DCIC with Glorytellers at the Black Cat

Last night DCIC performed our first trio show of the season. All of our concerts since April or May were with Joe Lally, playing his songs. It was nice to get back to our regular thing; I think that spending some time learning songs and playing more structured music was a good exercise for us.

Playing at the Black Cat is fun. They treat the performers nicely there and since Ben knows the staff people so well, it's almost like we're playing at his house. Well, his house is a lot cleaner, but the sound system at the club is much better. They've made some upgrades to the system on the backstage and it sounds pretty good in there.

The Glorytellers drew a good crowd (especially for a Sunday night in August) so we had a substantial audience. Quite a change from our last few shows at Warehouse Next Door where it was just Ted and the sound guy. Ted was at this show too... so we didn't have any worries.

I've seriously down-sized my guitar rig for DCIC shows so I have no gadgets and gizmos. No fancy laptop guitar effects and I didn't even use any prepared guitar tricks. No alligator clips, no dulcimer hammers, no vibrator. I just played the guitar with my fingers and a pick. Ok, I brought a distortion pedal and a volume pedal, but that was it. I do love my new guitar. It just sounds so nice no matter what I do with it.... Ben was rocking a new translucent red drum kit. It sounds nice - and looks cool too. The guy's got it going on. And with Mike always looking the bad-ass, that means I've got some styling to do, huh? Cameron is really trying her best, but I'm a difficult case.

For this show we had our first composed material. One of the pieces was built around some patterns I actually notated. Another was built around a short melodic theme that Mike composed. That still left plenty of time for complete improvisations as well. I think we rocked. I'll know better after I hear the recording.