Hickoids played at Giddy Ups last night. There is a classic car festival
in town this weekend (there is crap going on EVERY weekend in Austin)
so the field behind the club was packed with really cool looking cars...
and the cars from the bands... Bands don't have really cool looking
cars. They are either vans or hand-me-downs with over a hundred thousand
miles on them. I have the latter.
We are playing two shows with the Loco Gringos this weekend. They were gonna play right before us on this one, but the opener was stuck in traffic so the Gringos went first. The sound was terrible. The wind was blowing more than 20 miles an hour and that alone was making the mics howl. Early on the soundguy had overheads on the drums... Howl. All the amps had mics on them and were way too loud, the bass rig was direct and it was too loud, the toms on the drum kit were louder than the kick or snare and the PA speakers were designed for an indoor space that was about 20% the size of the area they needed to cover...
The worst part is that since everything was turned up so loud the vocals were completely buried. I heard a couple of Gringos tunes that were suddenly "instrumentals", sad.
They finish up and the next act was the worst carbon copy of a hillbilly rocker I've ever seen. I'm not even gonna mention his name, but what a bunch of shit. He was going for that Hank III, Wayne Hancock vibe that is still popular amongst the folks that like to play dress up, but he had none of those guys skills. His band was lame. He made his lead guitar player set up his guitar before he set up his own (what a dick) and he spent most of the set bitching about how awful the sound was...
He wouldn't let up about the soundman. Even after he was finished he was trying to bitch to us about how bad it sounded. I get it, the sound sucked. But bitching about it the entire set (and after) ain't gonna fix it. Move on and play.
He was trying to be our best pal in between the sets, saying things like "That's how it is on the road" and "Just another night of rock and roll". DEAR JESUS LORD THAT I DON'T BELIEVE IN, WOULD YOU PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What a fake little ego maniac of a hack. Pitiful, just pitiful. (I could go on for an hour about this jackass, but I've already wasted too much of my energy on him.)
Anyway, we went up and did our thing. The sound sucked but we knew that going in. We had a pretty good set and the crowd was really in to it. It was cold as hell out (well, for a thin blooded Austinite, it was windy and in the low 60's) so I kept the jacket and tie on the whole set. That's a first. Smitty tried to get some women up in the front to take off their tops and the only person that got to do it was a guy in a wheelchair.
That's what you get when your a Hickoid.
Dale Watson finished things up. Incredible as always. His band it tight as hell and all of them are solid bad asses. And they didn't bitch about the sound once.
More with the Gringos tomorrow.
We are playing two shows with the Loco Gringos this weekend. They were gonna play right before us on this one, but the opener was stuck in traffic so the Gringos went first. The sound was terrible. The wind was blowing more than 20 miles an hour and that alone was making the mics howl. Early on the soundguy had overheads on the drums... Howl. All the amps had mics on them and were way too loud, the bass rig was direct and it was too loud, the toms on the drum kit were louder than the kick or snare and the PA speakers were designed for an indoor space that was about 20% the size of the area they needed to cover...
The worst part is that since everything was turned up so loud the vocals were completely buried. I heard a couple of Gringos tunes that were suddenly "instrumentals", sad.
They finish up and the next act was the worst carbon copy of a hillbilly rocker I've ever seen. I'm not even gonna mention his name, but what a bunch of shit. He was going for that Hank III, Wayne Hancock vibe that is still popular amongst the folks that like to play dress up, but he had none of those guys skills. His band was lame. He made his lead guitar player set up his guitar before he set up his own (what a dick) and he spent most of the set bitching about how awful the sound was...
He wouldn't let up about the soundman. Even after he was finished he was trying to bitch to us about how bad it sounded. I get it, the sound sucked. But bitching about it the entire set (and after) ain't gonna fix it. Move on and play.
He was trying to be our best pal in between the sets, saying things like "That's how it is on the road" and "Just another night of rock and roll". DEAR JESUS LORD THAT I DON'T BELIEVE IN, WOULD YOU PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What a fake little ego maniac of a hack. Pitiful, just pitiful. (I could go on for an hour about this jackass, but I've already wasted too much of my energy on him.)
Anyway, we went up and did our thing. The sound sucked but we knew that going in. We had a pretty good set and the crowd was really in to it. It was cold as hell out (well, for a thin blooded Austinite, it was windy and in the low 60's) so I kept the jacket and tie on the whole set. That's a first. Smitty tried to get some women up in the front to take off their tops and the only person that got to do it was a guy in a wheelchair.
That's what you get when your a Hickoid.
Dale Watson finished things up. Incredible as always. His band it tight as hell and all of them are solid bad asses. And they didn't bitch about the sound once.
More with the Gringos tomorrow.
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