Monthly Roundup #8 - October '18

October was slightly quieter on the gig-front, but that worked quite nicely for me as it gave me some time to prepare for a busy start to November! I had a couple of gigs early on in the month, alongside the usual teaching.

The first gig of the month was another of the variety type shows I do a few times throughout the year - “Arthur Lager’s Big Night In” - a double act formed of Barney Pout and Steve Hewlett. The theatre it’s normally hosted in is undergoing some changes at the moment, so instead the show went on in the upstairs function room of a local pub/restaurant. It was rather cosy, but had a really nice feel to it! It was also the first outing for my newly acquired 22” Gretsch Renown kit. This was a good example of where the 20” could have lacked slightly, as there was no drum mic’ing due to the small room. Having a 22” gave it the added “oomph” that I sometimes lacked acoustically from the 20”. But it was a lovely gig that kept us on our toes!

Set for the variety show, with the recently acquired 22” based Gretsch Renown

The next gig was with the Eagles tribute band I’ve started depping with this year, “Alter Eagles”. This one was at Boisdale restaurant in Canary Wharf, and consisted of a 60 minute set earlier in the evening, followed by a 90 minute set a bit later on - so lots of playing! It was a nicely spread out evening though, with time for some great food and a good hang. I did also cast my eye over the whisky selection, which was quite something - unfortunately I couldn’t get involved with that though!

Alter Eagles set up for the Boisdale gig

A small section of the Boisdale whisky shelves - a boy’s got to have a hobby?! The eagle eyed among you might spot the 1946 Macallan… That was worth more than my drum kit!

Setup-wise, while preparing for this gig I decided to mix things up a bit… The parts are written for a four tom setup, and there are a few places where the toms crop up as a part of the grooves, so I thought I’d try sticking one of the floor toms to my left. It’s not something I’d tried out before, but in this case it seemed to work really well! I’m going to leave it like that for a little while in my practice space to try and spend a little more time getting used to it, as it was definitely a fun thing to try out!

Trying the fourth floor tom to the left in my practice space

The following week I took some time to start putting together some basic videos to help my beginner students to get up and running. I have a folder of “introductory material” which I start most of my students out with, so wanted to do some videos to accompany it, to hopefully try and make it a bit easier for them to pick things up at home in between lessons. I’m certainly no expert when it comes to producing videos, so I’m sure this little project will have a steep learning curve!

One of the last bits of playing required for the month was fulfilling my duties playing at church. There’s been a bit of a push at my church recently to start incorporating playing to tracks, so this was the first week I’d done there with the new system in place.

On duty in the band at church once more…

The rest of the month was spent doing some homework for upcoming gigs in November and December. More about that in the November issue (I’ve got to leave something to write about then!), but there’s a production of Les Mis, a gala night, and then rehearsals for some gigs and recording going on in December. It all promises to be a fun couple of months, but there’s a busy couple of weeks preparing for it all!

Sat at the desk, prepping for some upcoming gigs in November… Pencil and rubber at the ready!

As always, I hope you’ve enjoyed this monthly entry on what’s been keeping me busy throughout October. As mentioned, November is set to start with a vengeance, so hopefully I’ll have some interesting goings-on to report in the next entry! Thanks as always for checking in if you’ve made it this far, and I’ll catch you again soon! All the best, Ed.