Last night with Petrichord was Lovely. A slightly below-average list (in length, not talent) came in a slightly above-average time because of continued tech problems. Since last week David had replaced the power amplifier running the mains, but halfway through the night we started getting our weird glitches again, causing us to put EVERYTHING on pause and swap over to using powered Mackie mains, routing around the power amp. We also daisy-chained everything off one side of the stereo outs because we knew it was the right speaker that was regularly (well, IRregularly, which is a big part of the problem with solving the problem!) glitching out.
Well, as usual, fixing the problem worked until it didn’t and a couple of performers the mains went out AGAIN. We powered everything down a SECOND time, swapped to the other output on the board and then got up and running and through the rest of the night sans incident – but there seems to be something deeper going on with the board itself (because it SEEMS like outages are occurring on the webfeed as well, which nixes the idea of it simply being a problem with the XLR output) and so it’ll be swapped for a Mackie DL1608 next week… and I’ll plan to get there EARLY to really trouble shoot… but of course, the problem really comes and goes… it DOES seem like we should be able, with an entirely new board, be able to go back to the initial power amp and run back through the mains that were hung in the room (this’d be great, the fewer damned tripods we have cluttering the room, the better) but man it makes me grateful to be here setting up the Lair and knowing my OWN gear is solid…. Plus or minus when it’s not!
In any case, that was probably more than anyone at all needed to know – because the MUSIC is the thing, and the music was mighty. John Peiffer came out and played harmonica along with a bunch of different players, and having a solid sideman available to all makes a HUGE difference in the feel of the night, making it more collaborative, and giving a renewed sense of wonder about one’s own music.
I LOVE “Slight Departure” with harmonica slathered all over it, and John did NOT disappoint, giving it that haunting howl he does so well. After years of seeing John as a solo singer/songwriter with an intense library of ukulele chords and a quirky but forthwright song-slinging style – well, I LOVE his music, it’s smart, it’s heartfelt, it’s beautiful – but it’s good to see him playing with others again…
He clearly felt the same.
Other interesting additions to the night included a guy who’d actually seen us last at our friends’ the Hobsons café (I have no idea where the ‘s REALLY should be up there) and had moved to the area recently. Dinny played an octave-strung fiddle and was just a joy to have. Entirely too tall, but he played sitting down so we allowed it. Plenty of return regulars, and of course Petrichord themselves, were just SO solid and joyous, it was a shame to not be able to give them the fullest sound to which they SHOULD be accustomed! And, *I* got to play along with Susan Rowe, which was an absolute joy.
For as much as I don’t get to do it THAT much, gosh I Love playing with others!
[PS Susan Rowe has just agreed to do Live from the Lair with us on Tuesday, March 29th!]
