Notes from
the Road |
When the Bertye Maddux Band was still
gigging around, we played a regular
monthly show at the UTE Inn. It was
a logical choice for me to make the Sunday afternoon
on the deck a regular part of my schedule.
The UTE Inn is the oldest bar in Woodland
Park, and still retains that mountain bar feel.
Out on the deck, you get everything from sunshine, to
rain, views of Rampart Range,
and the crowd is everyone from the local
Harley riders to families and friends of the band
Bertye is playing bass with me for most of
the show. I'm using the 1981Martin-HD-28 that I got in
a swap for a 750CC motorcycle some years back.
I run the guitar signal directly into
a Crate amplifier, and use that to mix the
single microphone. The output signal goes into a
Peavey head that I use as a power
amp. Very simple, compact, and a surprisingly good sound.
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I had been looking
forward to the Woodland Park Purely Bluegrass concert for a while.
It is in my home town and a chance to play for the home town crowd.
A beautiful day, small crowd on the lawn in the sunshine, good food
cooking and cold beer. How can you beat that?
The sound system troubles continue.
Once again, a very nice looking, large, sound stage and
sound system fail to realize the potential due to on-going feedback,
roaring, and echo in the monitors.
Whew; instead of making music flow and happen, you have
to fight the sound the entire day. That does take most of the fun
out of it.
So, what is the lesson learned?
A couple of lessons. One is that with patience we
were able to work most of the sound problem out of the system. The
key here is not to try to forge ahead, but rather to let the sound man
know that you are having trouble and allow him time to fix it.
The second element is to note that after you've done all
you can, just do the show the best that you can. In this case,
that means playing blind, in the sense that you can not really hear the
sound.
Well, there's another show tomorrow.
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hiWay 24 - Woodland Park, Colorado
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