I promised that you’d get a follow-up report on the show we played recently with some friends, and here it is. To begin with, Murphy and I walked into the performing venue (the local Moose club) to find that thanks to Charlie and Charlotte, the sound system was already set up and working—a real plus for any job. There were 10 mikes on the stage, all ready for vocals and instruments. They and their band (the Sweetwater String Band—Charlie, Charlotte, Larry, Troy, and me) were to play the first and last sets of the day—at 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. —a pretty long day. So we got on the stage and started the show.
Now, at 10:00 on a Sunday morning you don’t generally expect that the crowd will have shown up yet. We began the set with an audience of 18 people. That didn’t matter, though, because we had a good time playing our set of gospel material. And everybody in the band was aware of the music—WATCHING and LISTENING to what was happening, and responding to each other, which made the music not only better but also more enjoyable. I played mostly mandolin, but picked up the fiddle to play harmony with Larry on a couple of slower numbers.
Then several local bands played their sets, and their sound suffered from a current fad: Instead of using individual vocal mikes, each band wanted to sing around one big condenser microphone. However, in this particular room, that big mike could not be turned up very much without feeding back, so the singing was hard to hear. This went on with one band after another, proving that the bands weren’t WATCHING and LISTENING to the other bands on stage and seeing that the mike setup wasn’t working, but instead kept asking to use that one mike which couldn’t pick up their voices very well.
Also, as I watched the bands, I could see that most of them weren’t listening to each other on stage. They all had a well-practiced set of music to play, but in most cases each band member just played and sang his own part without listening to their whole band and responding to the other band members. This took some of the life out of the show.
At 3:00 we had a special event. Murphy and I were scheduled to play—a rare appearance in our local area—and our son Chris was in town and played guitar. At our request the sound man set up individual vocal and instrument microphones for us, and we kicked off the set with “Philadelphia Lawyer”. We followed that with “Foothills of Home” with a trio chorus. With those individual mikes the crowd could hear us, and we sounded pretty good. We played for nearly an hour, and I’m glad to say that the audience lit up. We played lots of music we liked, including a twin-mandolin arrangement of Chris’s tune “Pelham” and a father-son duet on “Toy Heart.” Murphy’s songs “M&M Blues” and “All of Us Used to be Skinny” were big hits, and we finished up with her singing lead on “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder”. Good show.
For the next set I had an interesting challenge. A local band’s guitar player couldn’t be there, so they asked me to play guitar with them. I was glad to do it, although I’d never met them before. They were on right after us, so I didn’t even leave the stage but just picked up our D-28 and got ready to play. They did a well-selected set of good bluegrass material, fortunately all numbers I knew. But it was awkward playing with them: although I was playing guitar in their band, they rarely looked around at me, or, for that matter, at each other. In other words, they weren’t WATCHING and LISTENING to their whole band all the time. Also, they were using that big condenser mike for their vocals, and I was afraid that the audience couldn’t hear them very well. But the were nice guys and I enjoyed picking with them.
For the 5:00 set, Charlie and Charlotte and the Sweetwater String Band took the stage again. With our individual mikes the audience could hear us well, and we were all WATCHING and LISTENING to make sure we sounded our best, and the listeners responded nicely. But by the end of the set, I was ready for the day to be over. I’d played four sets of high-energy bluegrass, including the last three hours in a row, and I was ready for a rest.
What’s the moral? Well, for one thing, don’t play four sets of stand-up music and expect to be able to stand up very well afterward! For another thing, don’t go with the current bluegrass fad (such as using just one microphone for your vocals) if the situation isn’t right for it. But mostly, remember that the music’s more fun to play, and sounds better, if you’re WATCHING and LISTENING all the time.
Tags: playing advice, red, shows