Thoughts On The 3/19 Dudley Manlove Quartet Performance
On Friday 3/19 Dudley Manlove Quartet celebrated our 15th anniversary at the Nectar Lounge in Fremont. This was also the night we debuted the shiny new Plan 9 horns. Also joining us for the anniversary celebration were Matt and Joe, original members of the band who both happen to play a pretty mean sax. At a few points during the night we had ten musicians onstage, rocking the hits. Opening the night were our friends The Hemingway Reference, who played a fabulous first set. I’m sure we’ll work together again.
I arrived early enough to get loaded in and generally situated. The house sound operator is a longtime friend who used to run sound for us in Jumbalassy, and he’s also worked with The Preons. Great to catch up with him as we finished wiring the stage for soundcheck. We started the night with some great standards and the room’s energy was a great source of inspiration for us. At a few points during the night I found myself tempted to turn my guitar amp up, which means the stage volume was a bit louder than usual. My amp is only 40 watts, and when turned up tends to begin introducing some distortion; this is a deliberate characteristic of the amp’s design and not simply clipping due to excessive gain. In order to minimize logistic challenges at this show, Steve borrowed the opening band’s Epifani bass amp. He usually uses an SWR combo for our shows, and it sounds great. I was really impressed at the power and tone of the Epifani setup. It’s pretty tempting as a potential upgrade to my Ashdown bass / Warr guitar amp.
Overall, the gig was a blast and one that I’ll remember as a highlight of my first year with the band.