JW - First Show - 6/23/12

First show ever with this line-up, at the Horseshoe Pub in Honeybrook.  Overall results were encouraging.  We went over well, though the band members themselves agreed across the board that we made far too many mistakes.  Fortunately, most of those mistakes were minor enough that most of the audience probably didn't notice unless they were musicians and paying relatively close attention.  At this writing, I've listened to a recording of the first set, and few of the mistakes are noticable, which matches with the audience reaction.  I would attribute the mistakes to a combination of first show excitement and being thrown a bit by the different sound of playing somewhere other than our rehearsal space.  The good news is, the feel of most of that first set was incredible; the audience response makes sense.  I talked to some audience members who didn't know anyone in the band, and they were not only impressed, but particularly impressed to find out this was the first show for this particular group of people.

We did get into some trouble with management for being too loud.  It's a problem that can be fixed, but a matter of some concern because it's not new.  We practice relatively loudly and we know it.  Some of that is because we practice in a confined space, so no surprise there.

Hearing everybody else was also a problem for all of us, and may have contributed, if not flat out caused, some of our mistakes.  Some of that is that almost all that comes through the PA is the vocals and some minor drum miking.  Andy and I are on opposite sides of the stage and each of us couldn't hear the other at all, but we managed via visual cues and the other musicians as reference.  Each of us is hearing a completely different mix.  Lead vocals sounded fine; backing vocals were too quiet in general.

Some things about audiences are a lot different since the last time I played anywhere in public.  When audience members become bored, the cell phones come out and the texting begins.  If it happens with enough people, it's actually a very striking image from the stage.  It only happened a few times, but it was enough to observe the phenomenon.  And it happens on the opposite side of the audience enjoyment spectrum, too.  When things sound good, the camera phones come out.

Audiences are also generally less reactive than they were in the '80's.  It's not that this band wasn't going over; I've witnessed this same thing while going to see other bands, most of which are very successful.  I have no idea why this has changed, but it definitely has.

Same thing with how late people stay.  In the '80's, the bulk of your audience didn't even show up until at least half an hour into your show, and usually it was more like an hour.  You lost a certain percentage after the third set of four, and while people would often drift out over the course of the last set, you still had a fair audience by the end.  Most current bands seem to lose most of their audience after the third set, and play to a largely empty house by the end.  Again, seeing other bands, this isn't just us.  My theory is that most of the audience for live music is getting older and simply doesn't want to stay up that late.  One of the local venues has bands starting at 7 or 8 PM and playing until midnight, which I think is a great adaptation.  I've got to go there some time to see how that plays out.

Overall, a good start.  Hopefully we'll be booked to return and improve on it.

JW - 6/17/2012

This session was essentially a dress rehearsal for the show next week, going through all four planned sets.  The result?  Not perfect by a long shot, but satisfactory.  Consensus seemed to be that, while we could do better, we would be okay if we play as well as this the day of the show.

One of the things we learned is that we have far more material than we need.  Good problem to have.  And we feel good enough about everything on the list that we were having a hard time deciding what to cut.  Again, good problem to have.

The vocals slipped from last session.  Not surprising in light of vocals not being the focus of this session, and we really didn't want to spend a lot of time on it just then.  I was having a very hard time hearing Keith's voice again, which makes it difficult to hear what I can do to blend well.  We'll sound good enough for the show, but I'd like to shore up this area afterward.

That first performance is a significant threshold, and we know we have more than enough material to play out now.  The next step, from my point of view, would be to get the vocal mix up to the quality level of everything else, and bump the amount of material up to six sets.  Why six?  So we can play our 20 or so best songs each performance and still be able to shake up the remaining list.  That should keep the audience (not to mention us) more interested than if we were beating the same 40 songs to death.  Those things are both easily accomplished with a little practice time.  The vocals are just a matter of reinforcing what we did in the vocal practice.  And we have quite a bit of material we sidelined to focus on the four sets we were going to need for our first show, so we wouldn't have to add much to reach six sets total.

The thing I really want to see is where we go from there.  How large of a list are we going to maintain?  What, if anything, will we choose to drop?  Will we add songs that are more current (or significantly different in some way) than what we're already playing?

We've got a good band here.  We won't know just how good until we get it in front of an audience, and that's about to happen.

JW - 6/10/12 - The Vocal Session

The vocal-focused session was exactly what I'd hoped for.  We covered the whole list (quickly, but it was the whole list), going over parts that needed vocal work along the way.  Singer Bill took the lead in figuring out the required notes, and we quickly figured out who needed to sing which parts, rather than winging it as we have in the past.  Bottom line was a huge improvement in the quality of the group vocals.  The hard part is going to be remembering all those parts for the upcoming show.

I don't think anyone was happier about it than bandleader Dale, the one guy who wasn't singing, but I suppose he was in the best position to objectively hear what we were all doing.

JW - 6/3/2012

Blew through modified versions of the planned third and fourth sets without too many problems, so not much to say on that front.

In preparation for our first show with this line-up, we had the full PA set up.  It was nice, easier to hear everything than usual, and didn't sound any louder than usual to me.

It was also my first practice with my new, significantly more powerful, Gallien Krueger amplifier, as well as bringing my wireless set up.  Left the pedal board at home, as I'm getting everything I need from the amp or the compression effect that the wireless tends to have.

For next week's session, we'll be focusing hard on vocals, which is a more-than-welcome development from my perspective.  Andy will be out of town next weekend, so a full band practice is out, and everybody still wanted to fit as much working time in as we can before our first show.  One of my old bands (Mirage) was much more vocally oriented than this group, and we did two or three pure vocal sessions in the year-and-a-half or so that I was with them, with substantial benefits.  Considering that JW isn't vocally oriented in the first place, it shouldn't take too much doing to step up our game in that regard by putting some focus on the subject.

Andy made reference at one point to the six years they'd been together, and Dale had once said he and Keith had been working together for about ten years.  Now I've got some idea as to how long this group has actually been around.

We talked a bit about the place we're going to play and the set up needed for it.  Sounds as though we're going to be bringing a lot of lighting for a such a small place.  While the stage is small, it's also high enough off the ground that you don't want to fall off, and with the lighting, it's hard enough to see that Andy actually did fall off at a previous performance there.  Keith also referred to changing shirts at least every set because it gets so damn hot with the lights, so I'll want to make sure I have clothes in reserve as well.

I've been reading up on stage presentation due to my excitement about getting out in front of an audience again, and have learned some useful things in the course of it, but I still don't feel as though it's likely that any suggestions I have will be given a lot of consideration by the group, so I'll have to bring what I can to the table and make the best of it, hoping to influence by example.