Well this was our 7th gig since our return from the enforced sabbatical. All had been brilliant, but the run came to an end here.

The last time we played this club probably about 25 Roadhouse supporters came (plus a good few locals) from pretty long distances to see us play a rare gig in this part of the world. Well not having gone North at all since our return, I thought it would be a good idea to stay in touch with people even if with the petrol involved, this gig would cost us money.

Bad decision, as it turned out. I remember the room (a modern concrete sports hall with a high stage) being a bit poor for sound.  As we arrived the memories came rushing back and no matter what volume we set things at things were out of proportion in different parts of the room. Apparently the promoter, Alan Robson, usually puts up a curtain to stop a bit of the sound bounce, but he was full of flu and obviously didn’t have the energy.

Well the good news, about 15 Roadhouse supporters came (plus some locals) and we saw quite a few special freinds and talked about future shows with some promoters. At the end of the first set we came off knowing that we’d played a really good first set and totally happy.

It went wrong at that point as some people thought the sound was fine others said it was too loud, others said they couldnt hear the girls , others could abut could not hear the guitars in balance. It all depended where they were sitting in the room. We tried our best to address all this and by the end we’d turned in a really good performance with improved sound.

 

However, the promoter said that some people had complained about the vocal harmonies being out of tune. Now Sarah’s monitor 95% failed from early on in the gig, but I could hear the vocals throughout and there were only a couple of times that they went fractionally off, so I’ve no idea what he was talking about?. He also started the you need to bring more people rant. Well my answer to that is as ever we’ll bring the quality and as many people as we can, you promote!!!!!!!,

Its only a band thats was rated by music writers as being the top 15 best live bands in the UK in 2011, Dark Angel as being the 4th best UK release in 2011, that has played Glastonbury and has two great looking and fabulous sounding female vocalists. Can someone sell that???

We need more people like Alan. Here he is running a club with little support and often making a loss. How brave and dedicated is that. We (Bands) need more people to be like him and do this to keep live music alive. The pressure on these people is vast as they gamble with their own money. Its tough in a recession with a shrinking market for live music, so I have a lot of empathy here.

What I do know is that this is a very hard room (the hardest we’ve played for years) for sound.

Well it was great to see our friends

Gary