Ring in 2011 with the Dudley Manlove Quartet and special guests Rat City Brass at the Sunset Tavern in Ballard! Tickets for the New Year’s Eve bash are $20 in advance and are available at Brown Paper Tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/136479 .
The show begins at 10PM, but get there early to stake out a spot and enjoy some delicious Flying Squirrel pizza!
On Saturday 10/30 The Dudley Manlove Quartet performed at the Sunset in Ballard. This was our annual Halloween Ball. When we arrived for load-in, the bar manager told us the show had sold out in advance! That’s a great start for this kind of event. Following our tradition, we always perform part of the night as another band; we usually do this as a surprise by put on costumes for the second set and perform a number of their songs. This year we decided to just announce the tribute band in advance: David Bowie. It took us a few weeks to narrow down the song selections. David Bowie has a massive catalog of hits, and it wasn’t easy to decide which ones not to play. We eventually got the list down to:
Ziggy Stardust
Suffragette City
Rebel Rebel
Ashes to Ashes
Changes
Heroes
Modern Love
China Girl
Blue Jean
Let’s Dance
I put a lot of effort into programming the tones for these songs and I think they came out pretty good. The audience reaction was wonderful, with lots of people singing along as we ran through the hits. One nice bonus this evening was the pre-gig feast on Flying Squirrel Pizza, now for sale at the Sunset! It you haven’t tried Flying Squirrel Pizza yet, I’d strongly recommend doing so. Halloween is my favorite holiday and this event always is a fun party for our friends and fans. Getting to rock through that set of Bowie was a treat. The gig was blast. We’re already looking ahead to New Year’s Eve. Tickets are already on sale! Make sure to buy yours in advance.
On Friday 10/29 the 1 Uppers performed at Conor Byrne in Ballard. This gig was an interesting challenge for me; the band’s other guitarist – Kris Geren – was unavailable so I was covering both of our parts as best I could. On most of our songs the guitar parts are interleaved and form a kind of dialog. I was a little daunted by the challenge of (1) re-arrange the two parts into something I could do alone and (2) trying to cover the solos that Kris usually plays. It was a busy week of practice since I was also preparing for the 10/30 Dudley Manlove Quartet performance. The night before the 1 Uppers show we held a rehearsal and I was still feeling that I needed more preparation time. Whew… lots of pressure!
The show itself was a lot of fun. One of the opening bands didn’t show up, which allowed The Blackberry Bushes to extend their planned set. They were fantastic and played a great set of bluegrass that got the place happily stomping. My first instrument is 5 string banjo and I’ve got say that was some great playing! We followed with a fairly regular set of 1 Uppers favorites and I’d say it was a great night. Jon Hyde’s amp suffered from some seasonally appropriate haunting, possible a side effect from a pretty major tumble that amp suffered a few weeks ago. Fortunately it made through the show.
Another fun show with the 1 Uppers. I felt the evening went quite well despite the absence of Kris, and I look forward to having the band back at full strength for the next one.
