John Hendow

On Friday night I performed at a double-bill gig with the 1 Uppers, and The Dudley Manlove Quartet. We had a decent crowd at the High Dive in Fremont including friends from work, members of my softball team and my mom! The show made for a full night of guitar wrangling for me, with a quick suit change between bands. The 1 Uppers played mostly originals, but we did throw in some covers such as “Looking At The World Through A Windshield” and “How Soon Is Now”. The latter is always a crowd pleaser as people begin to recognize the song early in the first verse; despite being dressed up as a country cover, it’s actually that familiar Smiths’ song from the 80s. We were well received by the crowd, and some people made good use of the dance floor during the upbeat numbers. I suppose it’s a given that certain songs (our murder ballad for instance) tend to be undance-able bummers. Well, nobody said country music was all happy and fun…

The Dudley Manlove Quartet hit the stage with all cylinders firing. Our first set was a fun overview of favorite pop songs, and we kicked into the more rocking tunes in the second set. I enjoyed playing some surprises like the Perry Como song “Seattle” and the ever-classic Bee Gees tune “How Deep Is Your Love?”.

This set marked the bar debut of my newly re-reconfigured pedalboard. Apparently pedalboard reconfiguration has become my new hobby, as I’m planning at least one more major revision. The most recent change was the removal of the Line6 POD XTLive, replaced by the Line6 M13. It makes my song-to-song transitions a little more challenging as I wind up having to remember the pedalboard assignments and layouts for each of the “scenes”. When we got ready to play “Melt With You” I spent a few scary seconds trying to remember where I’d stored that sound… fortunately I was all set up and loaded before we got underway. Overall I’m pretty happy with the new effect unit and intend to make it the cornerstone of my new smaller setup.

It was a great gig with a lot of great friends, both on and off the stage. As always, I had a blast playing with my bands and look forward to the next shows!