Thoughts On The 6/27 1 Upper Gig
On Sunday 7/27 The 1 Uppers made their debut at the Little Red Hen in Seattle. This is one of the better-established local country bars, and a gig there marked our official “coming out” party for the local scene. Sunday nights aren’t usually the best night night of the week for gigs, but the Little Red Hen has an advantage on those nights because they teach country dance lessons before the band starts to play. It definitely helped with getting people out onto the dance floor for some boot scootin’.
Several of our friends made the trek to the bar that night, so we had a few ringers in the crowd. Between them and the regulars, the place was packed! It made for a fun night of music with wildly enthusiastic reception to some of our songs. As observed by my friend Chris “…that was the world record for the largest number of people country dancing to ‘How Soon is Now’…”. Each of us took our turns that night at the microphone; I sang “Ring of Fire”, which is right in my baritone range. Hope I did Johnny Cash a reasonable bit of honor by taking that one on.
For this gig I decided I didn’t need the larger wattage of the Twin, so I brought the Hot Rod Deluxe. It was the right amp for this stage, but the biggest challenge was the layout. The Little Red Hen has a fairly wide but very shallow stage. Essentially, the band was presented in a single-file line across the front. On stage left I was situated somewhat behind Jon Hyde, but since he sits down when playing pedal steel I was still visible. When you’re a short guy, such things are a consideration…
Our first set was 2 hours long. This is a little unusul, but was a good strategy as it kept the crowd in motion. Once we took a set break around 11:00 PM people started to drift out, although we had a good bunch of people around until nearly the end of thenight. The gig felt like a great success. People stayed and danced until well into our second set, which ended around 1:15 AM. It made for a somewhat tough wakeup the next morning, but well worth it. We look forward to the next show at the Hen.