So Saturday night one of my side bands, Pedagogy, played. It was a fill-in gig for a cancellation. We opened.

This is the band that does the originals of the keyboard player, Joel, who I know from and play with in church. He’s a really talented musician who can play keys, bass, guitar, and drums, and a very good singer too. In his mid 20’s I guess. Reads and all that good serious muso stuff. The drummer Nickel, is a couple weeks shy of 21, Joel and I both know him from church as well. It was the debut of our new bassist, Mark, who I nicked from the hippie band I recently was let go from, Cinnamon Hill (which appears to have subsequently folded; at a minimum they haven’t been gigging, or for that matter even practising). He is hands down the best bassist I’ve played with in 30 years of local gigging. He used to do the USO circuit flying all over the world.

Set went OK, but I wasn’t entirely happy with my volume levels. Had to back my guitar off a bit to get them right. I used the same rig I use for this band and most times when I gig with the church praise band outside church, my Super Champ XD as controller/effects box/close monitor, lined out to my vintage Sunn 200S 60W head into a DIY 2×12 (gutted combo box w/silverback Celestions), with the Sunn rig mic’d. It’s here on the left:

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I used the Dano Hodad throughout for this’un. The DeArmond Jet Star and Fender Telecaster Special were there for backup. Though it seems marginally excessive, I have been known to go through 3 guitars in a set, and frankly I’d rather have them and not need them than the other way round.

We’d been practising up a bunch of covers in order to eventually be able to eventually do a whole night’s worth of music, so we had to shift gears pretty radically in order to work up a set for this venue, which focuses on originals. In addition to Joel’s originals, we also do one of mine, a Crash Pad song (slowed down a bit) called “Make Haste Slowly” (Joel sings it though, which puts a totally different feel to it from my Johnny Rotten/Jello Biafra “vocal stylings”). We still ended up with a couple covers in the set, but were running long and cut one. Closed with Jason Mraz’s “Butterfly,” which has me basically jazz comping (lots of minor and major 7th’s, though nothing difficult) throughout.

Yes, Krashpad not only playing clean but comping. You read it here first.

Due to the last-minute shift in the setlist, I used a book and stand, but set it side stage to try and keep it as inconspicuous as possible, and set it as low as it would go. Lighting was not particularly good, making seeing it a bit of a struggle, but managed to mask any fluffs relatively well. No real trainwrecks.

Here’s a few shots from sound check, will post some from the set in subsequent posts. I usually say that comments on my poseritude are welcome, but this is Joel’s band, playing pop music rather than the more aggressive stuff in Crash Pad (or for that matter the roots rock of my other side band, the Hotheads) so there’s really no wacky stage antics here. Still any comments or questions welcome, of course.

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