Well this past Friday I got to play my first gig in a long time.  I think the last time I had a gig was when I was in my second year at Ball State.  Our short lived career back then consisted of two shows and neither one went well.  This time however, the band was well rehearsed and made up of some great musicians.

Oddly enough, my return to playing out happen to occur in Muncie of all places, the home of Ball State.  I took the guys to a certain chinese buffet I frequented during my two years there.  We had a good time questioning all the food that we saw or ate.  Apparently this particular restaurant had been fined for fishing out of the White River.

After that we went to the venue which was more or less what I would expect.  Not exceptionally nice, but not a total dive.  We got our gear in, got setup, said hi to some people who had come out to support us and then we waited.  We waited for an hour for the sound guy to show up.  

It was fine for the first fifteen minutes, we just talked to people, Doc’s provided the band with free beer all night, which was nice.  Then another fifteen minutes past and we started to get annoyed.  The sound guy still hadn’t shown up.  The manager had started pulling some stuff out but had no idea how to set things up.  Then someone, who didn’t work there, volunteered to set everything up.  While it was a nice gesture, he had no idea what he was doing.  So then the lead singer and frontman for the band, Tyler, asked his roommate who is an audio technician to see if he could lend his services.  Even though his roommate, Andy,  knew what he was doing, it is almost impossible to be thrown into some else’s system and know where everything is being run, let alone know where they keep the mics.  So for another half an hour, they tried to get something going, no avail.

Finally, an hour later, when we should have been packing up and Cory Hill should have been going on, the sound guy finally showed up.  He scurried to get everything setup, fix what the other guy did, and then do a sound check.  We played through our set as best we could, but it was difficult to say the least.  They had three floor monitors, two side by side and one for the drummer.  We might as well have had no monitors.  The sound coming out was horrible and way too loud.  If you weren’t right in front of one of them then you heard nothing at all, which was my experience.  Our drummer smashed his hand early in the set and was flinging blood all over his kit the whole time.  We missed cues because we couldn’t here each other.  It was interesting.

Despite all of that though, we played pretty well and people said the music was good, but the sound was horrible.  The sound guy obviously didn’t know what he was doing and wasn’t monitoring the mix at all.  Andy had to come and give us some feedback on what we could do on stage to try and fix it, but there was only so much we could do.

We packed up our stuff and then headed home.  I get in my door at 2:00 AM that morning.  Even though the whole sound situation was really bad, the band said it was the worst they had experienced, I still had a great time and wish I could do it more often.  There is something about playing in front of people that is rewarding and desirable.  I get to moonlight with Tyler Bender and Training Wheel Fire again in May, and I look forward to it.

Finally, your Arrested Development for the day…

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