Great venue tonight. OK, wait...I take that back. Beautiful venue. Not great for sound. This was a larger church with some amazing, modern, stain glass windows along the sides. But, a 4.5 second reverb. Thankfully we had a good solid crowd that helped soak up the reflections.
We finally got a decent sound check. Running through many of the pieces that we just hadn't had time to look at in detail. Especially now that we have our Brian. Key things that we hit were “Rhythm of the Heat” (Michael and I play drums and sing on this one), “Games Without Frontiers” (with bonus coda), “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” (new for us), “No Self Control” and “Intruder”. All sounding pretty damn good.
We spend some time each day after sound check tweaking the set list. It is so easy to take this great material and making a crap show by putting the tunes in the wrong order. We are getting close to an ideal set though some things still need moving around. Not that once we get a great set it will stay there. We still like to shift things around. But to begin with, it is nice to have something solid that really works.
The show, itself, went quite smoothly. There were some hiccups with our monitor mixes as, at the last minute, we had to accommodate some video cameras and that through off a few things. Our sound man, Rob, is super cool. And a real hero taking on our new Berhinger system. No sound man looks forward to walking into a gig and being told that every thing that they are used to doing, is now going to be thrown out. That they have to start from scratch with an entirely different way of mixing. And even, thinking, about how the sound system works. But Rob is rocking it. We figure that within a few more shows our setup and sound checks will be cut in half again.
Highlights from the show:
Opening with “Rhythm of the Heat.” Jerry and Michael and I are closing in on getting the backing vocals solid. This is such a great opening. Spacious and big.
“Here's Come The Flood” is my place to stretch out. And tonight I did. I decided to do this one standing up tonight. Seemed to work. Though I have now missed the final chord in the first chorus two nights in a row. Bad, hands! Shame on you! I swear I will fix it in Poland. (Four of these “Flood” solos, preludes from our last tour appear on my latest CD “The Waters, They Are Rising” along with many other things. Coming in March, but on sale at these shows.)
“The Lamb” was very solid tonight. And Scott joined us for “Biko”. Which was a track that I was originally very opposed to playing. My reasoning was that the Security Project, as a concept, would only work if you didn't feel like you were missing Peter Gabriel. And I thought that “Biko” was a such strong a Peter-Moment in his shows, that it would play against us with the nostalgia-factor and just the plain “I wish I was at a Peter Gabriel show instead of here.” But, I was wrong. We play it really, really well. Jerry IS the pocket on this one. And David has done an amazing job with getting the Eigenharp to play the bagpipes. Some nights it is completely spine-tingling when they kick in.
Nine hour overnight drive to Poland.
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previous tour diaries