It’s been a weird and wild weekend. Weekend plus. Driving out to Cumberland, playing on a beautiful stage, running amok in a tiny town with Sharif and Joey and Kristen and Heather. Returning home fast because that’s the only way Sharif does ANYTHING. A day of spinning plates and fast pivots and then a day out in Frederick, spinning plates and pivoting fast before driving home FAST because thunderstorms threatened, promised and eventually delivered, and no-one wants to be caught in THAT.
The Cumberland show was exquisite, but full of moodswings and heat exhaustion. 100+ degrees in an open dirt field, looking at the barren fairgrounds we were hoping to fill we weren’t optimistic about turnout. Soundcheck was great, but the temperatures were brutal and the attention span of the band was wandering as we retreated to our greenroom. But things kept getting better, and returning to the stage to find a couple of hundred people gathered in the slowly shifting shade showed the organizers certainly knew their town better than we did.
Marvelous show to a receptive audience, supportive and full of excitement over something NEW.
Not that we were FEELING too “new” – an hour and a half in late summer heat, sizzling, and the recent addition of “quarter century” to our introduction were making us feel a LITTLE bit like “come on, how have you NOT heard this sound!”, but a fantastic time was had, we got paid, and Sharif got us home with much precise acceleration, deceleration, and lane insertion.
Friday was full of shifting plans and phone calls, and finally Saturday’s show (Monocacy’s 12th Anniversary) made the call to move indoors which meant getting the word out. Of COURSE that meant, just as it was time to communicate far and wide, client calls came in fast and furious about nothing particularly pressing, so there was much hanging up on affronted people who don’t understand that sometimes, yes, things have to happen NOW, but they are not THEIR things.
Facebook posts, X, Instagram, mailing list. Out and off. Phone tag with the sound engineer for Saturday. An attempt at an early bedtime.
Saturday, celebrating Monocacy at Bentztown in Frederick, MD was ALMOST a disaster. On a whim I’d thrown the mini-Thumps in the trunk, and as an after-thought I’d thrown my mixer in. The initial plan was that all the bands were providing their own sound*, though after a phone conversation with the owner of Monocacy he’d agreed to have sound in place for the afternoon. Out in Cumberland, our sound engineer revealed that the person Monocacy had hired had contacted HIM to ask for some advice and a quote, and that he’d passed along to Monocacy’s hiree that we were awesome, and passed along to US that we were in good hands. With how exquisite sound in Cumberland had been** I took that as a good recommendation.
And so I was a little disappointed that we wouldn’t be meeting THAT guy, but Monocacy assured us that Bentztown was a brand new “music venue” with newly—installed, great-sounding gear that would have “everything we need”. Never one to take things for granted, I still wanted to chat with the sound engineer in advance, but having been treated so well recently, after some phone tag I DID text the engineer that, from what Monocacy had told me, I was pretty confident in what the venue had and I’d just bring some stop-gap gear.
Normally “stop-gap” is a couple of Dis, our mics, and a couple of cables. This time I threw the whole grey bag in (hey, I’d need it Sunday), my mixer (I’ll need that Sunday), my mini-thumps (maybe they won’t have as many monitors as I’d like) and my stand bag (meh, that’s heavy, I don’t want to take it out).
Thank goodness I did.
We walked into Bentztown to some of the worst sound I’ve heard in a LONG time. The singer/songwriter on stage was clearly GOOD. Great voice, solid guitar, well-performed covers, but the sound was SO hollow I went up to the front to hear if the mains were even ON. I spent some time trying to find the sound engineer (not in his booth, bad sign) and was EVENTUALLY introduced by the owner of Monocacy. I briefly described what we’d need and he was like “as long as you can play and sing, it’ll sound great”.
Yay! Confidence!
At switchover time, the singer/songwriter getting off the stage points to a couple of spots of water “don’t stand there or set anything there cause something’s dripping”, points to the snake “it took a little while but those two channels are definitely working” and I realized that the mic stand, the two monitors, almost everything on the stage was the artist’s and once again the engineer was nowhere to be found.
When he eventually showed up again I reiterated what we’d need and he said “well, I’ve got a DI… monitors? We don’t have MONITORS!” He literally threw 2 XLRs on the stage and walked away.
I went back to my car, grabbed my two Thumps and my mixer. Used the two XLRs to plug my mixer into their snake and got to work. Fortunately, the guy hadn’t even muted the PA so after the CRACK of plugging in and turning on, I could do as I pleased. I literally didn’t see the “sound engineer” again till well after our set, talking to someone at one of the tables in the back.
We made the best of it. Our friend Chris Compton showed up and helped with the sound and helped us make the best of it. Mosno Al-Moseeki showed up out of the blue (he’s moving back to Maryland!) and helped us make the best of it. Our message had clearly gotten out and fans found us at the new location and helped us make the best of it. And we actually had a really, really fantastic night.
The drive home was dramatic, filled with fingers of cloud that looked like they could coalesce into tornadoes at any moment, and strange black isolated POOFS that looked like anti-aircraft fire or perhaps Dementors. We got home with literally 3 minutes to spare before the rain came pummeling down, comforted the cat, and gratefully CRASHED, exhausted into our air-conditioned home.
In any case, if anyone asks whether or not Bentztown is a fun place to play, I’ll get to firmly answer, “the food is amazing”.
*In hindsight, actually “house sound” for Saturday afternoon at Monocacy would’ve been a little bit overkill. We’re inordinately complex, but the opening act was a solo singer/songwriter apparently pretty used to just throwing a speaker in a corner and going at it, and Guys In Thin Ties, an 80’s cover band, travel heavy ALL the time, with their own complete (pretty freakin’ large) sound system, lighting and sound and production engineer, banners etc, which would’ve supplanted whatever Monocacy had hired, so the “house sound” would’ve really just been about us and I’d have probably needed to be pretty hands on… it would’ve saved me carrying a bunch of speakers, but it wouldn’t have benefited the overall show THAT much.
**Okay, we haven’t played THAT much in Cumberland, but Thursday’s music series, the Loft show and the Friendsville Days Festival have now given me very, very high expectations for the quality of sound production in the area. Every one of these shows has had just about the best sound we’ve ever been treated to.