John Hendow

On Saturday The Dudley Manlove Quartet performed at The Triple Door in Seattle. This is probably the nicest night club in the city and has a wonderful staff. We arrived in the late afternoon for a somewhat chilly load-in. Once we got set up and changed into our suits, we spent about 45 minutes taking pictures. We’ve been wanting to do a new promotional picture of the band for some time, and this seemed like a good opportunity for us to take a number of shots. Our friend Kristi was kind enough to come down to the club with her DSLR, and after reviewing the first bunch of her pictures I think we’ll have several very good ones for promo purposes.
The club has a backline of great gear available for bands to use while playing there, and I used the club’s ’65 Twin reissue guitar amp. This is a great amp and I’ve used in on numerous occasions when playing the club. For some reason it didn’t sound nearly as good as it usually does, and throughout the night I kept going back and attempting to dial it in. The tone was strident and flat. My guess is it needs new preamp tubes. My bandmates thought it sounded good, so perhaps this was just my perception of the amp’s tone.

This performance was a private party, booked by a corporate client almost a year ago. We performed three sets of material during the night, starting with a string of holiday hits. Once we settled into our more typical set, the audience began to dance – tentatively at first, but as the night went on the dance floor got more full. Nothing like great food, a few glasses of wine, and a fun band.

My pedalboard project is currently stalled while I await delivery of my Keeley-modded pedals. Rather than hauling the incomplete pedalboard to this gig I decided to remove the Line6 Pod XTLive and carry it in the old case. Since my wah pedal is one of the units being modified, I used to the built-in wah that’s part of the Pod. It’s actually not bad although the sweep is pretty big. It’s also a little strange to have my volume pedal be the wah pedal, since this means when I switch functions the volume is maxed out. I have a volume knob on my guitar, but it has a much different effect on the overall tone. Overall, I’m sure it stuff that others notice much less than I do. I’ve become so attuned to nitpicking about my tone that sometimes I obsess over things that probably should be below my threshold of concern.

One of my favorite things about The Dudley Manlove Quartet is that the band is composed of such wonderful friends. Hanging around backstage with this bunch is always a kick. Once we hit the stage it’s a three ring circus of music, humor and interplay. Playing music should be a joyful experience, and DMQ is a great example of how well that translates into a fun gig.