General Music Chat

Oh yeah!! Well....than...ummmm...I'll show you!! So Am I!!

Its around 5:30 am when I started this.

Some people ask what really goes on in a kick ass rock n roll band. Well for this guitarist a lot musically. Im an early bird type of person, Ive probably allready been at work for 2-3 hours before most of you on here even think about getting up. I was up at 4am my time getting things ready for a racing trip my son is taking this weekend.

He leaves out about 6:30 am. Then am I going back to bed, hell no. I set up the amp system I am using this weekend in the mainroom of the house. Heres a picture.



Lately I havent been using the big amps, Ive been using the smaller combo. But tonight is a special reunion show in one of our old strongholds. We expect a packed house around 275 people at this venue, hopefully we can pack a few more, but anything less than 250 and I will be dissapointed. Why, well we work for the door. On our little club tour most clubs let us charge $7.50, he squeezed me back to $5, That difference will make a $625 difference to my bottom line, but what do you do stand on principles and cancel. It would just make our band look bad. 250 people at $5 equals $1250 plus I expect 3-400 in merchandise sales. These are real numbers. Ive got roughly $200 in advertising, $40 to the door person, %10 merch sales goes to the merch person, then I guarentee our sound/light guy $100 minimum a show. We should net after expenses around $1470 for a 4 hour show.

Enough about money, once my son leaves the house and I have it all alone. I will start practicing. I will probably run thru every song we will play tonight 2-3 times the ones that I struggle with like Bulls On Parade I may play 10 times or more. I will play at gig volume making sure all my effects settings are good to go. I will make sure when Im done that I have fresh batteries in my wireless. All in all I will probably play 5-6 hours today before our gig tonight. Let me make it clear I know these songs probably better than the original artist so why do I do this? My goal when I play is to make it look effortless, so I can grin and pay attention to the crowd and give them their moneys worth. Honestly I am good
enough to wing it with a lot of sit in band situations. But for my own band it has to be kickass.

A lot of you see Crips post on here, Im sure he does something similiar. If you want to be a true badd ass do your homework before the gig. Know your material backwards forwards and sideways.

Tonight we have a filmmaker coming in to record the show. Will I throw video up for you guys to see, only if it meets my standards, If it looks goofy in anyway, you will never see it. Im a control freak and all I want to show people is us kicking ass. Why am I sharing this? Cause too many people put up inferior recordings of themselves that just suck. If your recordings or videos dont give you a woody when you listen and see them why share it with the world. Some talent scout or someone who could help your career might see it and dismiss you before you even get a chance to show them what you are really all about.

I will leave the house around 4pm to go setup at 5pm. I try to leave no stones unturned. Weve been bulletining myspace, we had a writeup in the local paper, I have given free passes to people who probably wouldnt other wise come. Ive given passes to media personal in the area. Ive given free passes to some goodlooking women who I want to see there.

Ive got one question? what have you been doin lately to further your musical career? Im a weekend waarior myself, 2 jobs, divorced with 2 kids, a house to care for, some parent issues that take a lot of time. Serve on the board of a couple of companies and I make time to do all this. DONT make excuses use your time to either get better practicing, or get out of the house and network with other musicians, I did this monday and thursday night along with making sure my kids got dinner and clean clothes for school. If I can do this then you can at least be a kickass musician on whatever instrument you play. DONT make excuses just DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Crip I swear our bands would go great in a double bill somewhere!

I see you are up too!!! It just proves the point of my post.

Your my hero on here dude.

Kick some ass up that way tonight and I ll kick some down my way!!!

JW,
I would have awakened sooner this morning to prepare for a large concrete pour in our new house, but we may call it due to rain. I fired up the ol' 'puter to check out the weather forecast and some how ended up on Bandmix.

I know what you mean about pre- gig adrenalin rush. I usually end up untangling cables and reorganizing stuff that was hastily stashed at the previous gig.

Motocross is the most athletic of all motorsport in my opinion. Good luck to your son.

Since you're gonna be packin' the big guns at the gig this evening,...
ROCK 'EM HARD
(I believe I'm goin' back to bed now, myself)
Howlin'

Right now, I'm preparing 3 set lists to print out for each member of the band... also gonna change strings on the strat and will use 2 Les Pauls for the night...different axe for each set... I got all my equipment loaded upstairs out of my studio last night so all I hafta do is throw it all in the wife's Jeep when she gets home today! You've got quite an awesome set up there JW mine is basically very simple but it definitely does the trick!

Line 6 150 watt Combo w/ 2 12" celestions attached to a Line 6 Stereo cabinet w/ 4 12" celestions, which breaks down the wattage to 75 on the right and left and one pedal to just change my preset channels with a wah pedal built in!

Simple but very effective whether I'm mic'd through the PA or not!

Guitar rockers of the likes of J.W. and Crypt are indeed the "heart of rock and roll"! (That's why it's still beating)

Ain't no strings attached on me (although I've been known to replace a few keys from time to time)

Rock on, chillin'
Howlin'

Is that green Ibanez stomp box I see a SD9 or TS9? Looks like the right color for a SD 9, that's the pedal on my board too. Can't beat it. Then the Morley pedal...I don't see switches so it must be either straight wah or volume. Need to get mine fixed, it's a power wah, I have one of the old silver box power wah pedals too but will have to completely rebuild the circuit board to fix it, too much abuse years ago when I was playing fill in gigs. Contact strips have started to separate from the board, it'll have to be totally rebuilt.

I'm usually up that early too, slept in this morning, it was 6:30 when I turned on the coffee pot. I don't go to quite the extent you do to get ready, but I do test all amps and pedals, make sure the wireless has a new battery (which isn't actually put in the box till set up time) change strings on every guitar I plan to bring, usually 8, and plug in to the Champ and put in a couple of hours of practice and string stretching. I don't practice the songs I plan to play onstage, I stop that 2 days before the gig, anything after that is wasted time, if you don't have it down already you never will. Practicing the day of a gig or the day before doesn't stay with you the way it does with earlier rehearsals. Our high school band director didn't even talk to us about the songs we were going to play at a concert or festival, for that reason. The day before we would play something entirely different.

I also make sure I have extra strings, all cables are in good shape and a couple of extras, (quite often spend an hour or so soldering the day of a gig or the day before) slide bars and picks in a gig bag, at least one roll of duct tape, usually 2, stage clothes in a garment bag, batteries in the camera, soldering kit put in its bag and ready, fresh copies of the song list printed, all gear and amps loaded into the Jeep or a trailer, and usually try to get a short nap around 2PM, depending on when need to pull out...The cable fixing is something I try to never forget, I've had to solder cables together 10 minutes before starting time, these days if I have to solder a cable it belongs to someone else, mine are ready. I've told band members to get all bad cables to me and 3/4 of the time they don't, then gig night we have an hour to go at best and someone has a bad cable...GRRRRR

One thing I've found that helps a lot that not many bands do, is color coding your cables with electrical tape. Mine get a ring of red tape around each end, no more disputes over whose cable that is. My mic stands get it too. You can get red, green, yellow, blue, white orange and probably a couple of others, those are just the ones I have on hand right now. No wait, I'm out of blue...

I guess my biggest shortcoming is the networking part, right now lack of income prevents much running around with gas over $3.50, but I've never been much good at meeting people, being a lifelong loner. I try, but don't get out nearly enough to make much of a difference. I meet someone, say hi and have no idea what to say next, and I'm very uncomfortable around them, very self conscious. Feel like a fool really...and I've tried to get over that for many years...especially since I know I really need to get out there and meet the local musicians. Oh well, I keep trying but probably not as much as I should.

And what are you doing disgracing a good Gibson with a sticker? Shame on you...I never put anything but a soft cloth on my guitars and new strings. I avoid buying guitars with stickers, you find new looking spots under them and the faded finish around them sticks out once they are removed. I am thinking about some Van Halen stripes on one old Tele copy, not an all out Eddie job but more like a couple of "racing stripes" across part of it. That would be electrical tape to check the appearance, then masked off and painted so it's permanent. And that's ONLY on an off brand Korean or Chinese el cheapo...never on my better guitars...

Damn...too long winded again...somebody tell me to shut up now and then...

One more post and then more practice. Ive been nailing that scratching solo on Bulls On Parade pretty good, maybe a couple of more.

Crip my live sound is mostly a POD PRO. I run a signal in it and send the signal to the pa. It is set to a JCM 800 setting that I tweaked for our pa system. The POD PRO also has a direct line thru which I put into my pedal board. Thats a big amp, but I have a Weber Mass power soak on it and I have it throttled down to bedroom levels. Its mainly for looks but with the Power Soak I have it cranked to where it sounds like it should. I have an SM 57 shoved into the grill of it. Our soundman has control of the POD signal and the mic feed and blends them. I switch channels on the Mesa for leads, clean and grind. On stage I use the wedges to hear what Im doing. I used to crank the sh*t out of the amp, but Ive learned a few tricks. Being loud does not make tone. So Crip I imagine that your Line 6, you and I are probably using basically the same sound. Im sure at some point you had or emulated the sound of a Marshall JCM 800 cause most of the songs that you play used one on the recordings.

Im with you, I just wrote out 3 setlist for tonight, We do a 30 min warmup soundcheck with around 6 songs. I do this cause the club expects us to start at 9pm. This fulfills my obligation to him. This guy ran another club that we played 12 yrs ago and fired us for being too loud. He said we would never work for him again, never say never. Our bass player reminded me of this when we were in there the other night. I stay in touch with anyone we are doing gigs with, maybe just a phone call out of the blue and say thanks for using us. Remember you are essentially a whore when you play for money and you have to please your employer the club first then the crowd next. If you cant keep the club owner happy you may never get the chance to play for the crowd. This is important dont burn bridges, like this club owner if you hang around music long enough you will run into the same people. Dont piss them off.

After our soundcheck our bassist and I put together some canned music to play, Its all originals by members of the band.

10 pm we will come out and do a hard set for an hour. Ive written up a list of 15 songs that I think will work with 3 extras in case we have to change course. Our soundman will have the list, we never change the last song of the set. The soundman knows when that song is done, kill the stage lighting and start the canned music.

For this gig at 11 we will play disco music. My hard rock buddies say I cant believe you are doing that. Well women love to dance to disco music and we dont play it so we just turn the place into a disco for an hour. It also cuts down the time we have to play. We have our Aint Yo Mama "Hot Mama" contest during this period. Why cause it keeps the crowd with us and involves them. Anything you can do to include the crowd is a positive. After the contest we will play more dance music. We have some long songs on this part so if we need to cut 4-8 minutes we have that option.

At 12 pm we will come out with RATMs Bulls On Parade and go from there. This set will have some Skynyrd, Black Crows even Doors music so we can keep the crowd dancing. Late night I feel a band should focus on keeping the crowd on the dance floor. Why they may just get up and leave. Your job in a club is to keep people in the room for the whole night. Its really not to play YYZ or some pet songs that you love. We play our pet songs like Spoonman and the couple of originals we are doing in the 10 pm set, the last set is for the crowd and we do take request, just write it on the back of a hundred dollar bill and we will play it.

Im out of here for the weekend. I will get home around 4am hopefully not alone and then leave out around 9-10 am to Kentucky for my sons MX race, where i will probably take 2-300 pictures for him and a MX website I am involved with.

As I said earlier, make a plan to get out and play your music. Oh yeah I found a heck of a deal on getting CDs duplicated really cheap, so weve decided that we will just give them away at the gigs so people can hear us and hopefully spread it on to others. The least a band should have is some kind of CD with a good representation of their music. either cover or original. Dont hold your music sacred like its worth a lot of money or something, cause in reality its not. Give it to everyone you can and try to sell other merchandis, like tshirts, beer huggies are cheap and great ideas sunglasses. But dont hold onto your music, cause if you arent heard what difference does it make? I know lots of guys who have 1000s of cds in their closet cause they thought people should pay up for thier music. The bands broke up and now they have all this worthless music sitting in the closet.

I'll post up pictures the first of the week

Ya have a great weekend.

Pete one more and Im out of here.

Heres a picture of my board all my cords and incidentals are in there. There is a flash light, screw drivers, plyers for cutting strings, extra strings and batteries in my board at each gig. I ussually have a cable in place in case my wireless acts up, which it does on occasion.



Oh yeah I took the black pedal out which is a Rocktron Black Jack booster distortion pedal, its just a nasty bastard that ive never been able to tame, comes in handy for Metallica type songs. It just bites but makes a lot of noise when engaged and not in use. I took it off the board cause my combo control pedal is a lot bigger then the one in the picture. The above picture of the amps look on top of the Roadster and you can see the pedal.

I get up early and practice cause your mind is fresh, today I will probably take a nap after lunch thats when I ussually get sleepy.

The tube screamer is a TS 9 early 80s, its just a great booster for solos. Ive got my sound dialed pretty good so the crowd really doesnt know when I use it. I just like to step on stuff. Im competent enough on guitar that I could throw the pedal board awya and it wouldnt make any difference to anyone but me. My main tone shapping tool is the wah wah.

Ive always played the day of a gig, I think anytime you play you move forward, if this was an out of town show I would already be packed but its only 45 minutes from the house. I haul everything so around noon I will load everything and take it easy this afternoon. Ive got a really good dolly for cabs and such, and all my big cabs are on wheels. I also like to move the equipment cause its like lifting weights which I dont do much of anymore. I try to make everything in my life positive, do I really like to load gear, NO, but if I think in terms of keeping care of myself its a great thing, just make sure you are lifting correctly cause you can hurt yourself. At the gigs we have all the help we want and all I do is point and say put this in first. Im kinda private and dont want many people around my house so Ive learned to do the loading and unloading myself. I have a 6 x 12 foot trailer with a ramp door so cabs can roll out of it and dont have to be picked up.

C-Ya

I,ve been getting up 0430 - 0500 ish since I was an oilfield worker at about 15 years old. If you were not on the job by 0545, you had no job. Now a days I like it about 0600, as not to disturb my wife. She works VERY hard to support my lazy ass. (if you can call a man that works 6-7 days a week lazy)

JW, just love the pic, especially the duct tape.
Working out logistics for a gig and a trip to the studio in October.
ROCK ON MAN !!!

I played last night at the Canyon Club inside The Four Queens.



There was about 500-600 people. KILLER sound system. Fat gig! All went well. I winged it a few times, but nobody noticed at all. Tore s**t up dude! It was only my 4th time ever playing music with the band (2-practices/2-shows).

JW, when you get my "pic" doctored, are you going to show me it or what?

Just thought of that while looking at the really cute chick up there.

Gets my vote for "Sticky"/"Best of Bandmix."

Excellent, excellent post, and follow-up comments!

And... control freak? You are just a perfectionist. Me too. I think MOST successful artists probably are.

My band had a great gig, weekend before last, but we played a bike rally near Augusta yesterday and some major f*ck-ups! I was not happy. We played after 3 or or 4 other acts, and before the last two acts, which were "D.B. Bryant" and "SwampDaWamp" which are both successful regional acts that tour all year. Both drove in to the gig, just before stage time, in nice large buses. That's where I need to be in 1 or 2 years.

They had a huge covered stage, plenty of wattage, 4 giant projection screens, with a camera-man filming the acts while we played and projecting us on the screens.

Two radio stations were there, with one broadcasting live from the event. We got press kits to both stations and schmoozed them a little before we went on.

The venue didn't really know much about us, so we agreed to a small "getting to know us" fee for the gig. These large bike rallies are worth a smaller fee for the first gig, cause biker events just always seem to lead to alot of bookings if they like you. Both from that venue, as well as other bikers approaching us who have something to do with booking for OTHER bike rallies and similar events. Not to mention merch. Which can be really good at biker rallies.

We accepted $500 bucks, 3 hotel rooms and food.

We f*cked up a little more than my comfort zone, but apparently the crowd was unaware of this, and dug our music. The venue booked us for next year, the minute we got off stage. They are paying us $1200 and rooms and food, for next year's rally. The radio stations dug us too, and filmed us and took lots of pics. Some other gig opportunities came through this event as well.

We still play for $600 or even $500 if we are not using our own PA and the gig is local, but we are getting more gigs now, between $1000 and $1500, which is where we want to be. We are building up toward a grand a set, which is our goal, and brings us to the next level.

So, I'm happy for the most part, but I DO NOT LIKE the kind of f*ck-ups we did this last gig. I told the band we are gonna have to practice more. Period. I told them, that every band has off-nights, but that our off-nights needed to still be so good, that we are better than most bands around us.

Only repetition and time-in will get you there. You play the songs till you are sick of them, but you can then play it in your sleep almost.

I take that VERY seriously, cause as I always remind the band, we NEVER know who is gonna be in that crowd. I don't care what venue it is, how small or remote, you NEVER EVER know for sure, who may be in that crowd, and you don't always get a second chance to prove yourself to the same person.

Alot of us veterans here are cut from the same cloth, hell, even some of the younger players here already have an honorable work ethic.

I'm happy to see that.

Great post and advice. I'd be thrilled as hell to do a concert with alot of you guys, and bet your ass, whenever the opportunity arises, I can't wait to see your bands live sometime.

There is no real substitute for hard work. It's just that simple.

Kudos again!