Arnie Newman's Country Club Band had another mid-week gig in one of our regular small, but fun, rooms. Stillwater Spirits and Sounds is just off PCH in Dana Point. We sort of used this gig as a paid rehearsal so Arnie could work on his Merle show. This crowd likes the vintage country. It was still pretty wet when I left work to head into South OC.
And the freeway was a bit crowded, even the onramp. Yes, we have lights at the freeway onramps.
It took an hour and a half to make my one hour commute but I eventually arrived at the venue.
My setup consisted of hanging my bass on the wall and plugging into the house amp, a nice little Rumble 500.
Our soundguy, Paul, was in a good mood tonight. He works hard to make the room sound good. He geeked the camera when he saw me taking pictures.
The acrylic drum set looks pretty in the lights behind the acrylic shield.
I thought I would take in the view from the drum throne. It's got to be weird playing in a cage like that.
Arnie brought his big pedal board and his little Deluxe Reverb amp.
We are just about all set up behind the curtain so I stepped over to the bar for a beverage. I ran into our friend Gladys.
Then Angie pulls a pint of Moose Drool for me. Terrible name but a tasty brew.
It looks like Johnny's ready to put on the show.
Drummer Dave gives me a wave just before the curtain opens.
Arnie checks his tuning. He tunes because he cares.
Randy is on stage left with me. Usually he's on the other side but on this stage it just gives us a little more room.
It's a pretty good crowd tonight despite the rain.
Here's the poster with all the entertainment for the month. It's a smorgasbord of music.
Here's a look at the stage while we're on a break. They used to close the curtains on the breaks but that just seemed superfluous.
It's the last set, we've had a couple, and we're really having fun now.
It's a fairly short night, playing 7-10pm. Randy schleps his gear from the stage door out the back to the parking lot behind me.
You can tell it's Christmastime in Southern California because people put lights on their palm trees.
It had pretty much stopped raining by the time we left. That made for a much nicer commute home. Tonight Arnie ran through some of his new-to-him Merle songs he's working up for the tribute show. They sounded like the first time. Hopefully we'll get to run them some more so he can get comfortable with them. Otherwise a good time was had by all.
Next we're going down to the the OC beach area again to play at the Old Crow Smokehouse in Huntington Beach. It's a loud room and Jason will be back tonight so it's a good thing we'll be using our IEMs here, for the first time. We've been having inconvenient little issues with the IEM rack so a tech from Shure is coming out to the gig tonight to go over the system and make sure it works the way it's supposed to. It's starting to rain again so I'm hoping that causes no issues with my commute. Wish me luck. Thanks for looking!
Thank you for your indulgence,
BassCliff
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