Clark Plays Guitar: Concert Calendar

Wow, what a great time! Although it was not the largest crowd we've ever had there, this was perhaps the most enthusiastic. Made new friends & fans, and had a blast!

Downplay opened the show with good energy, mixing covers & originals. No bassist, they use low tuned guitars to create some bottom end.

We went on with very little sound check (I'm used to really, really in-depth sound checks) but the sound seemed fairly good. We played our hearts out, & the crowd was very enthusiastic. Two songs into our set, one of my shoes came untied, & I had to stop the show to deal with it. Pretty funny. For being just the second time I've had this line-up on a stage, I felt like the show was pretty good. The crowd seemed to like us a lot.

Roxtar closed the show, mixing their own unique versions of some pop songs with Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, & a couple of originals.

Thanks to Osyrys of Roxtar for letting all the drummers use his kit. And big thanks to Wendell & the Revolution for putting the gig together, Donna & Tommy & everyone at Bar 3 for having the concert. It was definitely a blast!

Wow. What can I say about this gig at LT's. I guess we played okay, but honestly, it was everything that made me want to give up music over a decade ago. I worked my butt off at trying to promote this show, but between the indifference of the venue & the freaky warm weather, we had a very small turnout. We were told there would be lights & a board, but the board was really just a chunk of wood with some wall switches to control a couple of stage lights. And then there was the whole P.A. thing... Ryan (bass) borrowed a huge system, which was a pain in the neck to move & set up. Factor in the cooking of a power amp when Ryan was testing the system in his garage, which led to a rented power amp for the gig. The rented power amp used a different style of connector for the speaker cables, unlike anything we had on hand. And because we couldn't get in early for a decent sound check, we did not discover this until it was too late to purchase adaptors. Eventually we cobbled something together that made noise, but it was way too loud & not really dialed in. Then someone (not me) decided the mixing board should sit on my side of the stage, resulting in the rented/borrowed sound guy running across the stage for the entire first set, mostly trying to stop the feedback. Plus, the mix sucked, or at least many people said so. Yow.

Since we were trying to play the whole show ourselves, like a bar band, rather than play a concert-style show with another band or two, we were playing a bunch of cover tunes, & not playing them well, I fear. Ryan decided he was going to "read the audience" & just shout out the tunes he thought were appropriate. Since neither Joel or I could understand what he was shouting much of the time (nor could the audience...) we did not always start together, and not always on the same song! Not good...

Small, indifferent crowd, uncaring venue, lousy pay, too much trouble with the sound system, no dressing room, poor sound, we sucked, and who knows what else. This is living the dream? No. Time to change things around, methinks...

Somehow we are the headline act for this show. The opening band, "The Aqua-holics," played instrumental music, sort of a psycho-surf with a dash of rock-a-billy. They sounded ok, were enthusiastic, & I actually liked what they did. The middle band was another story. They tuned really, really low, something like a "minus Z double flat" tuning or something. They opened with your basic uber-powered "death-growl-from-hell" over a sub-sonic double kick drum driven riff that LITERALLY drove everyone out of the venue before the first chorus! I am NOT kidding! The only humans left inside were the venue staff, my band (& Ryan's wife), the drummer's mom, the guitarist's sister, & the "singer's" girlfriend. Within seconds of the start of the second song most of the staff went outside, too. Wow...

Once we went on stage, a dozen, maybe 20, people trickled back in, but it was not my idea of a great show. I guess we played good, we had a very enthusiastic response from the few folks that were there, but I don't see us making that trip again any time soon. Oh well...