Your last gig

Larry

"Uncle Larry"
For all that gets discussed here, I thought it would be interesting to gain a little overview of the cross section of different gigs that are being played by everyone here.

I'll start:
Last night I had a gig in a new place in Woodbury NJ. (I missed you CCDirt!) An OK place, nice people owned it, gave us free food, but it was more of a classic rock bar (so we were told) and we do a mixed bag of stuff, a lot of which is not classic rock. We got some nice compliments from the people there, and they did dance. Made 100 USD. The owners loved us, but the regular crowd are the people who really matter, so we'll see if we get another gig.
 
My last gig was a private house party.
We played everything from Moondance to Stuck In The Middle With You.
We even did Wipeout and other surf tunes. Beatles, Elvis, and Country tunes. Some Blues also.
The people loved us. It was a mixed gathering from infants to grandparents.
We did make a bunch of mistakes. (First gig for this band)
We did get to loud. (Do Do Happens!)

The guitar player freaked out the next day and sent harsh emails that described every mistake. People responded to the emails. I tried to calm everyone down to no avail. No one is talking to the guitar player at the moment.

Here we go! The war will rage on until the guitar player quits the band. Two weeks will pass. He will apologize. We will take him back. Start all over again!

Thank God that I still have my other band, The String Band. The Hippies in that band always forget about the band fights in a few days!
A couple of fat ones, and all is good again!
 
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Last night gigged at the Slopeside Bar on Boyne Highlands. Its a ski resort and the club is right at the base of the hill. The crowd was ample, but lame. No one really seemed to care we were there, but I didn't care. We made our $$$ and are on to another ski-gig this afternoon at the the next mountain down the road.
 
I didn't have any gigs this weekend, but I have a gig as the house drummer in a bar every Tuesday for their "Jam Night".

I always play the first set, but after that I never know who is going to show up, or what is going to happen. Sometimes no drummers show up, and I end up playing the whole night. (We play from 8:30 to 12:30.) Other times I only play the first set, while I watch other drummers come up and bash my kit for the rest of the evening.

Last Tuesday, a whole band showed up with a left-handed drummer! So I had to rearrange my entire kit for the guy so he could play. Afterwards, it was really hard to get it back to the way it was before -- in fact, I am sure I will be making further adjustments to my set up next Tuesday. I use my DW kit for the gig, and if you don't count the high-hat and snare, the entire thing is mounted on two stands! I have one tom, a cowbell and two cymbals on one stand, and two toms and two cymbals on the other stand. With the memory locks the setup is very easy, but as soon as you start re-adjusting things it becomes real complicated.

Anyway, that was my gig.

Regards,

Alex

P.S. On a separate note, my beloved Cardinals got annihilated today in New Orleans. We are bumming out here in the desert!
 
Last night I had a gig in a new place in Woodbury NJ. (I missed you CCDirt!) .

Hey man, I was SO pissed that I missed it, I found some work in Cheltenham and ended up staying there until around 9:30. I pass the Southwood on my way home from there and when I got home I checked here to see the date you guys were playing. Well.... I got offtrack and by the time I remembered it was 11:30. I thought about stoppin by anyway but had to get up at 6:00 the next morning so ended up just goin to bed.

I m glad it went good, but I ve played there many times and absolutely HATE how the take-out beer is right there. You can be in the middle of a great song and then someone just walks over(stepping on cords or cutting between amps) to get a 6 pack... Its a cool place that always has a good sized crowd though, so that helps. I hope 2 Feet Pete comes back soon!
 
I got home from a gig about 90 minutes ago that was just sensational. I had never met the other musicians. We played such a diverse group of tunes, Big band things such as Mercy mercy, Headhunters tunes, straight small group jazz, funk, blues, pop... and we stopped on a dime. Man, we were tight!

And best of all, they just kept smiling at me....

I used a kick, snare, crash cymbal and hats and when it was over they kept asking me about all the equipment they thought I used, such as toms, rides etc. Man, just hats kick a crash and snare.

A good feeling.
 
Schnapps Bar - Tongariro, National Park Village, NZ.

$600, Acom. and food (had steak), open bar tab.

First 2 sets were lame, by the third and encore, folks were good and lubricated to get on the dance floor - finished the night at a couple Chilean girls house listening to traditional Chilean music and drinking wine...

Did our regular set which also includes Moondance, but goes as far as Move On Up, and I Like Dirt along with our originals. Think we sold 3-4 shirts and as many CD's. At most, 50 in the bar for the night. Kinda a slow night for us, but super fun none the less.

Third day in a row I've seen the sun come up. Party on Wayne.
 
In a converted church at a Canterbury University in the UK. A jazz trio with some more bluesy originals. Nice concert situation. Went well.
 
Here is one for you! One of the bands I play with is an original material(blues,rock,country,swing)normally very well received(this band does about 20 gigs/year). Very good musicians.
This club was slow..The owner asked us to leave so with half pay which we did.
He wanted to play the juke box instead of listening to original material. So we went out to eat and talked about the next gig. Hoping we won't get kicked out again!!!!!!
Denis
 
Here is one for you! One of the bands I play with is an original material(blues,rock,country,swing)normally very well received(this band does about 20 gigs/year). Very good musicians.
This club was slow..The owner asked us to leave so with half pay which we did.
He wanted to play the juke box instead of listening to original material. So we went out to eat and talked about the next gig. Hoping we won't get kicked out again!!!!!!
Denis

Wow... That would feel horrible. I had a gig yesterday afternoon and the crowd was asking for stuff we just couldn't play. This particular group I worked with yesterday always has different personnel and we never rehearse so it is tough to take requests.

But I would've told the owner that if he wanted me to quit half way through a set, he would still have to pay the agreed upon rate. You still had to lug all your gear to that place when you could've booked a gig somewhere else.
 
last gig was a weird one, local show put on by some teenage girl. pop punk band, a folk rock band, then us a thrash/death metal band. we headlined the show and of course we didnt get paid because said girl batted her pretty lil eye lashes at out bass player(he sets up our shows) and says " oh sorry we didnt make enough money, but thank you so much for playing". even though there was close to 400 people at 10 bucks a head.
but we blew the doors off that place made some friends gained some fans, sold a lot of merch, all things considered it was still a blast.
 
Hmm...funny timing. I don't know if you guys are aware that I am involved in a LOT of projects, most of them non-drum set for me, even though drums are my passion. So, my gig last night was singing in an a cappella quartet, doing songs ranging from 17th century love songs to Moondance to Beatles to Rare Earth...etc.

Man, I'm semi-embarrassed and kind of blushing. I wish I would have read this and posted after tonight's gig, where I'll be playing Djun Djun, Doumbek, and electric bass in an African/Middle Eastern hand-drumming ensemble. THAT sounds a little more interesting, at least, but hey--you wanted variety! :D
 
I played last night at an irish bar in austin, tx. We played outside on the patio, it was kinda cold but i've played in worse. It was REALLY packed last night. We had a sub fiddle player so we did alot of different songs, basically whatever songs he knew, and threw a in a few tunes he didn't know. Funnily enough his amp overheated towards the end of "devil went down to georgia" in the 2nd set. His amp would cut out every once and a while after that. Other than that we played really tight everything was in the pocket. We kept alot of tempos down just so the sub could follow us.

We had free food and drinks, but I can't stand pub food so I got some pizza down street from a sidewalk vendor.

got $240 bucks. They love us there, I'm back there next weekend.
 
Great Thread Larry!

I played yesterday on Peregian Beach (Sunshine Coast of Queensland). Open air gig, Beautiful Sunday afternoon, 600 people about half up and dancing. Every second Sunday people come to this park right on the beach, bring a picnic rug and some wine the kids run around (I had two sitting right behind me watching). It's a fantastic show, had a great time.

Next week is down at Yamba on Saturday in New South Wales (right on the beach) and then Byron Bay on the Sunday. Looking forward to it.

Got $150 for yesterday (only one set) and should be mustering up around $400 for next weekend.
 
Last gig was at McGann's in Boston Mass. We had maybe 40 people at the bar, around 10-15 getting into our 45 min set.

After the set, we were approached by a few strangers in the bar telling us we did a great job. Then this one guy started talking to our singer. After about 20 min, our singer comes over and tells us that guy is a record producer and would like to talk to us more in the future. I ended up talking to the producer towards the end of the night, and even if this goes nowhere, he had only great things to say about us, which was really cool =D

Oh ya, we made no money that night cause we brought only 1 guy in =P
 
Thanks for posting everyone. It doesn't matter if your last gig was last night or last year, I still want to hear more. This is vital information people!
 
ok. my last gig was about a month ago with my new blues/rock mostly cover band. it was at a bar where the owner is notoriously cranky and cheap, so i was a little apprehensive.

sure enough, when we did our sound check, he came up and growled at us to "turn it down". i was thinking oh boy, here we go. at that point i resolved to play at barely audible volume, which as you all know is not easy. we got through the first set ok with me tickling the drums and our lead guitarist at level "1" on his amp. the crowd was very enthusiastic. none of the regulars at the bar complained to the owner (always a sign that things are going well).

seeing how well things were going, i upped the volume a bit for the second set. the crowd was still loving it, and everyone had some beer in them so by then no one cared that it was getting a bit loud.

the third set was a full blown rocker, but by then most people had gone home for the evening. those who stayed were treated to a great show!

at the end of the night the owner was very happy with us and paid us the full amount we'd agreed on. the whole thing was a huge success!!

this friday we have another show at a downtown bar where a lot of hotshot bands play. i want us to make a good impression because i'm on good terms with the owner from other bands i've been in and i want to keep it that way.
 
Way to go with the volume metering there derriere man, very professional. It IS difficult playing soft w/ intensity. It's so much more satisfying when you don't have to stifle yourself.
 
I don't have anything to say about my last gig, but does anyone else here ever think about THE last gig? Like, what's the last gig you ever do before you die going to be like? Some bad sounding old guy reunion gig put on as a favor, or some great gig where everything goes right and you die in a car crash on your way home. How many of us will actually know it's our last gig ever when we play it? I think about that sometimes.
 
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