John Hendow

This was a great weekend for the Dudley Manlove Quartet. We performed at wedding receptions on Saturday 7/31 and on Sunday 8/1. Both events were in the Seattle area, so we didn’t have very far to travel. The show on Saturday was at the Georgetown Ballroom, which is a beautiful venue. I will keep it in mind if I ever need to throw a big private party. It has a dining / reception hall and a separate ballroom with permanent stage and flown PA system. This made our setup a little easier since we could just patch into the house mixer and use their monitor amp feeds to power our wedges. We used one of our mains speakers as a drum fill. A major logistical bonus of this show was the painless load-in; we were able to park in a loading zone directly in front of the door and only had to carry equipment about 20 feet to the stage without encountering any stairs. The wedding party was composed of enthusiastic dancers, and we had a full dance floor from the beginning of our show.

Sunday’s performance was for a wedding in West Seattle and we had a bit of a load-in challenge for this show with some stairs and narrow corridors. The room was pretty large with a big stage. Our soundcheck was quick and we took the opportunity to run some of the requests including “Twist and Shout”, “Love Shack” and “Cecelia”.  Then the band walked over to Endolyne Joe’s for a beer and few games of Bananagrams. It also afforded us an opportunity to watch the sun set, which is always nice. Upon returning to the venue we changed into our suits and prepped for the show. I don’t usually put a microphone on my amp for this type of gig and the size of the room required a bit more amp volume than usual. I had the Twin turned up to 7, which is pretty loud for that amp. It sounds good at that volume, but I think we should probably start putting both the guitar and bass into the PA for shows this size. We started the show with the usual assortment of jazz standards, and I found myself wishing I had spent more time practicing solos over this material. Mack is especially good at playing over those changes and it’s a little daunting to follow his solos. It’s going to be a good summer of musical fun with the band, and we’re staying very busy!