Monday, April 20, 2009

April 17 Dentones gig



A couple of weeks ago I was looking at the Carousel Lounge website and noticed that local 90s alternative rock heroes The Wannabes were playing at the club but apparently had no opening band. A quick call to Nikki, the club's manager, put an end to that vacancy. The Dentones would open for the Wannabes starting at 7:00.

It was a strategic move. I was resigned to the fact that there was not enough time to muster much of a turnout from our fan-base, but I figured that Wannabes fans would start showing up toward the end of our second set. If nothing else, it would be a chance to reconnect with Wannabes guitarist Kevin Carney.

I was 33% right. Very few Dentones fans showed up. No other fans showed up until way after we were done. Kevin didn't arrive until almost an hour after we had stopped.

There was a band in the middle. A very good one, actually. The Ron Titter Band was chutzpah incarnate. Imagine a mixture of Elvis and the Stooges and the New York Dolls (what other component am I missing here?) performed by a set of fellows who mostly look like Dell tech support lads. My, but looks can be deceiving!

The evening was far from a waste. The band played quite well. Alexei, a newish friend and the sound engineer who is recording the Dentones in his studio, got the PA very nicely balanced. The bartender liked us a lot, offered the consoling words that early shows are notoriously hard to populate, and gave me free beer for the rest of the evening. Also, Garrett Williams, the drummer for Right or Happy (with whom we are doing a May 29th gig) caught the last few of our tunes. He was probably there on a fact-finding mission to make sure our PA is acceptable and that the Dentones are, too. He talked to Big A for a bit (they have a mutual friend who was the genesis of this upcoming gig), introduced himself to the rest of us, and said we sounded good.

That was music to my ears.

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