6/4/2014

After being sick for a week, Lee was psyched to get back on to the throne and drum away on the skins. He was able to join the rest of us for a full jam. This week, like many of our recent weeks, the Band had no agenda and nothing to play for and we ended up playing a bunch of non-transitional types of songs and it ended up being not our most complete night of music.

We had a few guests including Ryan that checked us out. Scott took a little break during the beginning of the second set allowing Ryan to drum for a song or two while Scott regained his energy. Although I have been charting out lots of new songs and sending them to band-mates, I really had practiced too much leading up to the jam and hadn't printed out charts of these news songs. Therefore, for the first time in weeks, we didn't play any new songs, and I don't even think we played any songs that weren't part of the Jerry Garcia Songbook. I recall that for the most part, I didn't need to refer to my book except on a few occasions.

Once again I enjoyed using a Mesa Boogie Mark III to play out of in lieu of my standard Fender Twin. In a similar vein, Alan used a Roland JC-120 instead of his usual Twin. These ended up being pretty loud and the PA had trouble competing with the guitars, bass and drums until it was tweaked throughout the night. It eventually was ok.

The first set was a bit shorter than our usual in that Rich had some work he had to attend to which he did prior to our 10pm first set closing time. That was ok because we started the second set corresponding early to make up for the early first set closing.