My rock and roll band — Duke Rushmore — has its first official “gig” coming up on Friday at a local brewpup. It’s a short gig, only two hours long, and so we are working to tighten up our two sets of music. We want to make a good impression, and we have invited the owner of another establishment to come watch us play, in hopes he will hire us, too.
Yesterday afternoon, we spent about three hours working on the songs. I have to say, I think we are as tight as we have ever been. The sets flow nicely, although we continue to make some adjustments, and there is nothing like a performance in front of a live audience to help a band find some focus.
I am the saxophone player, and a back-up singer, and we are playing one of my songs to end the night. We’re most a cover band right now, but I keep pushing for more original material. For now, we are just establishing ourselves as a rock and roll, danceable band, and I think we fit that bill pretty nicely.
Our gig is the night before St. Patrick’s Day in Holyoke, which has a huge concentration of Irish and pseudo-Irish people, and one of the largest St. Paddy Day Parades in New England. We suspect the brew pub might be packed by people flocking home for the parade (and needing a respite from being home with their family), and we have included a few mandolin songs and even renamed our original song from “Champagne, Whiskey and the Rhythm and Blues Tonight” to “Irish Whiskey and the Rhythm and Blues Tonight.” Have you ever seen that Blues Brothers scene where the band goes into a country bar and tries to play the blues? Yeah, we don’t want that to happen to us.
🙂
We have one more practice tomorrow night, and then we are rarin’ to go!
Peace (in the rock and in the roll),
Kevin
PS — if you are in Holyoke, Massachusetts, on Friday night, come on down to the Paper City Brewery from 6-8 p.m. The admission at the door gets you free beer and some rock and roll. And be kind to the band!
