MBOTMA Harvest Festival

Last Friday we played a set at the MBOTMA Harvest Jamboree's open mike at Kip's Pub. We were originally scheduled at 9:00 or a 1/2 hour set, but since the slot before us wasn't filled, we split that time with our friends John Whitehead and Bob&Deb Carlson, who had the opening 8:00 set. We had prepared 8 songs with 2 backups. For the 1/2 hour set we figured we'd probably have to cut out one or even two of the 8; however, with the extra time we ended up playing all 10 plus another. We did two songs new to our repertoire - More Pretty Girls than One and East Virginia Blues. The sound set up was a modified single mike(there were two instrument mikes as auxiliary). Although it sounded boomy to us, the event organizer said the sound out front was fine (The room itself has stone floors and hard walls, plus it's a pub so you have lot's of people talking etc). We are also used to playing with multiple mikes (2 vocal/2 instrumental), so there were times when I was singing into the neck of Lynn's guitar and vice-versa.

As we played, I felt we were connecting with people (many of them were attendees of the festival); although in at least one case, the rapt attention of one woman was for the TV screen behind me and not for Lynn & me. We also had some nice comments afterwards including one from Kathy Liners (from Ivory Bridge). The next day, Jed Malischke, MBOTMA's executive director relayed some comments he had heard as well ('They sang all my favorite songs' is one that he passed on). In addition to this type of positive feedback, we also got a line on some potential (paying) gigs. One that we have verbally committed to is for Dulono's Pizza for January 4th. We had discussed playing at Dulono's with Al Jesperson last May, but to finally get a date set is a big step for us( Al did call us to be a last minute replacement for a date last summer but we were already booked). We also saw part of the Mill City Grinders set at the Main Ballroom Stage and ended up talking to Adam Kiesling about doing a combined set at the Coffee Grounds sometime. Lynn and I think that the Grinders are an awfully fine band , so we are get something set up (Stay tuned!).

The festival went all weekend and we went for a few hours on Saturday but had to cut it short to get to another event. The workshops at this event are for 'bands': the ones we attended were 'using a sound system and mikes' and 'organizing your own show'. Among other things I learned that Doug from Armadillo sound says that the Audio Technica AT2020 works just fine for the 'single mike sound' (and only costs $99 vs 100's or 1000's) and that organizing a show is a whole lot of work that is best left to others.