Any gig that begins with me getting electrocuted usually ends in tears and unhappiness. But, last night’s gig at Sally O’Briens was a ton of fun.
It started with a scheduling mixup, it ended in broken equipment and we had a blast the entire time.
Things that went wrong last night:
- The headliner somehow decided that “headling” means going on first. Because headlining usually means going last, but last night was apparently opposite night. I went second instead of first. My poor, pregnant sister was a total trouper in staying late to see most of my set.
- My guitarist, Dave, was so totally awesome and tuned up my guitar for me last week. He brought it to the gig for me to use. I admired his handiwork, picked it up to start playing… and promptly broke a string.
- I grabbed my microphone and felt something rather… shocking. Being smart, I grabbed it again. Yup, it was definitely electrocuting me. Mike (my bassist) was getting shocked by his mic as well. The sound guy’s solution? Don’t touch the mic. Ouch.
- Things started going better, the crowd was into it, people were dancing, everyone was super into it… and all of a sudden Dave stopped playing. Well, Dave didn’t stop playing. But is amplifier stopped making any noise. He was frantically checking cables, changing plugs, doing everything that he could to get the music going again. Mike and Matt (my drummer) turned to each other and gave each other a look that said “well, at least Hope is still playing.” I think we all know where this is going…
- While Dave was trying to get his amp going again, he accidentally knocked over his microphone. It fell over, hit me in the face, bounced onto my mic knocking it over and then wrapped itself around my guitar, preventing me from playing a note. Amazingly enough, I managed to not miss singing a note. But we definitely ended that song with only bass and drums playing.
You’d think that I would have been miserable at the end of a night like (getting shocked and hit in the face is usually not so much fun), but I had a blast. I love it when the audience gets into the music. And I love it when the other bands are fantastic (scheduling issues not-withstanding, it was a great bill). We all pretty much said, “Fuck it, who cares that stuff is going wrong. Let’s just play the hell out of this music and have a good time.”
I think that we succeeded.
I’d love to have all of my gigs go like that in the future… but maybe with a little less electrocution.
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