Concert last night…

I went to a concert last night. Rather, I was in the concert. My group, Might Could, opened for Bill Burke and the Richard Leo Johnson Trio (RLJ3). I posted the following account of the show in another journal:

We were instructed to be there at 4 PM for soundcheck. Arriving about ten minutes early, we didn’t see anyone around the performance stage. We had to go find Mike (the guy that runs the studio) elsewhere. Turns out he was across the parking lot in the recording studio helping a band lay down some tracks. We figured we had a short wait, so we went to the store for a quick snack and drink.

After coming back, we found Mike again and he told us to wait. Apparently, Richard (the headliner) was ready to soundcheck. They were gonna do him first, and then if Bill (the opener after us) showed up, he’d go next. That happened. We got to do soundcheck at 6:30 (only 2.5 hrs behind schedule, not bad). We had been rehearsing our set in Gordo’s (our guest bassist) practice room, and Mike showed up to ask us to get out there. Even though we had the largest number of people, we had the smallest amount of equipment and could set up quickly. We walk in… and the only people in the place were Mike, the studio’s security guy, Bill, and the RLJ3. Great. That’s not intimidating.

Anyway, we played a four-person bit from “Tricycle” and everything sounded fine. I was running through a pedal of Andy’s that made me sound a little different from the other guys, but all in all, it went well. There was slight applause from one or two of the watchers (as if they didn’t know whether applauding would be appropriate) afterward. We started to leave for dinner and J (security) said, “Hey, where you guys going? We’re throwin’ stuff on the grill in a bit.”

“Cool,” said us. We went off and took forever (45 min or so) to find a supermarket that sold meat. We bought food, some beer, and then headed back. It was a small cookout in the parking lot. We were sharing chicken and burgers and such with all the other performers. Pretty cool.

Soon after that, we went on. “Instability” was song one, and that went fine. Next, we had a bit of a weird timing moment. We were supposed to play Aaron’s new quick piece then. That one starts with me playing seven notes and the other guys joining in. I started without giving a countoff, though, and Aaron was busy messing with his hair when I started. He was able to hear what I was doing, and fortunately, he came in on time. That song went fine. Next was our mini-NES medley. We were doing all the Tetris pieces into SMB 3. Individually, both pieces went fine, but I loused up the transition between the two. No huge deal.

Next were our songs with Gordo. These went perfectly. “Lapse,” “Standoff,” and “Medea” (Medea’s Dance of Vengeance by Samuel Barber) all went off without any major mistakes. I was especially pleased about “Medea” since that took us the longest to work out. Gordo nailed it. The fact that I nailed it is less significant, since I’ve had eight months or so to practice. 🙂 We closed with “Tricycle.” For the most part, we were fine. The big cycle section in the middle was the only mistake. Aaron messed up once and dropped out. This threw me off a little bit, and I made a small mistake there too. We transitioned to the next part fine, but not many people noticed. For our one stage gag, Gordo (while he was quiet during aforementioned cycle part) whipped out a book called “Improvising Rock Bass” and leafed through it. That got a laugh.

That ended our show. A few quick pastries and drinks later, we were back out there watching Bill Burke. That guy is amazing. He plays an instrument called a Warr guitar, which is an eight-stringed beast one plays by tapping with two hands. The low four strings are bass-like, and the upper four are guitar-like. He could therefore play bass and melody at the same time, which he did to great effect. Also, he had a looper pedal. What he did was, he’d play a four-bar riff and loop it. He’d take two copies of that riff and loop that. He’d then take two copies of the eight-bar riff and loop that. By doubling it over and over, he made his backing track more and more rhythmically accurate. Once that was set, he could layer more melody or whatever on top. Sometimes, he looped THAT as well, and played something different over it. Basically, there were times when he had six simultaneous lines of stuff going on at once, and it was awesome. Aaron said, “Wow, this guy does more with one person than the three of us put together.” I agree. He was a super nice guy too.

The Richard Leo Johnson trio (RLJ3) was next. They had TONS of gear on the stage, and used it to awesome ends. RLJ himself claims to have the “baby raised in the woods by wolves” kind of education in music. His other players, Andy and Ricardo, were both members of the Savannah (GA) symphony orchestra and have musical resumes as long as your arm. I’d say RLJ is at least 20-25 or so years my senior. His bandmates didn’t look significantly older than Andy or I.

RLJ played three guitars: a regular twelve-string, a electricish six-string, and best of all, a 6/12 doubleneck acoustic. He was doing all sorts of crazy stuff. He fingerpicks, he uses a thumbpick, does a lot of two-hand tapping, and uses more tunings in one set than I have in my life. Andy (his bandmate, not mine) is a classically trained oboe player and for the RLJ3, plays a wind synthesizer. This is an instrument you blow into while pressing keys (like a woodwind), but the keys are programmed to various MIDI sounds. Ricardo played violin, viola, electric violin, and this amazingly weird instrument called a theremin. I’d never seen anything like it. His group deserved the standing ovation they got at the end.

Both Richard and Bill were encouraging of our stuff. Fortunately, Bill is local and maybe we’ll play with him again someday. At any rate, the crowd was about 40 people (very intent listeners!). We sold 20 CDs. Having a $5 CD no doubt helps, but that’s a new record for us, easily (by a factor of three or so). After the mindblowing performances by Bill and the RLJ3, I doubt we made an impression as potential touring musicians in that ballpark, but maybe we made a new fan or two. It was a good time. I’d love to do it again.