Oorgo

clusterfsck

What a weekend, what a gig, and what a load of shit that lead up to it.

Thursday night I'm talking to the bandleader/singer Roberto, about the gig in Saskatoon on Sunday, turns out no one told him that the tenor player wouldn't be able to make it, and it just so happens the alto player got a new job and couldn't take the Monday off. Oh joy! AND then he said the only contact for the trombone player was the Tenor sax player... and so we had no horn players but me.

As luck would have it my friend Jerrold moved back into town just a month ago, he's a monster sax player so I gave him a call and he was actually free and able to go! He also had the number for a friend of his that he went to Rutgers with (in New York) who happens to live in Saskatoon now, and he also is a monster sax player. I give Marc a call in Sask and luck of luck he can make it too! Whew! That's all taken care of. I get a call later that the Tenor book was missing and nowhere to be found, luckily it showed up under a pile of stuff in the back room at the bar we played at last.

Sunday morning after about 4 hours of sleep I get up at 5:30 am, shower, Jerrold and Troy (trombone sub) show up about 6:30, on time great! 2 secs before the bandleader shows up Jer realizes he's left his clothes at home in his hurry to get out of the house and be there on time. We decide that Jer and I will take his car to Saskatoon, tell the guys, and take off for his house. A half hour later we're on the way out of town, probably about 15 minutes east of the city and I get a call on my cell "Troy is here waiting and he says he's going to leave in 5 minutes". I'm like "What?!? What's he doin there?" I talk to him a bit and apparently they thought we were going together.. we turn the car around. Got out of the city about 7:45, on a 5 hour drive, for a sound check at 12:30, not looking so good.

We got into the thriving metropolis of Saskatoon about 12:45 or so, had a 5 minute soundcheck, left. The gig started at 3, 4 bands or something like that playing, we were supposed to play at 6. At 3 o'clock I pop by to see if my parents are there yet, and I overhear "Because of medical problems, the first band will not be playing, everything will be starting an hour earlier". Oh crap. Got a hold of the guy from Sask and cleared the new time with him. All good right? Yeah.

Gig starts, seems ok but I can't hear myself in the monitors, all I hear is sax and it keeps getting louder, (I notice the sax players going to the sound guy alot). I pretty much blew my chops the first 3 songs, playing too loud in an attempt to hear myself. Later that night I find out they had mixed up the monitors when they set us up... they had shifted them one over, the Tbone player had mine. That didn't make me that happy.

Oh, and did I mention that it started pouring rain halfway through the trip and until about 15 minutes after we started? Yeah, it did.

Posted by Oorgo at July 5, 2005 04:10 PM Permalink - Category: Music | TrackBack