The Night Shift

[WildcatOne]

I played 2 gigs this weekend; one Friday night at the Cock-Eyed Seagull on NASA Rd 1 and one this afternoon at the San Leon Music Festival right on the edge of Galveston Bay. The Friday night gig was the best one we've done yet...they usually have these little house lights that they have on but this time they left 'em off and the place was much darker except for the stage lights. We played our best, and it was a smooth rocking show. The lady DJ from KACC, Paula Guidry, had been talking us up on her radio show all week and she showed up and partied with us the whole night. We got her up on stage to sing some stuff with Brandi and she can really sing good...we were pleasantly surprized...usually when you get a local celebrity up there who isn't known for singing and get 'em to sing, well, they can't sing...but she did sing and she sang very well...so it added to the quality of the show. She and Brandi harmonized and the whole gig went over great. Again, in yet another venue, the waitresses danced. They hear 4 bands a week and they told us we were a most welcome change of pace for them...today I was not looking forward to playing this benefit for the San Leon folks, not that I don't like them, but I heard that a guy named Dash was running the sound and the stage and I have had to deal with his gargantuan ego in the past, when it was HIS band playing and it was ME who was running sound and the stage...I'll just leave out his childish attitude that he laid on me in 2002...but we showed up on time and the first band still hadn't played yet. He was having trouble getting all his stuff to work. The first thing I noticed was that he had aged a lot in 4 years. He also gained a lot of weight. And he was stressed-out worse than ever...I just unloaded my stuff and waited and hung out with the DJ who was there playing stuff during breaks. The first band was a Death-Metal Thrash band from the area. They had a big following that showed up and they did the head-banging, moshing and inaudible growling perfectly. They were around 16-17 years old...and I gotta hand it to 'em, they did it like it's supposed to be done. For what it was, they got it worked out. They've done their woodshedding...the DJ pulled me aside and said, "Looks like Elvis is definitely dead..." I said, yeah, I couldn't take a steady diet of this stuff, man, but they're out here doing it, and that's a good thing. He agreed. Then Shakedown went up and played a 45-minute set of classic rock...let's see if I can remember all the tunes we did..."What Is And What Should Never Be" by Led Zeppelin, "Night Moves" by Bob Seger, "You Don't Have To Remind Me" by Sash Jordan, "Ready For Love" by Bad Company, "Black Magic Woman" by Santana, "Save Tonight" by I don't know the name of the band that did that song, "Move It On Over" by Hank Williams into "Bad To The Bone" by George Thorogood, with Lynn changing it to "I Got A Big Ol' Bone" and playing slide with an 18"-long plastic bone with a slide glued to it...and we closed with "Ramble On" by Led Zeppelin. Dash hugged me...I sure didn't expect that. He told Lynn we were by far the best band that's played there all weekend...I appreciated that...Dash's band is great, in my opinion, his personality notwithstanding, and after us came Big Red and the Trolls...Big Red is a great guitar player...he does "Aqualung" and "Lunatic Fringe", some classic Sabbath and some originals...Trolls bassist, Gonzo is a former Wildcat and he and I hung out and got caught up on things...here we are a couple of years ago...
http://www.computermagiconline.com/dang ... escene.htm
It was a fun day. It's always nice when folks come up and compliment you after you drove clear down there and played an hour for free. But there were some chicks there from the 518 club that knew us and after the musicians let go of us, they came bouncing up to us and hugged us and were eager to party...I'm wearing my wedding ring and they see that so they reserve a lot of the physical interaction for Willie and Mikey, who are single and always ready to participate in full-frontal activity with them...we finally pulled outta there at 4:45, but we made points with the Gator Press, who sponsored the event and gives us a free ad every month as well as great reviews, and the rest of the bands who were there...I think we showed them something they aren't very familiar with, actually. We were nice to them and to each other. We went along with all the procedures to the letter. We didn't put any pressure on anybody about when we play and for how long. We just went and set up when it was time, and we played our very best set of music. Then we took our stuff down and shook everybody's hands and just said thanks. Apparently Dash had already had a situation earlier with a band that jumped on him about something...you just don't do that, ya know...so it was all good. Next weekend, I'm playing Thursday night backing up Tom Rodgers at the Cock-Eyed Seagull, then Saturday night I'm playing at Beamer's with Shakedown, then Sunday I'm playing in Galveston at Tiki Island with Lynn backing up Tori. All 3 gigs will pay well. Life is Good. WC1

[wheelzman]

Cat, your stories are something else. I felt as if I was there enjoying all the inter-aciton and observing all of the politics of the event. Your coolness in situations just amazes me. This alone will carry you over and above most, plus your talents, and your ship will come sailing in. Hang in there friend. All will fall in place as it is planned.

[WildcatOne]

Thanks, Wheelz. I'm keeping the faith. Right now, Shakedown is blowing up all over town. It's quickly becoming the most popular group around; at this time, we're one of the top 5 bands out there gigging. Everywhere we play, people are knocked out. It's just so gratifying to roll into a place and let rip a whole night of good music without pretense or attitude. We just do it and we're friendly and we always welcome folks to sit in and jam with us, unless the club has rules to the contrary...Katie's doesn't want jammers at band gigs because it can easily turn into an open-mic night...good call, but we do have some people that are starting to follow us and show up at just about every gig. They're studying what we do. We've got an onstage telepathy now that works and it ain't something that just comes naturally; we worked on it. An example of this was Friday night, we were doing "Gimme Some Lovin'" by the Spencer Davis Group. I'm the vocalist on that song...we worked it up by playing it live without ever rehearsing it, but this was about the 10th time we've done it and it's running full-speed now. In the middle of the song, I yell "Hit it, Lynn!" and he tears into a lead guitar solo. He is at this point a local guitar hero; he's doing incredible guitar playing...so he jumps on it. Me and Willie and Mikey all knew that we didn't have it worked out when we would go into the bridge/chord change at the end of the guitar solo, whenever that might be. Right before we went 16 bars into the guitar solo, I turned my head slightly to the left and made eye-contact with Mikey. He knew what I was thinking. I could see Willie out of the bottom corner of my eye, and at 16 bars, Willie hit a drum break and we nailed the bridge. That's how we're doing it. We've worked on dynamics as well, which are extremely important...that is, taking the music to peaks and back down to valleys and subtleties...it makes a big difference if you can do that. The only downside of Big Red's set yesterday is that it was full-blast from start to finish. No quiet sections in any of their songs, just top-volume boogie. To the listener, it starts to all sound the same...Shakedown lets Brandi produce drama with her songs as well as belting out her rowdy stuff. She gets down on her knees and lets her soul out, and then she stands there and sings straight from the heart. I'm rambling, but I'm pretty dang proud of what that band has come up with after all we've been through. As that's going on, the Citykings are about to start working towards promoting their album in concert. Bill is going to develop a live concept for us starting in June. BTW, our t-shirts are finished. We got 72 made this time, in S-M-L-XL and we're gonna sell 'em off the website and at our gigs. It's been called the best t-shirt in town, so we expect a sell-out on this batch. Life is good. WC1

[Gator]

[Lippy]

Cool W.C.!!!!! Get some rest though!!

[jim sanders]

more great reading !!

[WildcatOne]

Randolph called me yesterday and told me he ran into Johnny Nash the other day and he gave him a Citykings CD. He said JN was very impressed with the package and he told Rand he was going to give it a listen as soon as he got home...Randolph and Johnny Nash are buddies and they live about a block away from each other, so they frequently run into each other but Rand hasn't had a CD with him until last weekend that he could give him...a while back, I posted a picture of Johnny Nash's estate, which he has said many times was paid for several times over by "I Can See Clearly Now", although he had a few other hits before that one, but "I Can See Clearly Now" has sustained him and his family for 35 years and continues to pay handsome dividends and will keep doing so in perpetuity...the Citykings would be cool with JN picking any of our songs to record...or if he had some advice or contacts he'd want us to follow...Life is good. WC1

[Mike-Casella]

That is AWESOME!! Good luck with it!!

[Novel-T]

I'm hoping that will happen,Cat

[draglist]

Good luck, Cat. bp