Les Anderson
From:
The Great White North
|
Posted 12 Aug 2009 8:07 pm |
|
It was an unbelievably successful blast from the past that caught all of our band by complete and unprepared surprise. Our band had been putting together and practicing for almost four months a fifties and sixties show. It ranged from the soft rockers (Bobby V, Bobby Vinton, Richie Valence hits and so on) to the Hank Williams, Marty Robins hits. We had a five to seven piece band; along with my steel, two saxes & trumpet, a stand up bass, an old Hammond organ and all the other fifties and sixties golden hits era sounds. Everything was live and we even had three singers who all but duplicated the vocal sounds of the stars of those days.
Originally, we had booked 13 shows in 11 different cities and towns but ended up doing 24 shows in 19 cities and town in 31 days. We ended it all by being booked for an early evening, open mall show at a major mall’s parking lot in the Okanagan Valley; within an hour the police came and shut us down because we ended up with at least 1500 – 1800 (we had to guess at that number) very happy people taking over the malls parking lot.
Now no one can no longer tell me that music needs exploding pirodisplays, volumes of smoke, laser lights, half dressed people running all over the stage and a band so loud that you can’t hear the screaming vocalists. The people, teenagers and the fifty & sixty years alike all mixed together and loved every minute of the old music and just hollered for more and more when it was time to wrap up the shows. We had to turn down another month's of bookings only because all of our band members have real jobs that they had to get back to. And yes, the steel guitar was in 65% of the 50 & 60s music. Try doing Sugar Shack or Roses Are Red or Love Me Tender on the steel, it sounds great.
The entire thing was like dying and heading for heaven. Who would have guessed it would have turned out the way it did? |
|
George McLellan
From:
Duluth, MN USA
|
Posted 13 Aug 2009 3:42 am
|
|
Les, I know what you mean. I work five or six shows like that a year, and have for the past eleven years. One of my favorites is the lead break in Buddy Holly's "True Love Ways".
On the down side, last Saturday night doing one at a County Fair, a mosquito got between my eyeball and glasses, I now have a bug bomb in my grip.
Geo |
|
