John Hendow

I quite enjoyed our show this Saturday. It was an evening of seeing great friends and wrapping up Friday’s birthday fun (I somehow turned 44… I’m still not entirely certain how that happened). My friend Edgars made an appearance, having recently earned his computer science degree and joined the brethren of programmer geeks. He is one of those smart guys who knows his way around in the insides of hardware and software. Also making an appearance was my god-daughter Sarah, who isn’t 21. She hung out in the Venus lounge next door and peeked through the doorway to see us play. Her father Patrick is a friend of mine since childhood, and he was visiting us this weekend with his fiancee, so they were both in attendance as well. My good friend Frank made an appearance and provided moral support, along with smart musical observations. Right after we finished loading our gear off the stage, Kellie and Cynthia showed and asked what time we were going on…. it was lovely to see them, and I’ll look forward to seeing them at the next gig.

The Mars bar is cozy and always has a great vibe. Being in a small bar, on a bill with multiple bands always makes for an interesting logistics challenge. We managed to get ourselves set up without much trouble, and left our gear in place since the opening act was a solo acoustic musician. Midway through his set the third band arrived, loading in an impressive mountain of equipment… multiple amps, a big drum set, a cello, Fender Rhodes… the loads of gear kept coming and coming. I wondered if they had knocked over a pawn shop or something. Fortunately they found room for all those items in the various nooks and crannies of the club.

Our set went very well. Josh was full of energy and dug into the songs with passion. Life events have a way of showing up in how we express ourselves. I was glad to see him so intensely “in the moment” at the gig. Janie did a nice job of driving the songs and was especially groovy on Charlie Munden. Brad was great as always. He seems to have a solid sense of when to go for it, and those moments (especially trumpet solos) were wonderful. I had a lot of fun. This may be have been one of my favorite gigs with this band.

I used the five-string on most of the songs, but did a quick switch to the 4 string fretless for the middle of the set. Frank observed that the fretless has better overall tone. Teri made the same comment about the fretless. It is a very fine instrument and I’m thinking of using it as my main bass for future gigs. Warwick basses have a very nice balanced sound that sits beautifully in the mix. I’m still considering the purchase of a six-string fretted bass, but at the moment I’m much more in need of a better amp. My Behringer just isn’t really cutting it for gigs. The tone is woofy and undefined. I want the fundamental tone of my bass to sound more like a piano. It’s all a moot point really, as any gear acquisition will need to wait for a while. Our ongoing house projects are tapping all the available financial resources.

Going forward I will be introducing more live processing into my sound. I haven’t been using the Pod on my bass much in a live setting, but I’d like to start doing some looping and making more dimensional sounds. It’ll be an interesting experiment to bring these elements into play.