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Ive got a couple of pictures of our gig sat night.

This was a private party held at a Mooselodge. Weve played here a couple of times before and they have a small stage, the drum riser is so small that our drummer in the past couldnt set up all his stands, and when he plays his elbows are hitting the back wall.

When we went to set up, he was complaining and wanted to set up on the floor to one side, I looked at the place, which has this huge dance floor, and joked hell lets just set you up front for a change, I had to convince him but thats what we did.

Equipment wise I set one monitor in front of the drums, just a small area for our singer to get in front. The monitors that I ussually put on the floor for our bassist and myself, I put them on speaker poles on the sides, making some side fills. I put one monitor on the floor for our drummer, and I brought a 5th monitor and put right behind our drummer pointing back to the normal stage.

By doing this we were able to basically play all the way around our drummer.

As far as my amp setup, I used 2 4x12 cabs, placing one on my side of the stage and one on our bassists side, we put the bass amp kinda in the middle. By doing this when I went to the bassist side I had a cab to hear myself in.

My bassist and I lined up directly on either side of the drums, I had my amp a good 10 ft behind me on the stage, when I was at my pedal board I was getting a really good sound from my amp, ussually we are so close that I cant hardly hear my amp.

Our singer was concerned about the side fills, he thought they would encourage feedback, I just said trust me on this. In the end anywhere I stood I could hear everything clear as a bell, no dead spots. In fact our singer really loved the side fills at head level, he said man Ive never heard my vocals that well before.

I say this about the side fills, cause some of you, if your monitors have speaker pole inserts might be able to do this.

Another cool thing was that having my pedal board side by side with the drums when I was playing there I could really see and feel what the drums were doing.

The picture Im putting here will kinda give you the lay out, but in the end it was one of the smoothest sounding gigs weve done, the stage sound was excellent, and we ussually sound great anyway, but it was better than normal.

Sharing this, if you get into a wierd situation staging wise, dont be afraid to step out of the normal setup sometime, in fact we may start doing this more, and getting our drummer more out front when the room will allow it.

In this picture you see our singer singing behind the drummer, he has his foot up on the 5th monitor that I set up for him, there, when ever I got on the drum riser I could hear his vocals crystal clear with this monitor.

The setup kinda gave our drummer the spotlight for a change, instead of being back in a corner.

Heres one of me and our bassist cutting up behind the drummer, kinda weird to begin with but it really grew on us.

I didnt get any pictures but we were behind our drummer doing rabbit ears and all sorts of stuff all night long.

We really enjoy playing with each other and love to have a good time, so it was good to have our drummer where we could really see what he was doing all night.

Heres our singer Kevin playing the harp on Roadhouse Blues, he always gets the crowd to sing the line "Well I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer!" We do 4 or 5 times til the crowd really gets in sync with it!

My wife didnt get any pictures from behind us, that would have been really cool, this gig we had about 250 people and by the middle of the second set most of them were on the dance floor just right in our faces. I wish she had gotten a couple like, I know someone on here mentioned pictures from the back, maybe next time.

Our last few gigs have been slightly off crowdwise, I mean they were responsive and yelling and stuff, but didnt seem to want to dance, at this gig I think there were more people dancing than sitting which was really cool for a change. After the gig, our bass player Andy said "Man, we needed this gig!", we always get paid well but sometimes gigs feel like a paid practice. This gig the pay was good and the crowd was just awesome!

Heres a shot from my side, Im kicking some pedal in and out at the moment or maybe my wah wah, but this shot shows how close beside our drummer Brooks I was.

I told him it reminded me of those old gigs we did back in the day on trailers that were to narrow to line up in front of him. It was just cool being able to see exactly what he does all night, cause at most gigs I dont get much chance to do that, we all agreed that we felt musically that we played even tighter than normal because we were in such close contact.

Like I said earlier dont be afraid sometimes to sit up a bit different, if the room doesnt work for your normal setup.

Damn, we talked about playing Wipe Out and forgot once we got rockin! It would have been a great setup to do that and feature Brooks more!

One more with all three of us behind our drummer.

Overall sound was good, when I walked the room it sounded really really good, I think the only thing I did all night was turn the gain up on our singer a couple of times to make sure he was on top of the mix.

It took about an hour and half to setup, recently wever been doing it in around an hour, but when we hooked the monitors up two of them were plugged in out of phase, it sounded like a cable was dying cause the sound would go up and down between these two mointors, took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on, but I caught it and hooked them back into phase and they sounded great.

I ussually only hook two monitors up to each other, I did bring a 5th monitor so one of my runs had 3 monitors in line. I wondered if it would work or hurt the speakers, but I guess thats a good thing about being severly over powered you dont have to really push any amps too hard.

This was a bigger than normal room, but I only pushed the PA front speakers to about 55%, having all that extra headroom to spare made for a great mix and whereever our singer roamed with his wireless there was no feedback.

Im sure people see all the equipment in my pictures and think these guys must be loud as f**k, but thats not the cause, we go for a smooth clean sound at a reasonable level. For this night you could stand anywhere on stage or anywhere in the room and hear every instrument clear as a bell.

I say all of this, cause some of you may not do a lot of live gigs, My advice would be to never push your equipment to the max, find a nice comfortable setting, if someone is too loud then make them turn down to a reasonable level. Make sure that you have your vocals above everything, not in the back ground.

And my last advice that i used to give our soundman that he never seemed to understand. "Once you get it set, leave it the f**k alone!"

Great post JW, you guys look like
rockstars, (there all old guys nowadays)lol

Was there one song that the band and the
audience all meshed on.

I always picture you with a wig.


Neanderpaul's right, rock n roll, ah hell
all of music needs costumes, it's a show

Lynard a lof of my friends call me rockstar, I guess Im the closest most of them will get to know.

As far as songs, we started at 8 pm and most people werent there, so the first set wasnt that great, they were just getting warmed up.

But from half way thru the second set, there was always someone on the dance floor.

Its funny, caus when we play Im ussually the guy that starts most songs or calls them out, but most of these people have seen us so many times that the other night they would just say play this or that.

Of course we did the typical Skynyrd, Sweet Home, 3 Steps, Simple Man, and oh yeah someone asked for Needle and the Spoon which we havent played in forever so we played it, then there was Crazy Train, Bulls On Parade, Rock N Roll All Night, Walk This Way, Sweet Emotion, Man in The Box, Alive, Suck my Kiss, Give it Away, So Hott, Even Flow, Wicked Garden, Plush, Cant Get Enough, Tush, Lagrange, Jesus Just Left Chicago/Waten For the Bus, Beer Drinkers and Hellraisers, Control, Spoonman, Livin After Midnite, Another Thing Comin, Dr Jack (original), Turn Around (original) both originals were by request. Roadhouse, Hard to Handle, Smokin In The Boys Room, Shout It Out Loud, Panama, You Really Got Me, Aint Talking Bout Love, Runnin With The Devil, Paranoid, The Funk which is a medley posted on here, The Joker, Sat Night Special, now Im getting a braind fart and cant remember what else, but Im sure there was more.

We played a 1 hour first set, one hour second set, and then the third set was an hr and 45 minutes, so we covered a bunch of ground.

I had been woodshedding on leads the last few weeks, and I really went way over the top on some things, some worked some not so good, but it was all fun. In the past Ive always had kinda set solo patterns I play on songs, doesnt mean they are note for note, but sat night I threw in a bunch of harmonics, taps, legato runs, and sometimes in my mind I just make a silly pattern on the neck and trace it as a solo, these can get really wide and interesting at times. I just try to take my solo time as my time and entertain myself, as far as rythyms during vocals and such I stay very close to the book, but give me a break and who knows where I will wind up. The cool thing the other night was with our drummer right by me, we were doing all these wierd stops and starts and tempo changes that normally we dont do.

One song in particular cant remember what it was, but we just stopped, for a long pause, our singer said over the mic what the hell did the pa blow, and then we went right back in on cue together.

Our band has played together so long that we just do these things, in fact I feel like most of our f**k sound better than most peoples tryed and true songs, cause they feel fresh.

Oh lynard on song I forgot was Sandman by Metallica, I really felt like the solo I did sat night on it was about the best Ive ever done, and no it wasnt note for note, just my interpretation, Our singer was even calling my name after that one the Master On Guitar of something, hell Im always retuning after bending the crap out of my guitars so I dont even know what title he gave me this time.

After the gig I did have a couple of people ask if I would give them guitar lessons so who knows that might be in my future on some level.

And Lynard I hate to admit it but we even played Smoke On The Water the other night late in the night and the people were dancing and digging it.

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap and TNT were played too, now that I think about it, if I keep on I will give you a whole song list!

But oddly we didnt do one Zep song, ussually do 2-3 of those, but noone even requested it this time, go figure.

The only song we didnt do that was requested was Killing In The Name, but we had a very mixed crowd and I told our singer that i didnt think they would appreciate us yelling f**k You all night.

WoW, cool Show JW.. looks like you guys had a ball.

I am pissed I missed "Dirty Deeds + TNT" for sure...

Yea Capt it seemed like we played forever the other night, we did Whole Lotta Rosey also.

Ive really been jonesin to work up Let There Be Rock, thats one of my favs by them, we only do the Bon Scott stuff, used to do You Shool Me and Back In Black but our singer just likes the Scott stuff, and he does it pretty well, especially with me and the bass player backing him up. I have to put on my mean english accent for that stuff, LOL!

People really love AC/DC for some reason, I guess the good ole basic rock stuff just moves folks.

I still dont have a video or audio of the AC/DC tunes, we plan to record some and I will try to get one or two in.

I actually had a friend who was supposed to come and take some video but he was a no show! LOL

Oh yeah Capt we always have a big ole time.

My two big flubs were Panama, we havent played it live before or even practiced it, and when I went to do the little harmonic stuff I wasnt paying attention and just had my hand in the wrong place, duh, I had been nailing it over and over at home, but I just blew that little part.

Then when we start 3 Steps, I was moving around and started off in the key of C, somehow we morphed it into the key of D without anyone really noticeing, my bass player just cracks up when I f**k up, cause Im normally just a machine when it comes to rythyms and solo guitar parts like that, I guess Im getting old man.

But hell its only rock n roll and I like it!

That's what it's all about JW. Banging it onstage with a good crowd!

Way cool


wait!

huh


No Red Solo Cup