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Fat Fish Pub in Galesburg,
Illinois |
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Home
Pretty
Boy's Corner |
July 18, 2010 |
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Up
early, around 8 am, to make a drive to Galesburg, Illinois
for a 6 pm show at the Fat Fish Pub. Tommy starts us out and
after some brief confusion about a closed road and a detour
we finally make it out of Excelsior Springs and back on the
main highway. Lisa takes over driving in Monroe and soon we
cross the mighty Mississippi river after passing through Hannibal,
Mark Twain's hometown. Donto drives us in the last few
miles. We do our usual routine of checking in at the hotel,
unload our baggage, and go to the venue of set up and sound
check.
At the Fat Fish Pub we are greeted by owners Burl and Jeff,
and their family and friends. These guys turn out to be a
great bunch of people who are running a successful club. Burl's
idea is to have local talent play on Friday, Saturdays, and
sometimes Wednesdays. On Sunday once a month or however scheduling
will allow he contracts touring bands to come in and perform.
This is a win/win situation in that Burl gets exceptional
talent at a reduced price and bands want places to play on
their off nights. The bands play early - 6 pm - because it
is Sunday and most people work on Monday so they need an early
evening to come out. Some of the other bands The Fat Fish
Pub has brought in are Tommy Castro, Duke Robillard, Bruce
Katz, and Les Dudek. We are fortunate to be one of those bands.
We do our sound check, get settled in with the Frank the soundman,
and head back to the hotel for a quick change before the show.
Back at the Pub we find that most of the tables and stools
are taken making for a reasonable size crowd for a Sunday
night. You would always want more but for our first time in
Galesburg this is a decent showing and, after our high-energy
show and the great audience reaction, we would hope the next
time would be a standing room only crowd.
Burl and the gang feed us very well and I get a special treat
when Burl shows me this 12 string bass that some one gave
him who use to work for the manufacturer. It is a semi-hollow
body instrument that is really a 4 string bass but each string
has 3 strings each that are different gauges and that are
tuned to different octaves like a 12 string guitar. It had
a real chime like sound. It took some getting use to and needed
to be set up a little better as the string heights were uneven
but even then it was a joy to play. What a cool toy. I only
wish I could have played it for a while through an amp. I
should have made Burl an offer.
We get back to the motel by 11 pm which is an early night
for us. We get to sleep in tomorrow as our drive to Springfield
is a little more than 2 hours. Nothing compared to some of
the long drives that we will be doing. Good night all.
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