Road Journal - Michael Katon Tour - 1/27/14

Pre-tour rehearsal.

Monday, 1/27/14 – We wound up stopping and relaxing for a few hours in Stoke-Albany at our friend Colin Watts’ house (who treated us, by the way, like royalty), then drove to lovely Oxford, where we loaded-in up many a flight of fire escape stairs to the second floor of the Jericho Tavern. Our “Two Strong & Sober Men” who were specified in our contract’s rider never materialized, although one of the sound people did help us out coming in. I’m glad for many reasons that I talked Mike out of renting the refrigerator-sized (and weighted) Ampeg SVT, and into the somewhat lighter and more portable GK amp. Actually a more powerful unit, and with one 4X10 and one 15 cabinet, and a LOT easier to move! Sounds great, too.  We only took up one cab for this show…there’s a bunch of stairs, and it’s a small club. Still PLENTY loud! 

This gig is the retirement hobby of famous music promoter Phil Guy-Davis, a bit of Rock history himself and a charming geezer. There wasn’t much of a turnout, though (well, cold rainy Monday and all that), and although our set was good I felt that I was just banging out the riffs on some of the songs. Perhaps it was the dreary weather that was affecting my mood. I’m still working up variations on some of the material, trying to find things I can do to open up the tunes and build the dynamics. There were some really good moments – Mike’s solo on “Red Moon Rising” was kick-ass, and several of his slide guitar numbers were too. Load-out down the slippery fire escape in the rain, helped by a friendly Rock musician from the audience. A somewhat dispiriting gig – but interesting.

Trying out SX basses in Dutch music store. This one went with us on tour...not a bad little bass at all!

 

Talking to Cyn tonight via the Interwebz…well, actually Instant Messaging, since the wi-fi signal at the hotel is not strong…good just to be able to connect and have a conversation with her! But I find that the bad weather I left behind stayed around…it’s still around 14 below zero!! With more snow predicted, too. I really thought that we were done, Michigan usually only has like a week of really cold weather and we’d had that, when I left it had gone back up to 30 or something. Jeez. Here it’s just rain, rain, and more rain…a lot of flooding in the SW of England, some pretty devastating weather for folks there. But no 5-foot snowdrifts!!