Gigging Stresses
Tomorrow night (that’s Saturday, May 3rd) I’ll be playing with Ghetto Fabulous at the Lo Kai in Dracut, Massachusetts. Here in upper New England we have a slew of Chinese restaurants with attached bar/club rooms complete with big stages and sprawling dance floors. It’s quite odd to me, but hey, it works, and that Lo Kai is one of them. Great setup for a band, to boot.
Those of you who know me are likely aware that the day or two leading up to a gig is always filled with dread of having to go through the gear-change of shifting into “gig mode.” This entails adjusting my day/night schedule, packing the car with all the required gear, driving to the gig, getting set up, and making sure everything is going to work for the gig. Once I get to the last step, I’m actually quite stoked about the night, and remain so all the way through the gig and even through tear down, load out and drive home. So I’ve learned to ignore my desire to cancel gigs and know that it’ll be great.
This weekend, we have two curveballs that are adding to that cancelation desire. The first is that we have a sub for one of our sax players. Now, he’s a fantastic sub and a great guy, but it’s a sub just the same and that reduces the comfort level of the gig somewhat. On top of that, I just found out that our sound engineer can’t make it. This is a huge shift because he brings his own audio gear and lights. WIthout him, not only do we have to mix from the stage, but we have to bring all our own gear, cobble together a PA, and then do the “braille mix” from the stage. We’ve done it before and it works out great, but it adds quite a bit of time and stress to the gig, in addition to adding a distraction DURING the gig that makes even the enjoyable part significantly less enjoyable.
But it looks like we won’t be canceling, so we’ll make it work, and I’m sure I’ll look back and realize all this whining was unfounded.
