On Friday 8/24 the Dudley Manlove Quartet performed in Bothell for one of their free public concerts in the park. I love these opportunities for us to play outdoors and it’s always fun to get exposed to new audiences. We played the usual assortment of crowd-pleasing hits, despite having to set up on the infield dirt of a softball diamond… why oh why did they put us there? Oh well. We happily played and had people dancing in the grass.
During our third set my amp suddenly started to make an odd distortion and the output dropped. I turned around just in time to see the pilot light go out, indicating the fuse had blown. With no spare fuse or amp in sight, I had to wave over the monitor operator and have him patch the output of my pedalboard directly to a DI. I’m told it sounded surprisingly good, but it wasn’t nearly as good as my amp.
The next day I had a chance to get the amp to my tech who diagnosed the issue pretty quickly. First off, it’s partially my own fault. I bought the amp used about a year ago, and while I intended to retube it “real soon” I never got around to it. The original owner had installed mismatched power tubes in the amp, which is a really big no-no in a Mesa Boogie amp because they don’t have a bias control. Three of the four 6L6 power tubes were Boogie tubes, and the fourth was a Ruby tube. Naturally it was going to cause a failure eventually, and it did! I replaced the four power tubes and had my tech check the amp out. No worries. Back in fighting shape again, and sounding MUCH better since the power tube section was properly balanced. I definitely should have checked out those tubes on day 1 and recognized this was a potential problem. It also made me wonder if I should always have an alternate output strategy, like carrying a good quality DI just case something like this happens again.
The 1 Uppers get together every week for a 2+ hour practice session. We’ve kept to this schedule pretty faithfully since the band’s inception. It gives us an opportunity to work on new material and polish up any rough spots from recent shows. It’s also our communal time to form the hive-mind that is at the nucleus of good bands. There is no substitute for playing together. I have certainly seen brilliant performances delivered by musicians that have spontaneously assembled but this is the exception; most truly great bands come from hours of invested time working together and becoming mutually attuned.
Sometimes I come home from 1 Uppers practice frustrated with my playing and feeling that I’m creatively blocked. Other times I have fantastic nights where I’m happy with my playing. Because so much of what we do is based on a framework and then extended via improvisation, it’s a different experience from delivering a meticulously rehearsed performance. In the case of my other bands, such as “The Dudley Manlove Quartet” we spend time carefully crafting arrangements of our songs to continuously improve our show. It doesn’t mean the music is less challenging; only that it requires a different discipline where memorization and recall are emphasized.
Over the course of the past several years, these regular practice sessions have yielded some great music and fun times. We often wrap up our practices and walk together to a nearby bar for a beer and snacks, and general musical chatter. Making music with such fine friends is a joy. We’ll be releasing a CD on Friday September 14. Stay tuned for details!
Posted in:
Music,
My Bands
On Saturday 8/11 The Dudley Manlove Quartet performed at the Kirkland Summer Festival. I have played hundreds of festival shows over the past thirty years or so, and they usually involve some surprises. One of the absolute given facets of festival events is they will run behind schedule. The band before you will almost certainly start late and therefore they will run late. Fifteen minutes into what should have been our soundcheck we were still waiting for the previous band to leave the stage.
Still, we managed to set up pretty quickly and got ready for line checks. Naturally, when you’re in a hurry things will go wrong. One of my guitar cables, which has performed perfectly to date, decided to retire last night. I always carry spares, so it was a quick matter to switch it out. By the time we finally got to rocking the first song it was already getting toward dusk. Fortunately we have a supportive bunch of friends and fans, and it made for a great beginning for the night. We wound up skipping a couple of songs in the second set due to time constraints. Also, we had a few minor trainwrecks getting songs started… Jeff tried to count off “Summer of 69” when we were supposed to be starting “Power of Love”, and I followed up by biffing the beginning of “Summer of 69” thinking we were playing another song. I’m pretty sure nobody noticed, except that we did announce it in both cases and make fun of each other. Other than that I’m certain we got away with it.
Our set list was:
Set 1
Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You
It’s Not Unusual
Copacabana
Dancing Queen
Let’s Stay Together
Right Back Where We Started From
Always Something There To Remind Me
Venus
Sweet Caroline
I Wish
September
Suspicious Minds
Brown Eyed Girl
Set 2
Evil Woman (skipped)
Don’t You Forget About Me
Let’s Go
Power Of Love
Summer Of ’69
Melt With You
More Than This
Let’s Dance
Rio
Never Gonna Give You Up (skipped)
Little Red Corvette
Take On Me
Video Killed The Radio Star
Don’t Stop Believin’
My Life (encore)
A beautiful evening and always a joy to spend time with my bandmates. On to another show!
Posted in:
Music,
My Bands
On Friday 8/24 the Dudley Manlove Quartet performed in Bothell for one of their free public concerts in the park. I love these opportunities for us to play outdoors and it’s always fun to get exposed to new audiences. We played the usual assortment of crowd-pleasing hits, despite having to set up on the infield dirt of a softball diamond… why oh why did they put us there? Oh well. We happily played and had people dancing in the grass.
