First gig down
Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 8:53 am
As some of you already know I started playing with a band after many, many years absence of playing live. We have been rehearsing every Monday since October 20th. It's basically a newly formed band however all the other musicians came from bands that are recently defunct. We are a variety band and focus mainly on 70-90's Rock along with some Country and some Blues. I sent a report to Mel in a PM but thought I'd share this part of the story with the forum.
"Our first gig as a new band was Saturday evening, 8-midnight. It was a 'rockin' party. It was a crowd aged from 25-50, so our 70's and 80's rock list was dominate. On our first set, my fingers felt like they had contact glue on them and I gripped the neck like it was a baseball bat. I was playing the notes but they were lifeless. As expected the next set was a lot better and it continued to improve until the end. I'm glad to have the first one under my belt.
Rob busted a string on one of his songs where he does vocal and takes the first lead. I didn't know he had popped a string and there was a pause when he was suppose to take the lead. Fortunately I've learned most all the lead parts to all our songs regardless of who's playing lead, so I immediately recognize something wrong and covered for him to the end of the song. While he changed the string (he didn't bring an extra guitar, lesson learned) I cooked off with Jimi Hendrix, Red House. Definitely a good time. Plus I got to see our $3000 investment in mixer board, power amp, four floor monitors, and two twin 15" JBL speaker columns in action."
BTW, the name of our band is Old 99. That name was taken from the main route through central Bakersfield, Highway 99, before interstate 5 bypassed the city. Bakersfield was the crossroads of all traffic north, south, east and west. All truckers converged on Bakersfield between the 40's through the 70's. That was the time the Bakersfield Sound was formed. It only seemed right to honor those day's gone by, by naming the band after that meaningful famous highway. We have a web site but not yet open to the public. We will be going into the studio starting next Monday, doing some good quality recordings to post plus we''ll be getting bios and photo's posted. So, it will be the first of the year before we have the web site operational.
Here's our website, under construction.
http://www.old99.com/webfiles/99/html/w ... epage.html
"Our first gig as a new band was Saturday evening, 8-midnight. It was a 'rockin' party. It was a crowd aged from 25-50, so our 70's and 80's rock list was dominate. On our first set, my fingers felt like they had contact glue on them and I gripped the neck like it was a baseball bat. I was playing the notes but they were lifeless. As expected the next set was a lot better and it continued to improve until the end. I'm glad to have the first one under my belt.
Rob busted a string on one of his songs where he does vocal and takes the first lead. I didn't know he had popped a string and there was a pause when he was suppose to take the lead. Fortunately I've learned most all the lead parts to all our songs regardless of who's playing lead, so I immediately recognize something wrong and covered for him to the end of the song. While he changed the string (he didn't bring an extra guitar, lesson learned) I cooked off with Jimi Hendrix, Red House. Definitely a good time. Plus I got to see our $3000 investment in mixer board, power amp, four floor monitors, and two twin 15" JBL speaker columns in action."
BTW, the name of our band is Old 99. That name was taken from the main route through central Bakersfield, Highway 99, before interstate 5 bypassed the city. Bakersfield was the crossroads of all traffic north, south, east and west. All truckers converged on Bakersfield between the 40's through the 70's. That was the time the Bakersfield Sound was formed. It only seemed right to honor those day's gone by, by naming the band after that meaningful famous highway. We have a web site but not yet open to the public. We will be going into the studio starting next Monday, doing some good quality recordings to post plus we''ll be getting bios and photo's posted. So, it will be the first of the year before we have the web site operational.
Here's our website, under construction.
http://www.old99.com/webfiles/99/html/w ... epage.html
