I wanted to jot myself some notes about last night’s gig, and a good way to stay honest about it is to do it here. Song by song breakdown:
- Helicopter’s Rope – I think I missed one note when Arch was coming out of his solo, but caught up fine for the refrain. Probably not noticeable, but frustrating since I knew the song cold.
- High Tide – For whatever reason, I lost my fingering and nerve at the beginning and fumbled around until we hit the verse. Probably sounded terrible. Once we got there, evened it out OK.
- Halloween – Couldn’t have been better. I even hit my new vocal lines right.
- Hard – I don’t remember any problems here.
- Letters – Needed a stronger entrance and I think the drums exited a bit early, but very cleanly.
- Hurricane – I was SO on the money on this one, after this gave me real trouble at our last rehearsal, for whatever reason. Feeling good after this one.
- Pilots – Didn’t miss anything in this that I can recall, but it’s hard to remember well since the crowd was so loud over our nice quiet restraint.
- Our History – Came back with this after Laura’s solo acoustic interlude. Very strong as I remember it, and had all the changes nailed.
- Roads – Gave Laura some jitters trying to noodle around her entrance, so we need to fix that and get a good bead on how she would like to do it in a stretched fashion. But after that, it was spot on as I recall, and Arch’s solo was AWESOME.
- Firefly – I think this was really good, except for some very quiet intro notes I had where I forgot we had changed the key by a half-step (never good to get wrong, yuck). Thanks to the fact that Laura hit it for a few bars in soundcheck, I got the last-minute changes she had made at the last rehearsal. I think our vocals may have been killer, but it was very hard to hear them on stage, unfortunately.
- Proof – Left with a killer rendering of this tune as I recall.
We have a little work to do for the next show, but I am firmly of the opinion that getting it right on stage is what really cements the songs in one’s memory. This show was exponentially better than the first, and I expect the next one will be amazing. Now if we can just do that one at a venue where people are actually listening instead of roaring over us…. At least we got paid very generously.