Gig School 101

Well I did it, I forked out and bought a gig stand. Its pretty usefull and makes you look WAAAAAAY more professional..... 

228 The Strand

Ok Guys, for those of you who have been here, you'll have a fair idea of the place, but for all you regular readers who are wondering where the bar is in my house, this rough plan will give you an idea.

The garden is the front of the house, and the bar (complete with hammock and beer fridge) is out the back. Its a detatched house so there are paths on both sides of the gaff. The laundry is also the brewery. The lounge (or as we call it, the green room) is a nice social area between the eating area in the kitchen and the bar. The cinema is our poshest room, nice and tidy, not much clutter, and when the cinema is not active you would not even know it was there so its a nice quiet room for reading a book or music practicing (for Jane not me, I dont believe in practice).

The bathroom and the toilet (WC) are two seperate rooms, which makes sense when you think about it. The study, is where the computer is and also now functions as the spare bedroom (getting a sofabed/futon this weekend).

The roof extends over the veranda and we have a nice big tree in the garden which provides ample shade. A nice red-sandstone path seperates the garden from the driveway.

We have plans to extend the lounge out into the bar, and extend the study area out too and make it into a larger second bedroom. We want to put in another bathroom somwhere and also go up a floor. I am going to insulate the shed and put my homebrew operation out into that. 

Irish Race Day

We have another all-dayer gig this weekend, its at the races. Irish Race Day at the Belmont Race course

"Saturday 7 October IRISH DAY at Belmont Park Racecourse! Ireland comes to Belmont Park Racecourse when the good-humoured hospitality of the ‘Emerald Isle’ takes over the track. Don’t miss your chance to back a winner with the luck of the Irish on your side! This popular race day features the running of the ‘Guinness Cup’, live Irish music, plus traditional Irish dancing and the opportunity to indulge in traditional Irish food and drinks. There will be a FREE bus to Burswood Entertainment Complex following the last race, where you can win your very own private party at Paddy Hannan’s with $500 to spend! Simply buy a race book on the day for an entry form. For further details or hospitality bookings call 9277 0777 General Admission: $10 Adults"

We are playing over a period of 5 hours and are doing four 20 minute sets during that time. Should be a good day out 

Legends of Cork

Just found this picture on the internet. Its that Echo guy. Not sure how old this photo is but it looks like he has lost a bit of weight. I remember chatting to this guy for hours at a go when we used to go busking years and years ago. I used to get the first bus into town to get a spot and natter away to this guy about all manner of things. I've heard he is a millionaire.... 

Strange gig of the month...

Assassins is a gig I am doing for the next 2 weeks. A performance by the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), its an interesting play, some cool music. The WAAPA is the college that Hugh Jackman went to, he is a local hero down here. 

More gig photos

At that folk festival, each year, every artist signs a guitar. Generally just the name. I signed: 2006 Black Velvet Band, available for weddings, birthdays, beerfests etc.

Adam signed: Finally a captive audience that wanst in a prison!

Here are the lads having a rock'n'roll breakfast. The breakfast of champions! 

Larger than life...

Here is a little thing I made a few weeks ago. Its a 7 foot tall picture of me, consisting of 50 A4 sheets of paper, 4 rolls of selotape and an entire broadsheet newspaper for backing.

I made it for Eoin Schmidt-Martins stag night. I couldn't be there in person so I decided to be there in spirit. Eoin's brother Chris was my inside man on the job, when nobody was looking he stuck it onto the wall of the bar they were in.

This is the only picture I got from the party, via SMS, and the stories havent come out yet so I can only imagine what happened to me........ 

101 beers....

Well, the 101 beers list is going well, this was the oddest one this week, a wierd russian cherry beer. Tasted like as if someone dropped a packet of hubba-bubba into your carlsberg. Wierd, but all for the cause. I am onto C's next week..... 

The Field

ive

While we were down in Albany, we had a stroll around our land. 1.8 acres of grass and weeds, but its our 1.8 acres. Its pretty big, last time I was there the blocks had not been marked out properly, there is wooden steaks around the perimiter of all the blocks now.

Here we are driving up our street, such traffic......

Here is Adam and Denis walking the land. You can just make out the boundary posts in the background

Here we all are, the Albany landowners club. Adam's block is next to ours and Ann & Denis are just down the road.

Day 2 celebrations

After our wine festival gig we went back to My Place, got cleaned up, had a few whiskys and then hit the best steakhouse this side of the equator, Rustlers. Adam had a 32 ounce steak! I had a 28 ounce "New Yorker", that was 2 days ago and I am still full!

Enjoying a few well deserved post gig pints in the Earl of Spencer another fine beer emporium.

Here is Denis finishing off his steak. What a place. Rustlers. If you are ever anywhere NEAR australia, do pop in for a snack. 

Gig-rig-cam

Its not a rock'n'roll festival unless your sound equipment is bigger than your instrument. 

Look what fell of the back of a lorry....

Here is the gig-rig we were playing on at that wine festival. There was about 1000 people there eating and drinking for the day. We were the last act and it went pretty well. We had a sound engineer on this gig, which made it a whole lot easier to sound half decent. 

Thats a lotta hooch!

Here is Jane and me with the worlds largest bottle of wine! Our 2nd gig of the tour was at a wine festival and we found this bottle in one of the tents. Insert large bottle of wine joke here:_________________________________ 

Ozzie place names

So guys, where were you the other day...... 

What do do when you get paid more than you thought...

Heres Jane and Adam, after we got paid a bit too much by accident. So long suckers!!!! 

Diet of a rockstar....

This is what rock-n-roll is all about, a post festival-gig crisp sandwhich and some novelty rustic headwear. Here is Adam modeling the mini-tree we found outside and the tub of butter we raided from the kitchen at 2am. No crisp sandwhich is complete without some butter!

Black Velvet Band on tour

Here we are, checking into our room at the Araluen folk festival where we played some covers and some original stuff. It was stop 1 on our tour of south western australia. This blog posts in reverse order so i guess you have already seen the pictures of the other gigs.

This is the view from our dorm. Lots of folky folks and bearded old dudes

Here is our front door, which didnt lock, and we stuck our business card on the door. For some reason it didnt draw a lot of attention, the ques for teh autographs must have been somewhere else..... 

Wedding bells

Heres a photo from a gig we did at the weekend, one of the few times we have played at an indoor wedding! 4 bridesmaids, usually this means that it takes all day for them to reach the altar as they all come in one at a time, but not these guys, they were up and greeted by the priest in under 10 seconds, because they all charge by the hour over here and us musicians arent cheap you know ;)

Toot-and-come-in (tutankhamen)

Here is a place in perth, its open to the public and has the occasional private function. I played here a few months ago.

Its full of plants and trees, like a giant greenhouse, except its piramid shaped. Two sweeping staircases lead up to this crows-nest type platform which fits a string trio nearly perfectly.