21 Sept – Tower Records (in-store, Atlanta, GA)
Well, I honestly didn’t know what to expect from this. When we were rehearsing for the CD release show Pete had told me he was only doing this for me because he really hated doing in-stores. Apparently Uncle Green had endured some hellish ones. Anyone who’s seen Spinal Tap will have some idea of just how bad one can be. I was really sort of just hoping maybe 10 people or so might show, just so I’d have a tiny crowd hanging around for the set, rather than having to play to a HUGE store of people ignoring me.
The band was not the usual setup, Lee was filling in for Rob on guitar, John (keyboards) couldn’t make it, and Lyle played bass for David. We hadn’t rehearsed this configuration and worse still there are some songs that are sort of dependent at times on the keyboard stuff. There was no one at the store to run sound (not surprising, though thankfully they did actually have a PA, not enough mics to mic anything other than vocals but there were floor monitors) so I roped Gina (lawyer extraordinaire) into managing the sound.
We played at 4pm. Normal set. None of us could really hear what the other was doing. The sound was really strange from the stage, reverberating from the back of the store. The store is really big, bigger it seems to me than it can afford to be, given how many customers they had on a Saturday afternoon. We had about 15 people there to see the show itself, a few people popping in and out while shopping. We sold some CDs out of the store. It didn’t go as badly as it could have, and all things considered it went pretty well.
Pete said it was easily the best in-store he’s ever been in. I’ll take that.
I’m off to Nashville today. Tonight I’m playing the open mic at 12th and Porter to try and get my foot in the door there, then Tuesday night I’m playing New Faces night at the Slow Bar. About a 25 minute set around 10pm. If you live in Nashville come on out.