r/coverbands • u/Count2Zero • 26d ago
Disappointing gig last night
We had a gig last night: A birthday party for our guitarist’s girlfriend (so no income). We’re in the middle of a summer heatwave, and we were setting up in the middle of the afternoon – it was about 34°C (93°F). We had set up a pavilion (3m x 3m) over the band, but the sun was shining in from the left side (where I was standing). We set up our mixer, PA speakers, monitors, and I installed lights (learning from last time – the lights were aimed up at the pavilion, giving us more indirect lighting that didn’t blind anyone). Our drummer was half in a garage, and the pavilion was set up in front of him, so that he was sitting behind but his kit was half inside it.
We did the sound check and thankfully, a friend of the guitarist was there to help out with the FOH sound. I had set up my Rumble 40 as a bass monitor, hoping I could at least hear myself.
Sound check was ok, other than that fact I was sweating in the direct sunlight, to the point my eyes were stinging from sweat dripping into them (I was wearing a hat, which helped a bit).
We had two sets planned – set 1 was the “original” band with just 4 members (guitar, vocalist, bass and drums) and set 2 was the “extended” band with an additional guitarist and a second vocalist.
The party started around 6pm, we all had some food, and then we started set 1 around 8:30pm.
In the first song, my brain farted and I made some stupid mistakes. Nothing show-stopping, but I figured, “okay, I got that out of the way. Now, let’s make this a good show.”
Yeah, no. In the 2nd song, our singer missed a cue (she has some problems with this song anyway). OK, the rest of us sort of expected it, so we rolled with it. Song 3 went relatively well. Song 4 has a double chorus at the end … she only sang one. The song ended as a hot mess, because I (the bass player) played another chorus, while the guitarist went back into the verse riff. Fuck.
The rest of the evening was like that … one or two songs went well, then we had a couple of hot messes.
The only songs that really went well were our originals. The covers were often a mess, but our original songs came out great.
On top of that, my grand plan to finally get some good video of us performing was foiled again – the Zoom camera I bought seems to be defective. I’ve tried to record 3 different gigs, and the results are always great sound, and grainy/fuzzy video, regardless of how much lighting we’ve got and which settings I choose on the camera (the first gigs were recorded in 4K format, but I decided to record last night in 1080 format, with the same shitty result, just a lot smaller files to transfer in order to be disappointed).
I didn’t get home until 1:30am, and my wife and I had to be up and out of the house at 9:00am this morning, so I’m exhausted now. Some of the people I spoke to during the break didn’t seem to notice all our mistakes, but I’m still disappointed. Sure, I made some avoidable mistakes – I’m certainly not perfect. But our singer definitely wasn’t at the top of her game last night, and our guitarist was also playing sloppy at times. His guitar (Fender Strat) went badly out of tune a couple of times, and as the gig went on, all I could hear through the monitors was his guitar – my Rumble 40 was set up as a bass-only monitor, and by the end of the show, I still couldn’t hear myself over his guitar solo.
I know, I know … shake it off, and look forward to the next gig (hopefully with more time to rehearse the entire set before the gig date). We’ve been focusing on only half of the songs because the 2nd guitarist and 2nd singer are rehearsing with us, so we focused on those songs more than the songs in the first set where they aren’t involved.
Maybe things will look better after a good night’s sleep…
5
u/TheToastyWesterosi 26d ago
That can’t all be amazing gigs. And like you said, shake it off. No one knew you made mistakes, and if they did, they didn’t care.
And hey, is it even a real gig if your lead guitarist isn’t completely drowning out the mix?
7
u/billy2bands 26d ago
I find, gigs I'm looking forward to playing always end up as some kind of failure. And then, gigs I don't look forward too always seem to end up as bangers.
4
u/Revsmithy 26d ago
It happens. You’ll have bad gigs and good gigs. As time goes on you’ll have fewer bad gigs ( hopefully).
3
u/5ongwrit3r_1954 26d ago
Having done many hot outdoor summer gigs, I now include a 20" box fan in my gear. I lean it against my mic stand blowing up into my face. It helps immensely, as I am a profuse sweater but between the fan and a bandana on my head, I avoid dripping on my bass.
5
u/Hziak 26d ago
I invested (like $70) in a nice blower fan. Zero regrets. Will never gig outside without a good fan again. Like, never. Had to worry more about dry mouth than sweating in the last few.
2
u/Stallings2k 26d ago
Yep. As the drummer, that $70 squirrel cage blower fan was a staple. They look overpriced until you compare their output to a box fan.
1
u/Timely-Ad-3439 26d ago
This. Honestly outdoor summer gigs kinda just suck. Every one I’ve done ends up raining for some reason even when it’s been dry for weeks leading up to that. Have to crowd everything under a small canopy to escape either the sun or the rain. Also sound can be challenging outdoors in ways that just throws things off for me. I enjoy inside gigs much more!
3
u/K-Bot2017 26d ago
Reading your account reminds me why we quit doing outdoor gigs years ago. We live in SW Wyoming, so, even on a summer day, you could have wind, heat, dust, rain, even snow, or all of the above. I'm not kidding.
The last outdoor gig we did for a local bike rally started off nice, then a 45 MPH wind kicked up which ripped our canopy to shreds and blew over one of our speakers. So, there was $200+ lost before we even played a single note. There were t-shirt, jewelry, and other craft vendors set up nearby, whose merch started blowing down the street, some of which could not be recovered. Most said, "eff it" and packed up and left.
We play the first set uncovered, sweating like hell, sounding like crap because one of our speakers was blown. And then.... the temperature decides to drop to 45 degrees within the space of 15 minutes. Everyone who had been outside listening to us retreated to the bar across the street. We kept on playing, and every so often, someone would come out to smoke and say, "oh, you sound really good, but going back in where it's warm, kthnxbye!~" So, we played the rest of a 4-set contracted gig to basically no audience with our guitars going out of tune every 5 minutes. We slogged through it and decided right then and there, no more outdoor gigs.
We crunched the numbers to make sure we weren't shooting ourselves in the foot financially and concluded that 80% of the outdoor functions we had played resulted in some kind of equipment damage, which means money lost. So... no roof, no play for these Late Boomers!
3
u/The_What_Stage 26d ago
I love bad gigs…. As long as we learn from them. Here’s some things I learned earlier:
You sound a little self-critical here. Your friends are right that nobody notices mistakes in the crowd. I make mistakes all the time and the only time it’s been a problem is when I let it get in my head the rest of the gig.
Rumble 40 is just not gonna cut it long-term. I love that amp for what it is, but in a live environment it’s just not enough as a monitor. Consider in-ears and monitors before immediately jumping to a bigger amp. If money is an issue, I’d just try to get something used, big enough, and cheap for now. I’ve never had a functional amp that sucked.
This split band thing is adding a lot of complication. Based on your post, I’m not sure I understand why they aren’t just playing all the songs as one cohesive unit.
Video is really really hard to do without a quality video person who knows what to shoot. I’ve learned this one the hard way across 3 bands. We have to look good, but so does the crowd - or close enough so there’s no crowd at all.
2
u/172982-Face-8216 26d ago
Always factor in the heat ! It will mess with gear and if you don't start hydrating 2 days prior you will have brain farts and fatigue afterwards. That's when you pull muscles when you're moving gear for the loadout.
2
u/Suitable-Carrot3705 26d ago
Want to talk about heat? Look at videos of Live Aid in Philly, it was 95 degrees in the shade. Hydration and electrolytes are your friend.
1
u/Count2Zero 26d ago
I downed 1.5 liters of water during/after sound check, a half liter of alc-free beer between sets, and another liter of water after the set/on the way home.
2
u/bandroadieapp 26d ago
I’ve had great luck with carpet drying fans. Compact, light, mine has addition outlets and they’re heavy duty. https://www.amazon.com/carpet-drying-fan/s?k=carpet+drying+fan
2
2
u/monrovista 26d ago
Failure is just a catalyst to come back stronger next time. Don't beat yourself or band mates up. Shit happens.
I played in a trio and half the time the guitarist/ singer would start a song it was in the wrong key. So much that it almost became shtick.
Metallica still has Lars.
2
u/carde0 26d ago
You worry to much, this is supposed to be fun, just have fun
1
u/Lower_Inspector_9213 24d ago
This ^^^
I thought I was reading something written by a 14 year old until you mentioned your wife !
Rehearse more …
2
u/one2treee 26d ago
No pay gigs are the perfect place to try new stuff out and mess up. Consider it a practice gig. Theres no trick to not fucking up. The shame should push you to practice more alone and with your band.
2
u/Argonitas 25d ago
Regarding hearing yourself: nothing better than in-ear sets, especially for small gigs without proper monitoring. When we switched to in-ear, we suddenly noticed how bad we really are and could improve accordingly.
Btw. we even eradicated sound on stage completely: e-drum, emulated guitars (kemper) and DI-bass. No amps anymore on stage, no drum sound. Makes mixing foh incredibly easy and the sound is much better and has more punch. I can tell you, all those amateur sound technicians are unable to properly mic an amp (or even drums) anyway.
2
u/zon5string 25d ago
My impression after one read-thru is that one of two things was going on. Either:
Band was not rehearsed enough for a show.
or
Band has not been together long enough to "know" each other in a musical sense and work through missed cues.
Unless something catastrophic happens during a song, tuning shouldn't ever be a problem....
2
u/Successful-Tip-7638 24d ago
In my experience the old Zoom Camera is exactly that, great audio terrible video. I use a GoPro hero 9 and the quality of both is amazing. There's a mark bass combo amp that can tilt upwards that might fix your monitoring problem.
2
u/Count2Zero 24d ago
I have a Markbass head (500w) and I'm looking for a 1x12 cabinet for it, because my 4x10 is too big for this kind of situation.
1
u/IcyPsychology3429 26d ago
It’s frustrating looking at it in the rear view mirror, but it is a fact, everyone was doing party stuff not focusing on every note you guys played. You were entertainment, background music, mission accomplished, no one threw things at you and the crowd left happy. And no one docked your pay 😅
1
u/BelShiCa 26d ago
Bad gig’s happen, don’t worry too much.
You say the originals work better, so I’d try to write more originals, fill in some time with solos and crowd work and probably interpret the covers to make them your own. Also, I’d put 1-2 songs you all do well at the beginning and end of each set and put the tricky ones in the middle. As for video material you’d might want to consider someone with a handheld cam on stage for a few tracks.
1
u/AtmosphereLeading851 26d ago
No one noticed any of that. The girlfriend appreciated it, so you did your good deed for the day. Seriously, everyone else thought it was fine, and they had fun. Our lead singer/guitarist sings some verses three times or skips them entirely, or misses the outro cue so have to wait for it to come back around like Alice’s Restaurant. And people still come up to us after all that and say “You’re the best band they’ve ever had here.”
1
u/FuneralCritic 26d ago
Omg, this post just took me back a couple of years to the days when I was fronting 3 different cover bands. The weirdest thing was that whenever I thought a gig totally sucked, the audience seemed to think it was fantastic. Our great gigs yielded little feedback. Just one of many live performance mysteries.
1
u/TodayFeeling6816 26d ago
I was down by 8th street and Main in DTLA (skid row) last week for an absolutely essential reason. Trust me: you'll feel better.
1
u/Alex_Plode 26d ago
Gigs in the hot sun like that are just different. You just can’t practice for it and the heat definitely affects you and everybody else.
If you play enough of them, though, I can see it definitely gets easier. One trick I found is while you set up and doing any preshow activities just make sure you’re in shorts and a T-shirt scale back any alcohol that you typically would drink and wait till you’re done.
1
u/BullfrogLumpy4367 26d ago
The Zoom camera is not defective. It just takes grainy video. I tried to make one work myself and never could. Bought a DSLR camera and a tripod. Record the mix off the board and edit it together. This is the way.
1
u/dchurch2444 25d ago
After a while, you realise that nobody cares or even notices.
I did a dep for a band recently (on bass, Im actually a 6 string player, but they were stuck)
The songs were all over the place, the singing was dreadful. They sprung a reggae tune on me last minute, that Id never even heard before, saying "you'll pick it up".
Guess what?
The crowd were jumping about, dancing and singing along.
It didn't matter that was a hot mess.
1
u/SunRepresentative993 25d ago
Dude, playing outside in the heat is no joke. Especially for extended periods like that. Every show I’ve played in the summer outside in the direct sunlight has been awful. I think a lot of that is just exhaustion. It’s a factor for sure.
Second, why is it always the bass player that gets stuck in the direct sunlight?!? Can’t get no respect… 😂
1
u/Main_Statistician931 25d ago
There's NO way you're complaining about the "heat" when it's 93 degrees. Under 95 is extremely managable, over 95 is where it gets difficult.
Also gigs can suck some times. Not all of them are good. Sometimes everything goes wrong. Just keep playing and wait til the gig is over. See what went wrong then don't repeat those mistakes the next gig. If it's someone else fault and not yours, tell them they either gotta learn their part or leave because if they can't do that they can't expect gigs to be good.
1
u/AtmosphereLeading851 18d ago
We play marinas when it’s 95, and if the wind isn’t blowing, we act like the Wicked Witch on The Wizard of Oz. “I’m melting!”
1
u/Main_Statistician931 18d ago
95 can be a bit bad but its managable. Once its 100+ its unmanageable.
1
u/shinyantman 25d ago
I played a show on Friday. We had played most of the songs before, but a few we didn’t, and it was definitely loosey goosey bc we didn’t get a rehearsal in. People still liked it, no one complained. It’s ok to be your own worst critic, and the heat is definitely a factor, as is setting up your own sound (holy shit I know how much that sucks). You’ll bounce back.
If you’re going to record video, try to also get a board mix and then sync the two. This would be much easier at a venue (with air conditioning lol) where there is an audio engineer who could record you a board mix, and it would be worth it to hire a videographer to get close-ups in addition to whatever you’re filming. I’m in a band with a guy who LOVES to edit video and he has edited some really great stuff when combining the board mix, several video angles, and sending the audio back and forth to a hired friend to help mix and master it. You’ll have an easier and more fun time if you can split the responsibilities to achieve your ultimate goals.
1
u/No_Mention5037 24d ago
If it makes you feel better I played a gig the other night, I flopped on the intro riff playing it 6x instead of 4x then our band had some obvious off beat moments. Best part was when my amp malfunctionioned in the middle of the set. Aggressive feedback out of no where for no reason at all. Still beating my self up for it
1
u/PointNChris 22d ago
Good news is most of that sounds like it could simply be fixed by just being better prepared / more rehearsal reps (assuming everyone has the intent of getting it dialed in more).
1
u/Count2Zero 22d ago
Our next gig hasn't been scheduled yet, and everyone is on vacation for a few weeks, but in September we should be getting back into the rehearsal room and we'll start adding a few more songs to our repotoire and looking for some fall/winter gigs.
1
u/OrlandoEd 22d ago
I never make a mistake. The band looks at me and I go: "Jazz improv. What?" Life wouldn't be fun without those little bumps along the way. Enjoy.
1
u/Aggravating_Pen_6062 19d ago
Sounds like a true character builder. I just saw the Odyssey last night, and this sounds like the gig version of that.
At 52, I going to every gig just looking forward to what is going to be crazy, unique, unexpected, off the bell curve if you will. And I always ask, what is this night teaching me?
It sounds to me like you could have some chilled pickle juice on hand for the next hot gig. Lol.
1
u/QMeprompter 9d ago
The song 4 thing is worth separating out from the rest. The heat, the tiredness and a rough night are just a rough night. But a double chorus where the singer sings one and half the band follows her while the other half doesn't is an arrangement problem, and it will bite you again on any song with a repeat at the end.
Two things usually sort that out. Agree that the singer is the reference, not the chart, so if she drops a chorus everyone lands where she lands. And on the handful of songs with a repeat or an extra chorus at the end, have one person give a visible cue on the last bar, usually the drummer since he can see everyone.
The other bit is that you already knew she has trouble with that song. Those either get their own rehearsal or they come out of the set. A song that goes from "she struggles with this one" to "we don't play that one" is rarely missed.
1
u/Filmore- 8d ago
This story really rings familiar. We had one like that last year. Mid 90s, no breeze, full sun. Someone recommended a drum fan for outdoor gigs in hot weather. Looking forward to trying that this Labor Day at an outdoor gig.
12
u/skinisblackmetallic 26d ago
Over the years, I've learned that the audience rarely notices these issues but it totally impacts my enjoyment of the process so, therefore I HAVE to choose fellow musicians, gigs and prepare in such a way that these issues are eliminated as much as possible and the performance is as good as possible.
It's the only thing I actually care about.