New Year's Eve '09, The Redstone Room, Davenport, IA

It's plain to see, but I've been slacking in the blog. Perhaps my New Year's resolution should be to keep up with this more. It's tough when I'm faced with the task of putting together the band's "Video Blogs" each week; I know I know, it's no match for the textual storytelling of yours truly. I'll do better in 2010. (Satisfied, Zach T.??)

Anyway, New Year's Eve 2009! The band worked long and hard in preparation for this one, unveiling a few firsts for us: 1. A 3-set NYE show, 2. An acoustic set, and 3. Adding a horn section. Lots and lots of rehearsals, trying ideas, scrapping ideas, finalizing songlists, practice practice practice. No shows for six weeks and cooped up in the rehearsal room...we were ready to get back on stage!

The adventure began the day before New Year's eve. We set out to Davenport a day early to begin the extensive load-in, set up and soundcheck process. This was a genius idea by Jordan, as we got the 3 hour drive and half the work done the day before show. Nice.

It took awhile to get out of town, as we had to pick up both our horn players and fill the squishy tires of our van that had been hibernating for 6 weeks. Add in a little bit of snow, and our 5:30 load time turned into about 7pm. I loathe being late, but given that we were a whole day early to begin with, I kept my bitching to a minimum.

We got the gear loaded and partially set up, and had a very productive rehearsal with the horn section. Then back to the hotel for some pizza and beer, and an early bedtime for the 11am continuation of the set-up fun!

Musicians being coherent at 11am is never an easy task, but we were all pumped for the show and in good spirits. Today's work consisted of the electric and acoustic soundchecks, setting up the entire light rig, and not to mention, blowing up 150 balloons. This is where we thought our horn players with their super studly lungs would come in handy. They did blow up a commendable number of balloons, but alas, our crown jewel, the $8, three foot diameter New Year's balloon, met an untimely death at the hands of our trumpet player, Jerry. D'OH!



The work took us well into the afternoon, but we had time for a run back to the hotel for a short rest, showers, etc. At this point, I got a text message that the show was sold out in advance, and I became too excited for a nap. Boo-yeah!!

Back to the venue for a take-out dinner from the restaurant downstairs, and then showtime was upon us! The acoustic set was first, and our acoustic soundcheck was the very last thing we had done in the setup process. What an unpleasant surprise, then, when we took the stage with the crowd gathered around in anticipation, and my acoustic bass did not have any sound. A few minutes of troubleshooting that felt like an eternity, a bad cable was replaced, and on with the show!

The acoustic set was a ton of fun. We played a few reworked versions of FGC staples, including Ready Fire Aim, One Eye Dreaming, and The Charmer, giving them what I like to call the "Layla" treatment. We also unveiled a bunch of new covers, and everything went over really well. The set was a great way to ease in to a long night of music.

The second set was electric and took us until 11:30pm. Given that we hadn't played as a band in 6 weeks, I was very surprised as to how gelled everything felt and how comfortable all the tempos were. The crowd was raging from beat one, and it felt great to be back! The horn players joined us for the last few tunes of the set. I especially liked their contribution to our original tune, "A Misdemeanor's Worth."

The third set began right at midnight. I think this was our most accurate New Year's countdown yet, synced to the second with a satellite-monitored cell phone clock. Our balloon helpers launched all the balloons into the crowd as we fell into Auld Lang Syne, and then we busted into "Byron's Got the Time."

Everything went smoothly for about the first 30 seconds of 2010, but then I decided to kick a balloon off stage mid-song and my shoe went flying into the crowd. And it wasn't just any shoe. It was a nice shoe that I grudgingly bought just for the show so I wouldn't be wearing sneakers with my nice outfit, and I had in the back of my mind that I would probably return the pair to the store. So it became quite the crisis that my shoe was no longer on my foot, and instead was down in the photo pit, just inches away from being sucked into the mass of people. I then proceeded to blow the tune we were playing, while simultaneously blowing all attempts at communication with our photographer Chuck, who apparently thought me pointing at my bare foot meant that I wanted more balloons to kick.

I finally retrieved my shoe, and the rest of the set went swimmingly, with lots more horn fun, including the Phish cover, "Julius," which I was convinced the crowd would go apeshit over, and indeed they did. By the end of the show, my hands felt like jelly having not played that intense of a show in so long, and I was hurting pretty bad by the time we got to our double encore of "Late in the Evening" and "Another Before I Go."

After the show, we left all our gear set up (a New Year's tradition), and hit a friend's party, followed by more latenight fun at our hotel.







The next day went in slow motion, with a lazy check-out of the hotel, a 2pm "breakfast" at the Village Inn, tearing down and loading out the gear, a 3 hour drive home, and unloading all our gear once again.

An incredible way to end 2009 and start 2010. Thanks to all involved in making it happen!

Video Blogs

I'm a little behind on the blogging due to dabbling in a new medium: The Video Blog!

Check out the videos below for quick overviews of the last couple weekends of shows. Hopefully I'll have time to come back for the usual verbal synopsis, but these will surely entertain you in the meantime....

FGC Video Blog: Volume 1
September 17-19, 2009 :: Iowa City IA, Lawrence KS, Columbia MO


FGC Video Blog: Volume 2
September 25-26 :: Davenport and Ames, IA

9/25/09 Redstone Room, Davenport, IA

It seems that each time we play at the Redstone Room, it's more fun than the previous time, and last night once again exceeded all my expectations.

Our opener for the evening had canceled, which made for a little more of a relaxed set up for our light show and soundcheck. After all the work was done, we grabbed a quick dinner at the sandwich shop downstairs, and then awaited showtime as the fans started to stream in. Hanging out at the bar, I ground-scored a dollar...wooohooo!



The first set flew by, with the fans raging super hard in the front row. The venue had set up a "riot fence" at the front of the stage, and this probably enticed the crowd into being more rowdy than they may have been had the fence not even been there, climbing on the fence, shaking it, lifting it, and all sorts of other craziness. We even had a kid jump up on stage and dive out into the mass of people, successfully crowd surfing for a full 15 seconds or so. Totally epic!!



We didn't think it could get any crazier, but the second set got even more rowdy, with the crowd grooving hard and going absolutely apeshit. All I wanted to do was watch them go nuts, but the distraction made it hard to concentrate on my bass playing. I even got a "Janis is hot / Janis rocks!" chant between a couple tunes, though Adam swears they were saying "Janis sucks!" Hmmm, I'll need to review the recording. However, there was undeniable Janis support in the form of many WWJD shirt sightings:



After the show, the tear down took forever, and we didn't get to the hotel until well after 4am. Luckily, the continental breakfast was already out, so we raided it like hungry savages.



Now we're off to Ames, Iowa for a show at DG's. I don't know what it is about Iowa, but the people here freakin' ROCK. Will the Ames crew top the enthusiasm of Davenport?? Stay tuned for an update!

9/19/09 Mojo's, Columbia, MO

On Saturday, we had a nice leisurely check-out of our hotel and headed to lunch at a local pizza place that I had a coupon for. This lunch turned out to be a very exciting one, as thanks to a combination of my coupon, the house specials, and an order screw-up, the total to feed 5 people was only $12.11. Nice. We left for Columbia happy and full.

The Mojo's show started out as a bit of a clusterfuck, with the opening band deciding to take over the stage with their setup before we even got there. Good thing we didn't pull that stunt with Victor Wooten the couple nights prior...sheesh. After braving the opening band, we hit the stage for a small but appreciative crowd. The vibe was totally different than our short high pressure opening sets the two nights before, and we all seemed to play a little more adventurously and with less inhibitions. We did a particularly fun version of MSMW's "Little Walter Rides Again," a tune that we used to play quite frequently but hadn't ripped out in some time, so it was fun to revisit it. Another event of note during the show was that Mattias raged so hard that his drum stick caught on his glasses and flung them across the stage, bending up the frames quite a bit. Yes folks, we are too rock-star to smash our instruments and amps, and instead go for the eyewear.

After the show, we hung out with some fans, seizing the opportunity for two WWJD tshirt photo opps. Then back to the hotel for a short night's sleep before heading back home to Chicago the next day.



All in all, a fun weekend!

9/18/09 Granada Theater, Lawrence, KS (with Victor Wooten!)

Night number two with Victor Wooten started out with polite complaining to the Days Inn staff about our disgusting hotel rooms (and their subsequent promise to refund the points we used to pay for them...yes!) and then a long sleepy drive down to Lawrence Kansas.

A nice change from the previous night at the cramped and sweaty Picador, the Granada Theater is a spacious room with a great sound system and it was good to be back. We arrived to find Vic jamming out on stage with three of his kids: 8-yr-old Adam on the drumkit, and his 6 and 11 year old daughters on vocals....musicianship definitely runs in the family!

We got set up and soundchecked, and the crowd filed in as soon as the doors opened, vying for their spot at the front of the stage to get close enough to study Victor's technique...though I pretended it was for me. :) We were instructed to hit right at 9pm sharp, and it was a little nerve-wracking waiting backstage and counting down those final minutes before heading out to face that bass-critiquing crowd. The show went off without a hitch, though, and I felt good about the impression we made on this crowd of mostly new faces for us.

Victor hit the stage thereafter, throwing in a few of the same tricks from the night before, but the sound and sightline were so much better at this venue that it made even the repeats enjoyable. He gave yet another shout out to us, introducing FGC as one of his favorite bands and adding, "What would Janis do? That is the question." I was also completely entertained by Vic and JD Blair's freakin' hilarious on-stage banter -- JD in particular is such a goofball. Plus, as I hoped, Victor brought out his kids to play the tune they were going over in soundcheck. The kids didn't seem at all fazed by the crowd of several hundred people, and the 8-year-old drummer especially was a real treat to watch.

Post-show, we hung out with Victor a bit, and once again, I'm so pleasantly surprised by what a genuine and down-to-earth person he is. We then made the 45 minute drive to our hotel in Kansas City, where we settled into our cushy free rooms at the Sheraton with the best "Do Not Disturb" signs I have ever seen:

9/17/09 Picador, Iowa City, IA (with Victor Wooten!)

This show was a special one for me, given that we were to be opening for one of the greatest bass players of all time, and thankfully I wasn't the nervous wreck that I was for our first Wooten opening last year at Chicago's House of Blues.

We arrived to the venue just as Victor was finishing up soundchecking. He greeted me with a booming "Janis!!!" and introduced me to his wife and four kids who were all on the road with him. I had assumed this tour would be a small operation, given that it's just a duo of Victor and drummer, but no, they had a full tour bus and the family factor, not mention a monster bass rig and an even bigger monster of a drum kit.

Out set went off well. We were kind of crammed onto the small stage, but I think the close quarters made for more tight playing. The room was packed when we started, and it was easy to tell that the majority of them were musicians, since there was much more staring and much less dancing than we're used to. (I instantly got flashbacks of playing shows with Steve Kimock!) But the crowd's motionlessness turned out to be no indication of their enthusiasm, as we got cheers in all the right places and lots of great feedback after our set.

Victor hit the stage a little later, giving a sweet shout-out to me personally as well as the band after a few songs into his set. Needless to say, I was walking on a cloud for the rest of the night. His show was phenomenal, with the usual Victor virtuosity, along with some cool looping and harmonizers and backed up by an insanely funky and tastefully simple drummer named JD Blair, aka "The Groove Regulator." Go check these guys out! www.victorwooten.com

Off to Lawrence Kansas for night number two with the Woot-ster!

9/12/09 Wuhnurth Festival, Muncie, IN

Wuhnurth (pronounced "One Earth") Festival. Interesting spelling. Fun festival!

We made most of the trek to Muncie the night before our set so we wouldn't have to get up early and drive from Chicago, instead crashing in a cushy Candlewood Suites in Indianapolis using our points.
This hotel made us feel like royalty, with a gift bag upon check-in, no questions late checkout, free goodies from the "Candlewood Cupboard" pantry shop, and awesome rooms with full kitchens.

We started the day with a hot breakfast cooked in our rooms, and then headed out to Wuhnurth Fest. The band schedule was running a bit late, so we enjoyed some time in the great weather, hanging with a few other bands and friends and fans.

The set went off well, and it was nice to see some of our die-hards from Chicago raging the front row. We opened with the new "G Song," which is really starting to gel, and also played probably our last "Sittin on the Dock of the Bay" of the summer, in honor of the small lake behind the stage.



Post-show, the hospitality people were excited to feed their first band of the evening, and we loaded up on awesome pasta, salad, and garlic bread.



Adam, Jordan and I headed out later that night, leaving Mattias behind as the ambassador to the fans. On the way home, Adam spotted a drunk driver on the highway during his shift, so I called 911 to report it. We passed the crazy driver and went through an interchange, but about 20 minutes later, Miss Crazy Drunkie in the PT Cruiser whizzed by us once again, weaving in and out of the lanes, and slowing and speeding up randomly. I called 911 again, and while I was on the phone, Crazy Drunkie smashed into a truck about 5 car lengths in front of us. We narrowly escaped a sticky situation and were very grateful for it....we were "wuhn" lucky band!