John Hendow

My existing live performance setup is very good. I use a combination of great instruments, boutique pedals, a central multi-effect unit and a fabulous tube amp. I’ve been very satisfied with the tone and versatility of my rig, but it has some factors that make it challenging:

• No presets for my boutique pedals. The only device in my system with any notion of “remembering” an effect setting is my Line6 M9. It does a great job of being the central nervous system of my pedalboard. Nothing else of my board has a preset mechanism, so making significant changes on the fly is limited.
• No computer-based editor for anything. I would love to have an editor / librarian system for my effects and preset management. Back when I had the Line6 Pod Pro, I used its GUI software on my laptop to manage presets. I sure miss that!
• Size and weight. My system is just about as small as I can make it, given my current requirements.

I have been considering the possibility of going to a fully modeled system, based around a central effect / amp modeling unit such as the Line6 Pod Pro HD X or the Fractal Audio Axe FXII. This would feed into a full-range flat response amplified speaker that would replace my tube amp. This type of setup would certainly address the issues I’ve outlined above, and it also gives me a single highly flexible system for guitar, bass and Warr guitar.

The challenge in this type of setup is selecting the appropriate modeler and foot controller, then completely recreating all of my tones. I have used Line6 equipment for over a decade and their newest lineup of gear is impressive; I’d say they have the front runner position based on my historic level of satisfaction with the company and their products. I have read a lot of testimonials from Axe FXII users and I’m impressed by what I’ve heard, but at 4x the price I’m uncertain of the value proposition. The next step in my investigation will involve some A/B testing. Stay tuned for details…

On Saturday 10/26 the Dudley Manlove Quartet performed at the Sunset Tavern for our annual Halloween Ball. As customary, we performed a tribute to a well-known band as part of the show. This year’s tribute band was Journey. I have always enjoyed Neal Schon’s playing and it required substantial effort to transcribe his solos. For the first set I decided to use my Gibson Les Paul with P90 pickups. This produced a very accurate representation of the tonal signature in the songs. During rehearsals I had been using the Wampler Sovereign plus my Boogie Lonestar to emulate the rock tone, but during final tech prep I dialed in a much more accurate patch on the Line6 M9, using a clean setting on the Lonestar. I’ll say it again: the Line6 M9 is the nerve center of my pedalboard.

For the second set I switched back to the trusty black stratocaster. The one major regret I had during this show was toward the end of the second set when I decided to remove my in-ear monitors and go with the stage mix… argh! It was great to hear my amp in such a direct manner but the overall sound on stage was pretty muddy and my vocals were lost. Chalk that one up to a lesson learned.

The night was very satisfying. I was delighted to see so many friends and fellow musicians at the show. My bandmates from “The Preons” made an appearance, and I haven’t seen them in far too long. Overall, a great show and one that makes me proud of how tight the band plays this wide variety of music. Definitely looking forward to our next show!

Set List

SET 1
Stone In Love
Any Way You Want It
Open Arms
Oh Sherrie
Separate Ways
Don’t Stop Believin’
Werewolves Of London
Evil Woman
Copacabana
It’s Not Unusual
Right Back Where We Started From
My Life
Sweet Caroline
I Wish
Suspicious Minds

SET 2
Let’s Go
Centerfold
China Girl
Let’s Dance
Power Of Love
Rio
The Promise
Call Me
American Girl
Little Red Corvette
Final Countdown
Melt With You
Video Killed The Radio Star
Take On Me

ENCORE
Don’t You Forget About Me

The Dudley Manlove Quartet’s Halloween Revelation
Sunset Tavern
5433 Ballard Ave. NW
Seattle, WA 98107
Saturday, Oct. 26 9PM
$12 advance/$15 DOS

Advance tickets available at http://www.strangertickets.com/events/8216548/dudley-manlove-quartet-halloween

DMQ welcomes you with open arms to escape aboard the wheel in the sky for a Halloween journey to new musical frontiers. We’ll trace the evolution of one of rock’s most beloved bands as we faithfully recreate their greatest hits. Who’s cryin’ now? You, if you don’t get your advance tickets!*

*As always, we apologize for the abundance of bad puns in the preceding message.

The Black Strat

We began our association over 20 years ago when I found it hanging on the wall of a local used guitar store. This is a late 80’s production model “Strat Ultra” with an ebony fretboard, staggered locking Sperzel tuners, 2-point fulcrum tremolo, and Wilkinsen roller nut. It’s also not entirely black… if you ever see this guitar in bright stage lighting you’ll notice it’s actually black with a pearl green clearcoat. According to my contact at Fender, there are a number of aspects about this guitar that are non-standard for the model, which suggests it was probably assembled in the “Fender custom shop” as a one-off customer order.

I knew this guitar was unusually good when I first picked it up. At that point it already had some fret wear and few dings and scratches. I immediately bonded with it and purchased it on the spot. The only significant change I made to this instrument was replacing the original electronics / pickguard. It had Fender “lace sensors” on it, with a humbucker in the bridge position. The replacement pickguard is the same black pearl finish, but is outfitted with Fralin blues pickups with a bass plate under the bridge.

Over the past 20+ years I’ve played this guitar for thousands of performances. We’ve had many adventures and covered a lot of miles together… it’s been my primary guitar for live shows, recordings, practicing, touring and teaching. I would estimate I’ve played at least ten thousand hours on this guitar! That’s a lot of wear on an instrument and on a lesser-quality guitar that toll can be irreparable. Earlier this year I finally had to accept the fact that the frets were very worn, the bridge saddle set screws were a mess, the string spacing was incorrect, and the sum result was a guitar with so many high-mileage idiosyncrasies that I was the only person capable of playing it. It was time for this guitar to see a doctor for significant work.

The only person I was willing to entrust this guitar to is Mike Lull. If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you know who he is. He’s not cheap, but as my friend Kris Geren says about guitar repair, “if you love it, send it to Lull”. Mike has worked on other guitars for me, including my strats, teles, and even my Warr Guitar.

The first thing Mike said upon looking at this guitar was that it should have been refretted a while ago. See? I told you nobody else could play it 🙂 He was right. The frets were very worn and rutted, and pretty uneven. We discussed options and I played several guitars in his shop to select the gauge and material for the new frets. Fortunately, the ebony fretboard was in very good condition and only minor resurfacing was needed. I gave Mike a list of additional work to do (see below) and we shook on it. Handing off my primary guitar for triple-bypass surgery gave me a few jitters, but I knew it was in good hands.

Two weeks later I picked up my reborn instrument. Here is the rundown on what was done:

• Refret with medium-jumbo stainless steel frets
• Plek treatment
• Replacement of rusty / corroded pickguard screws with stainless steel screws
• Grinding of the height-adjustment hex screws for the bridge saddles
• Complete setup

The instrument is MUCH different than before. Focusing on the most obvious (and expensive) element, it has new frets. The stainless steel frets are beautiful, shiny and smooth. They’re perfectly crowned and tuned. They’ll last forever and never corrode. Mike tightened up the neck/body connection and completely set up the instrument.

I haven’t played a show with it yet, but my initial reactions are

• WOW. This guitar is beautiful. The entire instrument just goes together so beautifully and plays so sweetly.
• It resonates and sustains like a boutique guitar should. It vibrates freely and evenly all along the entire neck.
• There is a newfound clarity in chords, especially in that tricky area in the first five frets. Fender guitars are notoriously out of tune between the third and seventh frets. This is a topic for a much longer blog post, but on the black strat the frets have been Plek’d , which has largely eliminated those issues.

This guitar was nowhere near this good when it rolled off the bench brand new. It has always been a fine instrument, but with this work completed it has become exceptionally great. This kind of transformation isn’t cheap… the shop bill for this work totaled more than I paid for the guitar! I have a few other guitars (ahem), and several of them were significantly more expensive than this one. Even my super-boutique-y Eric Johnson signature strat is relegated to backup status at gigs. That’s how special this black strat is to me. Having it achieve such a state of near-perfection is a beautiful thing.

In just a little under a month, The Dudley Manlove Quartet will take the stage at the Triple Door in Seattle for a fun night of music. I’ve been going back to listen to some of our songs to make adjustments to my guitar arrangements, especially where I’m covering two simultaneous parts. It’s an interesting process of deconstruction to take multiple parts and attempt to coalesce them into something that a single guitarist could perform.

In Jumbalassy, I experimented with covering multiple guitar parts by using a digital delay. In reggae songs there are usually a few separate distinctive parts:

• The “skank”, a partially muted chord occurring on 2 and 4 in the measure
• A rhythmic line providing interplay

These occur at the same time so there wasn’t a practical means of simultaneously recreating that effect as a lone guitarist. My solution involved a hall of mirrors: I’d tap the tempo into the delay using quarter-notes and set the delay for a whole note so it would take a full measure and repeat it once, remaining locked to the tempo of the song. Then it was just a matter of switching between the parts each measure… I’d play the skank one measure, then let the delay repeat it while I played the rhythmic picking part, then switch back the the skank while the other part repeated. It actually worked pretty well as long as the song didn’t have very complex chord changes. 

In DMQ I can’t get away with that kind of approach because the songs have complex arrangements and the guitar parts have significantly different timbres. It means my approach to layering the sounds has to be more of a compromise between the two parts, and sometimes requires a little technical trickery… one of my Stratocasters has a factory-installed Roland hexaphonic synth pickup system. I use it to drive a guitar synthesizer but one of the sneaky side-benefits of that system is that I can map different sounds to specific strings or zones on the fretboard. Again, it requires a careful arrangement of the parts to ensure I’m triggering the appropriate sounds.

The most challenging approach to this is in playing Warr Guitar, where my hands are independently performing on their own sides of the fretboard. It’s much harder for me to play this way. It might be due the fact that I never played piano with much facility, and I believe that type of hand independence would translate nicely to Warr Guitar. It takes me a bit of time to work out my parts on this instrument, but it’s very rewarding and fun. I’ve been considering using this instrument in the Dudley Manlove Quartet when we perform Depeche Mode songs; since I can independently route the signal paths for the two sides of the  instrument I could double the bass line and trigger a synth line at the same time.

In an upcoming post I’ll detail some of the songs that will involve a split-brain approach and discuss my approach to performing them.

On Saturday 6/15, the Dudley Manlove Quartet performed our big “Under Pressure” show  at the Crocodile in Seattle. Also on the bill were our friends “Halloqueen”, delivering their tribute to Queen. I had been working hard on the guitar parts for these songs over the past few months and created detailed transcriptions for my own reference in learning the parts. My objective was to do more than merely delivering a credible bar-band version of the songs; I wanted to absolutely recreate the original studio performances and tones. I’ll provide detailed notes on my transcriptions in another post.

The show involved setting up both bands with all equipment onstage and ready to do. This was necessary due to the number of songs where we combined elements from both bands. Multiple rehearsals were held to polish these songs involving guest performers. We knew it was going to be something special, and the show was a blast.

Here is the set list DMQ performed during the Bowie portion of the evening:

• Ziggy Stardust
• Rebel Rebel
• Space Oddity (with Brian Bermudez-sax)
• Suffragette City (with Sean Bates-vocals, Tim DiJulio-guitar, Brian Bermudez-sax)
• The Man Who Sold the World
• Life on Mars?
• Ashes to Ashes (with Kim Virant-vocals, Nikol Fiala-vocals)
• Changes (with Brian Bermudez-sax, Kim Virant-vocals, Nikol Fiala-vocals)
• Golden Years (with Brian, Kim, Nikol)
• Fashion (with Kim Virant-vocals, Nikol Fiala-vocals, Chris Friel-drums)
• China Girl (with Kim Virant-vocals, Nikol Fiala-vocals)
• Fame (with Kim Virant-vocals, Nikol Fiala-vocals)
• Blue Jean (with Brian Bermudez-sax, Kim Virant-vocals, Nikol Fiala-vocals)
• Young Americans (with Brian Bermudez-sax, Kim Virant-vocals, Nikol Fiala-vocals)
• Let’s Dance (with Brian Bermudez-sax, Kim Virant-vocals, Nikol Fiala-vocals)
• Heroes (with Brian Bermudez-sax, Kim Virant-vocals, Nikol Fiala-vocals)

I wound up using my trusty black stratocaster for this show. During rehearsals I experimented with using my Les Paul, but due to the range of guitar tones involved, the strat seemed like the best overall fit. I brought the Eric Johnson strat as well, fully intending to use it for the later material, but once we got underway there was just no time during the set to make the switch.  That black strat and I have been together a long time and it never fails me. Honestly I don’t know why I even own other guitars 🙂

Overall I was very satisfied with the performances during the show. The most difficult material for me to really nail was the ferocious Robert Fripp guitar solo in “Fashion”, and the delicate guitar work in “Life on Mars”. For tone building I relied on a combination of the Wampler Sovereign distortion, Way Huge Pork Loin overdrive, Line6 delay, TC Electronic reverb, and Strymon Lex rotary pedal. It was also the debut of my newly reconfigured pedalboard and I was happy with the outcome. For our next public performance, DMQ will be performing more of a standard mix of material, but I suspect a few Bowie songs might sneak their way into the set.

Welcome to the 2013 installment of my pedalboard evolution

Apparently, May is the month each year when I completely tear down and rebuild my guitar pedalboard. I outlined last year’s rebuild in another article and it generated some interesting discussion with other musicians. For this year I decided to make a few strategic changes, with a some pedals sidelined and others called into action. Here’s an overhead shot of the 2013 version of my pedalboard. Note that everything is powered up, which is purely for photographic purposes… the actual sound with everything turned on is akin to the mating call of the Kraken.

Spring cleaning

I started this year’s rebuild with the ritual of removing everything from the board and completely cleaning the surface with alcohol. I keep my equipment fairly clean but there always seems to be “that one gig” when someone spills a beer onto my pedalboard. Fortunately cleaning and prep was a quick job this time. With that step completed I sorted my cables by length to reuse as many as possible. I use George L cable for my pedalboards and am happy with their performance, plus they are very simple to make or modify. Their right-angle connectors stick out about 1/2″ from the pedal housing, and my densely packed boards always have some places where two of those connectors meet. I play “pedalboard tetris” and arrange the pedals to minimize those plug-to-plug spacing requirements, but I usually have at least a few special cables that I have to solder up using “pancake” solder connectors to allow a closer fit.

Let’s meet the 2013 lineup

• Pedal Train 3 Pedalboard with flight case. I have been using the Pedal Train 3 for a few years now. At 16×24 inches it’s big enough to hold a reasonable assortment of pedals but it still compact. It’s built to last forever.
• VoodooLab Pedal Power Digital [Added for 2013 rebuild]. This is a high-current DC power supply for my all my pedals. I’ve been using a VoodooLab Pedal Power 2+ for years, but this year’s board rebuild required higher output for pedals like the Strymon Lex. This power supply does not have enough individual outputs for the number of pedals on my board, so I use a few splitters for the low-draw pedals, leaving dedicated feeds where necessary for power-hungry pedals.
• Empress Buffer + [Added for 2013 rebuild]. This is a nice patch point for input / output. It includes both a selectable boost and an output buffer to moderate signal loss on the return line to the amp.
• A/B Switch. This is one my pedals I built to give me a simple way to switch between my wired guitar signal and the wireless receiver. Nothing fancy inside this box… it’s just a 3PDT switch with a couple of LEDs and current-limiting resistors.
• Line6 G50 Receiver. Line6 makes three models of guitar wireless systems. I have been using the G50 for a few years now and it’s without question the best wireless system I’ve ever used. It has great range and a fantastic transparent tone with full dynamics.
• Mission Engineering VM-1 Volume Pedal. This pedal is in a wah-style housing and is a straight-forward volume pedal. I love the smooth travel and transparency of this volume control.
• Mission Engineering SP-1 Expression Pedal [Added for 2013 rebuild]. This pedal is also in a wah-style housing. It provides continuous control output for the both the M9 and the Strymon Lex, courtesy of the amazing magic in the Expressionator (see below). I use this as a wah controller as well. In addition to being a sweep-style controller, this pedal also has a switch in the toe position, allowing me to control other effect settings. A very clever and useful pedal all around.
• Line6 M9. The M9 is the nerve center of my pedalboard and provides a wide range of multi-effect settings. It’s especially handy for setting up the base configurations for my tones, which I can augment with outboard pedals.
• Mission Engineering Expressionator [Added for 2013 rebuild]. This pedal is pure magic. It allows you to connect a single controller (such as the Mission Control SP-1) as an input, and then simultaneously route the controller information to three separate outputs. This means I can send control information to the Strymon Lex and the Line6 M9 at the same time, and still have another output available for future use. The sweep / taper can be set for each output, and the pedal has internal memory for saving presets.
• Modulation Controller. I built a simple on / off modulation controller in a tiny housing, to control expression input #1 on the M9. This allows me to have 2 settings for effects and switch between them without changing presets. For example, I have the delay mix and regeneration set fairly low as the default, but stomping the switch sets them to a higher level. The pedal itself is just a 3PDT switch, LED + current limiting resistor, and is wired to short the tip / sleeve (in one switch position) or connect via a 10K resistor (in the other switch position). The M9 perceives those inputs as MIN and MAX settings from a controller.
• Sonic Research ST-200 Turbo Tuner. There is a tuner in the M9, but I prefer the Sonic Research ST-200. It’s bright, easy to read, and on my pedalboard is always on.
• Xotic Effect EP Booster. This pedal mimics the tonal characteristics of an Echoplex  EP-3 preamp section. Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page and Eric Johnson all use an EP-3 inline as part of their signal chain. This pedal is always turned on. It also has a boost, which I typically don’t use.
• Keeley 4 Knob Compressor. Robert Keeley makes beautiful guitar effects. This compressor is clean and transparent. I only use it for big strat tones, to evoke Stevie Ray Vaughan or David Gilmour. My version of this pedal happens to be a rare all-black variant. Not that I’m into black or anything.
• Wampler Sovereign Distortion [Added for 2013 rebuild]. I always need to have a “Marshall on ten” sound. This pedal has a huge gain range and delivers a full tone for those big rock songs. It’s only available from “a certain nationwide guitar chain” so you’ll need to go in or order it online. This is a damned fine distortion pedal. Wampler makes great gear.
• TC Electronic Trinity Reverb. TC Electronic makes beautiful equipment. This reverb pedal is a winner. It is a variant on the “Hall of Fame” reverb pedal, and includes a few extra preset models only available in the “Trinity”. You will have purchase this one from Pro Guitar Shop in Portland, Oregon. This is my favorite guitar store and is a joy to visit; they also have a fantastic web site with demo videos.
• Way Huge Pork Loin. First of all, it’s just really fun to say “Way Huge Pork Loin”. It’s somewhat based on the Tube Screamer tone, but has a much warmer sound with better clarity. I use this pedal to get some of my gritty blues / rock tones, and occasionally stack it with the Wampler Sovereign for solos.
• Strymon Lex [Added for 2013 rebuild]. Strymon makes stunning pedals. This is their “Leslie in a box” pedal, and I don’t know how they did it so convincingly. This is my favorite modulation effect. If you hear me play live you may notice that I use this effect quite a bit. I control the rotation speed via the Mission SP-1.

Signal chain

The signal chain (order) is :

Guitar->Empress Buffer+ -> Xotic Effects EP Booster -> Keeley Compressor -> Way Huge Pork Loin -> Wampler Sovereign-> Strymon Lex -> Line6 M9 -> TC Electronic Trinity -> Mission Engineering VM-1 -> Empress Buffer+ -> Amp

Here’s another shot of the top of the board with the pedals identified. 

1. Empress Buffer +
2. A/B Switch
3. Line6 G50 Receiver
4. Mission Engineering VM-1 Volume Pedal
5. Mission Engineering SP-1 Expression Pedal
6. Line6 M9
7. Mission Engineering Expressionator
8. Modulation Controller
9. Sonic Research ST-200 Turbo Tuner
10. Xotic Effecst EP Booster
11. Keeley 4 Knob Compressor
12. Wampler Sovereign
13. TC Electronic Trinity Reverb
14. Way Huge Pork Loin
15. Strymon Lex

Recommendations

For pedals that I build myself, I’ll make a big recommendation to Pedal Parts Plus. They stock a wide variety of pedal enclosures, switches, LEDs, and other parts. They offer drilling, custom painting and screen printing services for a custom professional finish. I’ve been ordering from them for years and have always been delighted with their service and support. Pedalboard configurations for my customers often include enclosures that I’ve purchased from Pedal Parts Plus.

I have a few items on my 2013 board from Mission Engineering. They produce high-quality equipment designed to survive the rigors of touring and are always coming up with new clever gizmos.

When you’re working out the initial layout for a pedalboard, there’s a handy online tool called Pedalboard Planner. It’s designed to help you arrange your pedals on one of the Pedal Train boards. If you are using another brand of pedalboard you can still use this tool as long as you know the dimensions of your board; just choose the next biggest platform and use their ruler tool to define the working space. Also, this tool does not show you the required clearance for plugs so expect to leave at least 1/2″ clearance for jacks.

On Saturday June 15, The Dudley Manlove Quartet will be performing at The Crocodile Cafe in Seattle, along with our pals “Halloqueen” for an evening of Queen + Bowie. DMQ is polishing up a solid set of Bowie songs and it’s been interesting to work on these transcriptions. I’ve stated in the past how important I think it is to completely understand the song in order to perfectly recreate the recorded performance, and for me the best way to do that is to make a painstakingly accurate transcription of the guitar part(s) and then memorize my transcription. Over the past few weeks I’ve finished writing out the entire night of material including some great solos by Mick Ronson, Carlos Alomar, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Robert Fripp. Bowie’s rotating cast of guitarists included some fairly incredible players, and transcribing these idiomatic guitar parts is the key to decoding the style of the guitarist.

As we get closer to our first full-band rehearsal for this material I’ll be dialing in tones to match the parts. This show is going to require both my Les Paul and Strat, as  it will likely be impossible to conjure all those tones from a single instrument. This is the other aspect of recreating the sounds of the original recordings. I’ve made extensive notes in the transcriptions for the timbre and effect settings for each section of the songs, and in a few cases I’ll be doing some creative tap-dancing on my pedalboard to rapidly jump back and forth between settings.

I strongly encourage other musicians to work on transcribing music that you want to really understand. It’s a very powerful mechanism for analyzing song structure and playing style. I frequently notice new aspects to songs as a result of writing out charts and it gives me better insight into my own playing style, including some mannerisms that creep into my playing as a result of muscle memory. As always, hold up the mirror and pay attention. 🙂

Playing gigs with a band is really all about the music… except when it’s not. As a professional musician of 30+ years, I am something of a road warrior and have done a lot of successful touring with my bands. As a professional Project Manager, I can tell you there are a number of things you should have with you to help mitigate risk and let you to focus on the music. In this post, I will outline the contents of three handy road kits and describe where they should be stored. With only a few exceptions (spare guitar and spare amp) these are not expensive items and you can probably pick up everything in a single stop at a department store.

KIT #1 : For Onstage Emergencies

These are things to have within reach while you’re playing. Everything other than the first item should be in a small, well-organized bag near the stage. I’m partial to “alice” (military surplus) bags, but you can find plenty of options that have small interior pockets to carry the following items:

• Spare Guitar : Someday your primary guitar will have some kind of issue… you’ll break a string, have a sudden wiring problem, or heaven forbid something worse… put your spare guitar on a stand next to your main guitar and tune then both before starting your set. Test your backup guitar during soundcheck to make sure it’s ready to go. 
• LED Flashlight : Get a decent, reliable LED flashlight. This should be right at the top of the bag in case you need it.
• Spare Strings and a String Winder
• Spare Cables : You should have an extra 1/4″ instrument cable at the ready, on stage, near your amp. If you use a MIDI control pedal, have an extra MIDI cable.
• Spare Batteries : For your pedals, wireless transmitter, LED flashlight, etc.
• Spare Fuses : Look at the back of your amp and find out what kind of fuse it takes. Buy spare fuses for anything in your rig that takes a fuse.
• Spare Amp : If you play through an amplifier, it will someday fail onstage. Get an Electro Harmonix 44 Magnum pedal and keep it in your emergency bag. That little pedal puts our 44 watts of usable power. When your amp dies at a gig, use the 44 Magnum to drive the speaker in your amp until you can diagnose the problem. This pedal is cheaper than carrying extra tubes and frankly, a lot more likely to be an effective solution onstage. I’ve had very few amp failures in my career, but they’re guaranteed to occur and you can be prepared to survive if you have this handy pedal. My trusty Mesa Boogie Lonestar died on me at a gig once; I was extremely fortunate that (1) this happened to be an early evening show (2) it was less than 15 miles from my house and (3) I was able to get my backup amp (Fender Hot Rod Deluxe) before show started. The next day I bought the 44 Magnum.
• Ear plugs : Buy a bunch of pairs of foam earplugs.
• Multi-tool : Get a Leatherman tool. This will provide pliers, knife, screwdrivers, a file, and other handy stuff including a bottle opener. If you play a guitar with a Floyd Rose tremolo, have extra hex wrenches as well.
• Sharpie pens : You should have at least six of them available at all times. Great for set lists, autographs, etc.
• Business cards

KIT #2 : For Minor Inconveniences

Your second kit should be offstage somewhere but inside the club rather than “out in the van”. The point is, you may need these items without warning and having them in your dressing room is a gig-saver. Keep track of your stock on this kit since it contains consumable items. For this kit I recommend getting a hard-sided plastic tote box.

• First Aid Kit : This should be a basic first aid kit with tweezers, band-aids, alcohol swabs, antiseptic ointment, sterile gauze pads and surgical tape. Throw in a styptic pencil to staunch bleeding from minor cuts. Bonus points for grabbing a few instant ice packs.
• Over-the-counter drugs :
  • You should have an ample supply of Ibuprofen, Immodium, and Dramamine. You will be thankful you stocked this stuff if you’re ever  on the road and suffering from diarrhea or nausea.
  • Theraflu or other cold medicine.
  • Cough drops.
  • If you are prone to mild allergic irritation, bring some antihistamines.
  • Sunscreen.
• Saline solution. Eyes get irritated. Stuff gets in them. Saline solution is a blessing. Absolutely required if somebody in your band wears contacts.
• Super glue
• Basic sewing kit
• Nail clippers
• Travel-size packages of Kleenex for sniffles, sneezes, and emergency TP use.
• 8 x 12 foot plastic tarps and a package of bungee cords : Get four of these tarps and leave them in their packaging. Carry a variety pack of bungees. Someday you will be playing an outdoor gig and the weather will turn. You’ll be glad you have some way to protect your gear while you’re figuring out what to do. After you use them, let them dry and fold them neatly again.

KIT #3 : For Maintenance and Repair

This is the gear you can leave “out in the van”. You won’t need it often but pack it in a small container you can easily find.

• Soldering iron, solder and flux
• Multimeter
• Power strip and extension cord
• Electrical tape
• Basic tool box : Pliers, blade + Phillips screwdrivers, utility knife, crescent wrench
• WD-40

Your Lifeguard

Have a lifeguard on duty. If you’re playing in your home town, chances are some of your musician buddies will be coming to your gig. So take stock of who is there and if you need their help during the gig, holler their name and ask them to come to the stage. You might have a good friend willing to come to the gig just for that purpose. For your big local shows, this is a great insurance policy. Most of the time things will be fine and your friend can just enjoy the show. Reward them with a beer and return the favor by supporting them at a gig.

When you’re on the road this is obviously more challenging. Sometimes I play on a bill with other bands, and I make a point of getting to know other musicians backstage. That’s a great source of support in case a problem arises onstage. If it’s just my band playing the whole night then I work the crowd. As a guitarist I am at the front of the stage. When setting up and doing soundcheck, I keep an eye on the audience and see if anyone is checking out my pedalboard or my guitar rig. My guess is either they’re a musician or they’re considering stealing my gear. So I engage them in conversation and establish a person-to-person rapport with them. I have met some really fantastic people this way and made great friends from this beginning AND now I have identified a fellow musician who might be recruited as a lifeguard in the event of an onstage emergency.

I can tell you from personal experience that it’s awesome to have some help in case of a blowout. It’s also awesome to be able to help a fellow musician. My band “Jumbalassy” was once performing at a club and the guitarist in the opening band broke a string during the middle of their set. It was obvious he didn’t have a backup guitar. He limped his guitar through to the end of the song and started to look around for his guitar case so he could dig out some strings and begin the process of doing an on-stage string replacement… but before ten seconds had passed I was at the foot of stage with my guitar, which I exchanged for his. When they finished with the next song I was back with his guitar, freshly strung and tuned. After the show we introduced ourselves and shared a beer. A good friendship was established that night. Help your brethren.

Last night The Dudley Manlove Quartet rehearsed for our upcoming 18th Anniversary Show. One of the great characteristics of this band is how well the members of the band mesh as friends and musicians. This is my fourth year with the band and over that time we’ve developed into a cohesive, high-performing group. It’s something that requires an investment of performing and rehearsing together, and the benefits are huge. During last night’s rehearsal we reviewed material that will be on the set this Friday, and even took an impromptu detour into Bowie-ville with his hit “Fame” (no, we’re not doing that song this weekend, but we WILL be officially adding it later this summer).

The more time we spend together playing, it becomes easier to form that elusive near-telepathic mental connection as musicians. The music flows through the band readily, and we hear each others’ playing with clarity. It also means as individuals we’re hearing ourselves differently. In that “zone” my guitar becomes an extension of my musical thought, and I don’t have to worry about making my hands do what they’re supposed to.

Looking forward to this week’s show, I hope we’ll find ourselves building on the success of the rehearsal sessions. It requires a significant investment of time and energy to put this kind of thing on the rails, and I’m honored that so many of our fans keep coming back to enjoy the shows. We’ll see you this weekend!