Greetings! I’m writing from a Days Inn breakfast room in Leesburg,VA and knocked out gig #1 last night of what I call my “Kentucky Fried” tour. I did a warmup gig at a small coffee house called Market Street Coffee.
Well the gig was ok, but I feel my playing was not at it’s peak. Gotta practice after finishing this post! 🙂
Before we get to Leesburg though, let’s go back to NYC in our minds – I’d like to thank Holly from Rudy’s music stop in NYC. I went there the day before the tour with a Taylor guitar with an intermittent ES pickup system. Needless to say, having equipment crap out the day before the tour is stressful. I do have a backup guitar, but the idea is to travel with 2 functioning guitars, not just 1.
Holly totally gutted & replaced the ES system. Oh, and just for kicks she filed & re crowned some frets, oiled the fingerboard, and saw that the nut grooves needed a slightly different cut. Yeah!! Thank you Holly for loving what you do and over delivering!
Last night’s gig was also the maiden voyage of my new BOSE L1. That too, was source of stress a day before leaving as it had been behaving weirdly at home. Long story short, the little T1 mixer is more akin to an ipod than a mixer. I had to download the latest firmware, reboot and all that jazz. The little T1 is incredible – 4 channels, digital effects, presets- all connected with just a data cable. Whatever the updates did, the BOSE did great on the gig.
I feel good knowing that I have a killer acoustic rig, and can show up anywhere and have great sound.
=-=-=-
An artist can’t stand still or just do yesterday’s tricks. What was full of life, and in the moment last month is not the same now! When I launched my acoustic direction part of the beauty was the freshness, the aliveness and the newness. I have officially hit the next stage, but an important one that I think many musicians deal with.
It’s time to refresh again. I already feel like I am doing yesterday’s tricks and it’s not even a year that the CD has been out. Yes, part of playing a great solo guitar gig is that you have great music ready to go under your fingers – and maybe it’s a question of being “in the moment” with the known music – just the same way David Copperfield has his tricks that he does night after night. Part of my practice today will be getting “the juice” back into tunes I feel like I have played ENOUGH.
Certain songs have a different meaning after having played them for a year. Some songs feel better and deeper. Some don’t feel right and need tweaking or need to be dropped / replaced. (FYI “I Got Rhythm” is one of my trickiest and I will go practice it in 5min…)
The journey never stops. Looking forward to tonight’s gig at Patisserie Cafe in Lexington,VA…..more to come!
Latest posts by adamrafferty (see all)
- Reclaiming Creative Innocence - March 6, 2018
- How to Listen to Your Own Guitar Playing - January 16, 2018
- 9 Ways to Boost Your Creativity on Guitar (and get out of a rut) - November 8, 2017
Thanks for your music last night, Adam. Your blog says your playing was not peak quality. Ha…you are too humble, sir. You were great. Simplicity was sublime. Superstition was awesome. You had a rapt audience for Machine Gun…and so forth. Thanks for putting our humble little coffeeshop on your tour. Every summer we have a concert series on the grassy common area at town hall right outside the coffee shop. Your music would be perfect there. Peace out, – Hark
Adam,
We have listened to the CD over and over again. Just incredible! We too are humbeled that you would appear in our little coffee shop. We thoroughly enjoyed every moment of your playing and certainly would make an efort to see you live again. Have an enjoyable tour in Germany and safe journey!
Darin