Setlist: Surrounded By Trees, Travelers Merchants & Masters, The Storm, Snow, She Waits By The Sea, Mr. Raleigh’s Dilemma, Hanging Up the Dream, Abused’s Song, August, 10K

Raleigh was a debut.  Also this was the first gig with Matt, first gig in Chapel Hill & first gig at the Cave.  Lotsa firsts.

The show was decently attended.  I think it’s the best we can hope for.  Julie, Eric, Bryan Younts, Brooke & Travis, Don & Lizzi and Chris & Andrea, plus some regulars.  We made pretty good money and that was a total shock.  I forgot to bring the mailing list & CDs (and setlist, thankfully Matt had a copy), but we managed.

Jenn wasn’t completely present tonight, kinda disconnected.  Matt did a great job of setting her levels and I could hear her voice wonderfully.  While her voice sounded great, her guitar playing was a bit off on a few songs.  The Storm started out so awful, like that one show at Pheasant Creek.  It eventually got better, but it just wasn’t there at the beginning.  She played better for Abused & Hanging, but it was still REALLY quiet during those.  During all of her guitar playing, actually.

While she contributed a few guitar-clams, I certainly contributed my share, which is usually pretty significant.  Overall, I thought it was a good show, though.  A good number of mistakes, but good overall.  We were stupid to open with Surrounded.  It was a trainwreck and Matt had a tough time with it.  I tried with all my might to hold it together, actually.  I like Travelers as a song, but I don’t think it fits in with our set on an every-show occurrence.  We need more material before we can start playing others less.  Ideally?  If it were me, I’d cut Abused’s, Snow & Travelers down to “not very often”.  Same with Amnesia, but we’ve already kind of done that.  Abused’s is currently one of our major songs, and one of our few up-tempo ones at that.  I just feel that it doesn’t reach people.  There’s no reaction to it.  I think it’s a pretty good song, but really, no one cares.  Mr. Raleigh’s Dilemma got a good reaction tonight.  I thought we played it WAY fast, but Brooke & Bryan specifically really liked it.  I have to say, it was very nice to play again and except for my horrid bass solo it was good.  I thought my backup vocals in the chorus sounded good.

My singing?  Overall I’m still too afraid of the mic and when I’m not singing, I just stay away from it.  I thought it was decent.  I still can’t hear myself well enough when singing, so we’ll have to work on it.  We’ve talked about having some specific vocal rehearsals with all 3 of us.  I think it’s a good idea.

So, Matt.  It was a lot to try to have him learn 10 songs in 3 weeks.  For the most part he sounded really good.  Songs like Raleigh, She Waits, Snow, Hanging and Storm really sounded good with him.  He did good on August too, specifically.  Surrounded was a mess; he’ll get better.  10K was still a bit too scatter-shot, esp. the chorus.  Travelers was good, but it just needs a bit more on the verses.  The “heartbeat” thingie.  He made some real nice, subtle touches to the music that I loved.  I think with a few more weeks/months of good practice we’re going to be a hell of a band.

I think it was a good showing all around and I’m pretty happy about it.  We have a lot of things to work on, so that’s good.