Thoughts On The 6/12 Dudley Manlove Quartet Gig
Last Saturday the Dudley Manlove Quartet took a quick road trip to Lake Chelan for a wedding reception performance. The road trip, as always, was full of crazy humor and musical chatter. We arrived in Lake Chelan early and were set up on site pretty quickly. Mack had been hired to play piano during the afternoon, from the time guests arrived, through the wedding ceremony and during dinner. So while he sat in the sun merrily playing away, the rest of us went back to the hotel and spent a few hours sipping bourbon and lounging by the pool.
The show went well and our set included several requests from the wedding couple. This was the first time we’ve played “Summer of 69” since I joined the band. We changed the key on the song, which meant several of the guitar licks – which involve open string runs – had to be refactored in the new key. As a result, it was quite a bit harder and required a few extra hours of woodshedding to get those parts to sound smooth. It went well and I’d expect to see it making an appearance in future sets.
The wedding reception was at “Karma”, a small winery near the lake. They made their wines available to us for sampling throughout the night, and they do a lovely blend (along with some nice single-grape wines). We performed our set in the underground wine cave. I’m always pretty happy to be out of the sun, especially on hot days like this one.
We’ll be busy this summer performing at private events, but there are lots of great public shows as well. Come join us on Saturday 7/10 for Redmond Derby Days, Friday 8/13 at the Tulalip Casino, and Saturday 8/14 at the Tractor Tavern.