The weekend Thread

[mainestratman]

"Shock the flock"...

Awesome.

[mainestratman]

The benefit went really well last night. I ended up doing an hour-long set...

It opened with a couple of high school kids who were so nervous that they didn't know whether to sh*t or go blind, but they did a solid 20 minutes, and an incredible job.

Next up was a local singer/songwriter who ended up doing only 15-20 minutes as well. Honestly, I wasn't impressed with him at all, but hey... different strokes for different folks, right?

Another local was supposed to play, but he ended up calling out sick (nasty cold floating around up here)... and the event coordinator was freaking out about having only 3 artists. I asked him how long he wanted me to play and he said "everything you got". His eyes were saying so much more.

So I get up in front of the most people I've ever done the solo acoustic thing for (about 50 people). Yeah, a little nervous, especially with the spotlight preventing me from seeing the crowd. I introduced myself and starting riling up the crowd a little bit by giving out kudos to the other performers and for the event coordinator for putting the benefit together.. and let them know that I was gonna be a bit more "rowdy" than the previous artists... then "apologized" to folk singers for what I was about to go into and started the set with "Teen Angst" by Cracker, firmly establishing that I am NOT a folk singer... lol

About an hour later, after covering everything from Toby Keith to 4 Non Blondes, Vervepipe, Green Day and George Michael (cause I gotta have faith...).. I brought my set to a close to lots of applause and awesome post-event comments.

Don't get me wrong.. I'm not a virtuoso by ANY stretch of the word... not on guitar, not on vocals.. I'm up there, chugging out chords and rasping out lyrics and having a ton of fun... and the audience loved it! Yayy!

As for the benefit... we helped raise just over $200 for the local tech school video department. Not lots of scratch, but with the state cutting funding for the arts in schools, it will certainly help.

\m/ on Fretters. Thanks for letting me brag for a minute. :-)

[bcdon***]

.. and let them know that I was gonna be a bit more "rowdy" than the previous artists... then "apologized" to folk singers for what I was about to go into and started the set with "Teen Angst" by Cracker, firmly establishing that I am NOT a folk singer... lol

Awesome! Sounds like you put on a heck of a show, congrats!!

The world needs more rowdy hell-rasiers like yourself. You must have asked yourself W.W.J.D -- J as in Johnny Cash -- and came up with the right rowdy answer!

[Spudman***]

Another weekend of rock stardom for me again. Got some new fans and we're really looking forward to going back to this club in two weeks. It's in a town 30 miles away that hardly ever gets good entertainment so they are very appreciative.

Also got out for a nice long road ride on my bicycle. Feels good to get the bar crud out of my lungs. I feel so much better early in the day now that I'm wearing ear plugs at the gigs. It really cuts down on the fatigue factor.

[marnold***]

Dude, you should totally post your weekends.

With all the headaches pastors have, it'll make us all feel even better about our weekends.

It would be the Christian thing to do!

Well, remember that Krashteban asked for it!

Spent most of Friday writing my sermon and doing the April newsletter/calendar. In the afternoon I sneaked out for visits to a member who has M.S. and another who was in a snowmobile wreck last month. Got done with everything ~9 P.M.

Saturday:
Got up reasonably early to get my sermon memorized (takes about an hour), whip up the master copy for the bulletin, and then go through my sermon again. At 11:30ish I left to pick up a friend/fellow pastor so I could drop him off at the airport in Green Bay to rent a car.

From there I went the wrong direction due to construction and barely made it to my homebrew club meeting in time to chair it. My friend catches up with me at the meeting having taken a cab because the rental place wouldn't accept his credit card. Joy. After the meeting at ~3:30 we head out, stop at the local homebrew shoppe, and then hit a couple of stores trying to find some colored legal-sized copy paper for his bulletins.

After dropping him back off at home I head home, have supper, and go through my sermon again. Head over to church to copy the bulletin and calendar/newsletter and go through my sermon again as well as make sure everything is set up right. Get back home around 8:00 P.M. Once I'm home I do a bit of surfing, go over my Bible class material, and listen to the tail end of the Red Wings game.

Sunday:
Get up, get ready, and go through my sermon one last time. Head over to church to see everyone enjoying the Palm Sunday breakfast. I can't eat before I preach so I just smell it. Have the service, get some leftovers from the breakfast, teach Bible Class, and get home for lunch.

After lunch (a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats) I do a bit of surfing, then prepare for the Elders meeting this evening at six. I just got done playing "Breaking the Chains" a bit. (I'm getting better at the Lynchian chord inversions. My Jet City sounds particularly awesome today.) I'm about to have a guitar lesson with my son. I'll probably also translate my texts for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Grab a bit of supper (or maybe wait until after the meeting). Once I'm done with that about 7:30-8, I'll eat if I haven't yet. Might have a martini.

Next week: busiest week of the year by far . . .

[bcdon***]

You're a mighty busy man, Reverend Rawk. Cheers to you and your work!

[sunvalleylaw]

This weekend and leading up to it was crazy, crazy busy. Lot's of fun stuff, but packed way too closely together.

Had the last organized team day and end of year party for the kid's Freeride (skiing/snowboarding) team I head up. Spent a good portion of the week, all my free time and some of my not free time editing a vid of stuff from the year. I normally have someone else who is a coach, and who shoots and edits as a job do it, but he is up in alaska shooting, so I had to try. Here is a link if you want to see what I ended up doing as I posted in another thread. This project almost did not make the curtain time as when I went to burn it onto a DVD, my computer started to hang, and my HD started to seize up. Fortunately, I was able to run it into the shop at the last minute, the tech was able to get my project off the HD (I did not have an external drive at home. Stoopid). And then I was able to get it going and finish on another machine. Finally done by 8:30 pm on the night before screening. Phew!

http://web.me.com/sunvalleylaw/Site/Freeride2010.html

After the party on Saturday, I cleaned up the lodge from that, then headed home to pack to join my middle son on a Webelos overnight hike and camp to the yurt I posted about the other week. Fun, lots of silly boy stuff, campfire, ghost stories, etc. Not much sleep.

We hiked out today about mid day, then came home and got ready for the Cubs Pinewood Derby. I cannot believe they scheduled both events on one weekend, but I guess they (the moms who organized it) lost a reservation on the yurt and had to take what they could get.

Anyway, fun stuff. Not much guitar this week, but maybe that was ok, because as I plugged the Fender into the Fender today, and played quietly, I really enjoyed the sound, and enjoyed it in general.

Rev, I am glad you are posting your weekend stuff. I don't care if your weekend is mid week or not. Inquiring minds want to know! P.S. you did some surfing? Is that on the great lakes? I heard one could surf there. (oh, I think you meant the internet. )

[marnold***]

You're a mighty busy man, Reverend Rawk. Cheers to you and your work!

It has been said that if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. Well, generally speaking, that is true. There have been some days that have been "work" though.

[djmcconnell]

We had a very satisfying weekend, both musically and with family:

Thursday night:
My wife and I had our monthly viewing of Minneapolis-based Steely Dan cover band (appropriately named "Steeling Dan.") It's salve for the soul.

Friday night:
We went to a concert of brothers Matt and Dan Wilson (both of Trip Shakespeare and Dan of Semisonic fame). This was a very musically satisfying and entertaining evening)

Saturday:
We hung out with our little Kinship buddy, and later in the day had a very nice family gathering in which our daughter's fiancee got to meet (and be interrogated by) my wife's cousins' family.

Dave

[Brian Krashpad]

Woohoo, this thread is a-rockin' like Dokken!

@ Rev. Rawk: great post, rest up and have a great Holy Week!

@ Mainer: Good onya for the benefit and stepping up to fill the gap! I like those kinda challenges. Every now and then you may end up trainwrecking, but that makes the good'uns that much more fun. The solo acoustic thing is one thing I've never tried. On my bucket list.

@ BCdon: thanks for your comments to the other posts. Now how about your weekend?

@ Steve: dang son, yours rivals mine in the busy bee department! Good onya for your work with the kids in the skiing and Scouts.

@ Dave: That sound like a great weekend. What is Kinship?

My Weekend:

Friday:

As previously related in the "busy bee" thread, on Friday I had 2 shows, @ 2 venues, w/2 bands. That was a first for me. I've done 2 bands in one night at the same venue, and two shows in one night with the same band at different venues (both having done different clubs, and doing the club/afterparty thing), but never 2 different bands at 2 different venues.

The first, "partial" show, the Cinnamon Hill thing downtown, didn't really fly. We set up on their outside patio, but used power from the light poles rather than running long lines back into the cafe. Apparently the light poles don't power up until dusk, when the outside lamp posts come on. So, we had everything hooked up, but for awhile no power. Then they futzed with the system so long I ended up playing only 3 or 4 sons and having to split. Still, fun. Played mandolin only, lined in to PA.

The set on bass with Pedagogy thereafter went OK, no major snafus but sometimes it was hard to see my cheats and I had to cover/guess what I was missing. Fortunately not too much of that. It was a benefit for Habitat for Humanity, so it's all good. I think I may've hurt myself moving my 8x10 cab. Didn't want to use it, but tried out all 3 bass cabs I have, with both bass heads, and the only one that didn't rattle was the fridge. Which is weird because I've used my 1x15 before w/no probs, but couldn't get it to sound worth a darn at the office before I left for the night out.

Had to get up early Saturday morning, so I split after our (Pedagogy's) opening set.

Saturday:

Sat. morning I took a friend of my son Jack back to his house after the kid's lock-in at church the night before, then took Jack took to flag football, getting there more or less on time at 8:30 a.m. Game was at nine. I was afraid they might get blown out because the other team was a lot bigger/taller, but they did a good job and won 14-6. A LOT of goal-line stands by the defense. Jack got 3 pulls (tackles), two in one series, so he played pretty well.

After getting home I rested a bit, had some lunch, and went to a free open-air show that was part of the "Feathers Music Conference," which
actually kind of focuses on various forms of electronica/dance music, but also had some live bands.

Saw 2 bands, at least semi-knew one person in each band, though I'd never seen either band before. Nice day with perfect weather, had a couple beers and shot the shit with some local scenesters who are long-time acquaintances/friends of mine. Took notes/photos and will write up for my music column in "Our Town: Gainesville" mag. I can't believe I get 75 bucks per column for blathering about fun shows.

Some pics, here are locals the Ex-Boogeymen, doing the garage rock thing, the lead singer had the whole Peter Wolf/David Johanssen/Nuge manic stage rant down:



(sorry about the Spanish Moss in this'un):



From Ocala, south of Gainesville, Vincent Valentine, doing the post-punk/gothy thing:





After the bands, I drove back out of town to Casa Krashpad, had some eats, and drove back into town for the 7:30-? show on the cafe patio. Again, lined in the mandolin, but since our electric player wasn't going to be there, also brought my little Super Champ XD for guitar, and lined that out to the PA as well. My wife and a couple of her girlfriends came out, plus a couple of her students, and an additional couple who are friends stopped by, by chance, when the film series at the Hippodrome Theatre next door let out.

It was a bit cool out, but other than that I had a GREAT time. Our keyboardist wasn't able to make it until the second half of the evening, and prior to his arrival, I mainly (possibly entirely) played mandolin. Before he got there, at one point our acoustic guitarist walked off at the end of a song, followed by our bassist. No announcement to the band as to why.

I figured they just decided to take a pee break (we played one long continuous several-hour set with individuals leaving for beers or to pee as necessary). Later found out that there was more band drama I was oblivious to, he had got fed up with the gal singer over song selection, and decided to cool his jets offstage. Meanwhile, the gal singer announces "Brian and I are going jam for a little" and she moved over to keyboards and we played some simple chord changes to fill the gap. As with the drama at our show the previous Wednesday, I only learned exactly what was going after the end of the performance.

After the keyboardist arrived we really went into high gear, as the song selection was not so important, since we weren't trying to play "around" his gap. At that point I got started to be asked (by Tom, the acoustic guitarist/singer and unofficial stage leader) to play guitar about every third song or so. Played my Tex-Mex Telecaster Special (LP Classic was available but stayed cased):



I had never played any of the songs on guitar before, not even in practice. However, I did have my mando cheats for chord changes, but for the most part simply did some added flourishes based on the key, and took solos when I got the nod. Under the circumstances I was VERY pleased with the results, and I know that Chuck (keyboardist) and Tom were too. Afterward Tom had said the guitar work was "phenomenal," which is about as far into the realm of hyperbole as you can get, but given that it came from another guitarist, and a bandmate in the band I've most recently joined, I was glad to hear it anyhow.

Kim and her friends really enjoyed the show and stayed to the end of the night, and are planning on coming to our next show in April. I went back to Casa Krashpad but couldn't sleep for another couple hours, too amped up.

Sunday:

Only had 2 songs for the praise band. One was a mellow one as part of a baptism. The praise band leader (PBL) wanted to spice it up by having me add a rocking lead to it, but I nixed the idea because I knew it was an important day to the parents, and didn't want them to feel like we were being disrespectful of the occasion. Kids today!

The second one was a rocking song, although stuck at the start of our Communion music. We did it as rocking as ever, but cut the outro solo we usually do in deference to it being a Communion song. We may end up getting flack about that, even cutting out the outro, we'll see.

Each song had a screw-up at the start of it. For the baptism song, the church bulletin had it listed in the wrong place, so our PBL started the song, and the pastor goes, "Actually, we'll sing that AFTER the baptism," and made a joke about how we obviously REALLY wanted to play the song. It was a good cover on the pastor's part and everyone laughed, including us. Nice save.

The second was more minor. I was supposed to start the rocking song by doing a chord progression with distortion and some palm muting, but forgot to put the distortion on. That sounded terrible, but I had to wait a couple bars for a repeat to make it sound intentional; though after that the song did rock out nicely.

Just lazed around the rest of Sunday. Did some laundry folding and watched some telly. I was beat!

[Bloozcat]

This past weekend through last night my wife and I went through our drawings of the new kitchen and began checking on price and availability of appliances, cabinets, windows, tile, lighting, etc. Already this project has spread to other rooms and we haven't officially begun the work yet. That'll start in June. It's a good thing we've been saving for this project for a couple of years...

This weekend we're getting out of Dodge. It's off to Seattle to see a couple of nephews and some friends, then down to Oregon to sample some of their famous Pinot Noir's, then over to Bend to visit one of my wife's former colleagues. We've never been to Oregon before, so we'll be adding that to the list of states we've visited. Should be fun...

[Brian Krashpad]

Travel safe, Bloozcat! From FL to Seattle is a long haul.

[sunvalleylaw]

Blooz:

Seattle and Oregon, two of my favorite places to visit. Maybe check out the Experience Music Project when you are in Seattle if you have a chance. We served Oregon Pinot at our wedding, but don't overlook the micros. While in Bend, you should get into the Deschutes Brewpub. Pub fare, and good beer.

Have fun!

Brian, that Ex-Boogeyman front man looks like he has a bit of the 78-80 Elvis Costello thing goin' on too. Thanks for the kind words about the Cubs and ski kids, and way to go on that end too! My weekend stuff was not scheduled ideally, and the computer issues did not help. But made it through, and enjoyed it. Hard not too really when the kids are having so much fun!

[Bloozcat]

Blooz:

Seattle and Oregon, two of my favorite places to visit. Maybe check out the Experience Music Project when you are in Seattle if you have a chance. We served Oregon Pinot at our wedding, but don't overlook the micros. While in Bend, you should get into the Deschutes Brewpub. Pub fare, and good beer.

We saw the Experience Music Project last time in Seattle, or I should say, I saw it while my wife zipped through and then waited for me at the exit. She's not into music much, except as background noise - and then it's usually something most of us wouldn't listen to...

I'm looking forward to trying the local beer, and I'll see if I can get us to Deschutes Brewpub. I'm sure our friends who live there know of it.

[bcdon***]

I'm looking forward to trying the local beer, and I'll see if I can get us to Deschutes Brewpub. I'm sure our friends who live there know of it.

Deschutes is great, they just opened their Portland (downtown) pub a year or so ago. Great beer and food. http://www.deschutesbrewery.com/

Also check out:
Rogue Distillery & Public House (PDX) : http://www.rogue.com/locations/locations.php

Laurel Wood: http://www.laurelwoodbrewpub.com/

Henry's Tavern: http://henrystavern.com/page/home (not a brew pub but has a great beer selection and a iced-bar surface to keep your beer cold; nice feature but my beer never lasts long enough to get warm).

A nice winery: http://www.montinore.com/

Most pubs in Portland (and Oregon) have Happy Hour drinks and appys.
Here is a great guide book to Happy Hour in Portland: http://www.happyhourguidebook.com/

I love Portland, I spend every Christmas/New Years there and go a couple of times during the year. Hope you have a great time.

don

[FrankenFretter***]

This past weekend through last night my wife and I went through our drawings of the new kitchen and began checking on price and availability of appliances, cabinets, windows, tile, lighting, etc. Already this project has spread to other rooms and we haven't officially begun the work yet. That'll start in June. It's a good thing we've been saving for this project for a couple of years...

This weekend we're getting out of Dodge. It's off to Seattle to see a couple of nephews and some friends, then down to Oregon to sample some of their famous Pinot Noir's, then over to Bend to visit one of my wife's former colleagues. We've never been to Oregon before, so we'll be adding that to the list of states we've visited. Should be fun...

I'll be in Seattle (and Bellingham) this weekend too, Blooz. If you get the chance, check out Hales brewery. Great food and beer. In fact, BC Don, NW Basser and I will be there Saturday for lunch. If you're in the neighborhood, stop in and say Howdy! I'll be in the Marshall shirt, clutching a pint of stout in a deathgrip.

Make sure and stop in to see Sumi when you're in Bend. He said something about the first round being on him...

[bcdon***]

I'll be in Seattle (and Bellingham) this weekend too, Blooz. If you get the chance, check out Hales brewery. Great food and beer. In fact, BC Don, NW Basser and I will be there Saturday for lunch. If you're in the neighborhood, stop in and say Howdy! I'll be in the Marshall shirt, clutching a pint of stout in a deathgrip.

Make sure and stop in to see Sumi when you're in Bend. He said something about the first round being on him...

http://halesbrewery.com/ is the place to be this Saturday @ noon.. the first round is on me -- just look for the dude wearing the sweatshirt with a huge Canadian flag on it and you'll find me, FrankenFretter, and NW Basser. Show up thirsty! :-)

[Spudman***]

Make sure you guys get a group photo. And save some beer for us. I'm really jealous.

[Brian Krashpad]

Make sure you guys get a group photo. And save some beer for us. I'm really jealous.

This! ^