Much better night. Not totally great, but better.
First off, as we were packing up our stuff to leave, it started pouring rain. Cold rain. We loaded in the rain, and unloaded at the venue in the rain. The parking lot in back does not drain well, so right where we had to put our gear in was a 5 or 6 foot wide puddle of standing water about 4 inches deep. Everything got wet. Fortunately, as we were soundchecking, no electrocutions occurred(unfortunately?). We knew this coming into the gig, but the venue's stage is VERY small.
<img src="
http://home.attbi.com/~kirkrs/stage.jpg" alt="" />
See? Not much room to do anything. We tried our best anyway. Oh yeah, we had about 30 or forty people show up, which is actually pretty ok for the size of the venue, which is abuot equal to 2 living rooms and a kitchen mashed together. So it was a fairly good "crowd." Anyway, playing the show, it was hard to do much, for fear of falling offstage, or knocking something over, or summoning Cthtulhu. At the second song, a string broke on my main guitar, so I switched pretty cleanly and came back in with the band on time and in tune. Cool. First time I've ever had to do that.
<img src="
http://home.attbi.com/~kirkrs/stage7.jpg" alt="" />
Later on in the set, JP broke a string, so he had to borrow a guitar from the other band, Quid Pro. It took him a long time to tune, and it was pretty awkward standing there while everybody waited for us to play. Scott took care of it by getting everybody to make noise for few minutes. THEN, Aaron's snare stand COLLAPSED in the middle of a song. I heard him struggling to keep the beat, so I turned around to see what was up, and the sanre drum was rolling around in front of him. He was trying to keep it up with his free foot! It was really funny to watch, and eventually when he lost it, he switched over to his rack toms and ride cymbal to keep us in time. Good call.
<img src="
http://home.attbi.com/~kirkrs/jpupclose.jpg" alt="" />
We all felt really comfortable on stage this time around, except for it being so small. We gave out a few more CD's, and met some cool people. Lots of good pictures were taken by our awesome photographer, CHUD's own Alkindzsky.
<img src="
http://home.attbi.com/~kirkrs/scottupclose.jpg" alt="" />
At the end of it all, the owner of the club talked to us and said that he really, really, enjoyed our band, and so he gave us another show! Pretty cool, huh? That's the first time we've ever been invited back without initiating it ourselves. Very cool moment. Anyway, we hope to get a lot more people to show next time. And we're hoping it doesn't rain.
<img src="
http://home.attbi.com/~kirkrs/kirkupclose2.jpg" alt="" />
the next show is the 27th of August, and then another show up North in Muskegon, Michigan. We're playing a festival! Woohoo! I'm hoping and praying that MAYBE we can have our whole album done and ready to sell by then. Thanks for the good wishes, too!
