a great time.
All the girls like to shake their money maker when Jason does his rap medley.
When we were done the audience was very insistent about playing ONE MORE! Encore!
So we indulged the crowd and played a couple more, even though we don't get overtime.
Then the lights came up but a really good time was had by all.
Here's Anastasia, the star of the evening, taking a selfie with Arnie and I as Brandi does the photobomb.
We just had to let Brandi in on the selfie too.
Then it was time to turn into roadies and haul all this gear down to the parking lot.
It was a really fun evening. I'm glad you guys stopped by here to share it with me. I've got one more gig from the weekend that I will post up soon. Thanks for looking!
Thank you for your indulgence,
BassCliff
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