Minor League Rocker

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It’s odd how you can take the same band, hear them twice and get two different results.

Last weekend at Smokey’s in Mesa, Chris the drummer and I felt out of sorts the whole night. Everything was a struggle, and I had a near catastrophic mistake. Fortunately, it was in the last few bars of one of our songs. He and I usually mesh really nicely, and everything goes pretty smoothly. Not that night.

Last night at Donna Jean’s, though, was another story. That performance was polished to a high sheen. I can attribute some of it to the crowd. Donna Jean’s had a lively bunch, and that always makes it more fun to play live.

A lot of them were regulars, so we decided to switch our set up a touch. That meant excluding a few crowd favorite covers for a few different ones, but it went over really well. We took Judas Priest’s “Breaking the Law” and Metallica’s “Seek & Destroy” out, replacing them with “The Gambler” (yes, the Kenny Rogers song, but done OUR way!) and AC/DC’s “TNT”, which was great.

For you gear heads, Todd (singer/guitarist) and I have really created a very hard-hitting guitar sound. He recently picked up a used Mesa F-100. It pairs really nicely with my Fryette Deliverance 60. Both of us now have a very aggressive distortion character which lends itself well to our music. But we’re not pooping all over each other sonically, which is really cool. Each of us has a distinct but complementary tone.

Speaking of the Deliverance, it’s very new to me but has become my number-one amp. I’ve been promising you a review of it, I know. Give me a day or two and you’ll finally have it!