I made a video of The Drop Daddies performing Where The Streets Have No Name at our gig on St. Patrick’s Day.
You’ll see that I’m playing the opening organ parts on the Korg wavestate, with MIDI footswitch triggers on the Helix, while struggling to simultaneously play the guitar parts – tricky business!
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Great time last light with the Drop Daddies playing at our local bar, the Outpost.
This was the Outpost’s final Saturday night party before closing their doors forever. It was off the hook!
Fun time with the Drop Daddies on Friday, playing a set with the Twin Creeks Elementary chorus at their Fall Carnival.
My band plays a number of outdoor gigs every year, and I usually need to wear sunglasses to survive the gig.
Aside from the sunlight-triggered-wah-freakout issue I wrote about last year, the HD500X works fairly well in the sun. The light rings around the footswitches tend to disappear in bright light, but the main display seems to maintain reasonable visibility.More
Proud to have been a part of the Walnut Creek to Walk to End Alzheimer’s again with the Drop Daddies – our third year!
It’s been a very busy year. I haven’t had much time for making videos and posting blog updates. Here’s why:
About a year ago, I started up a band – the Drop Daddies – with some of the other Dad’s at our kids’ elementary school. Originally, the idea was just to get together on weekends to play some music and have fun. Almost immediately however, a friend invited us to play at her 2012 end-of-the-world party. That humble little gig by the Christmas tree kicked off a very busy year for the band. So far, we’ve learned 60+ songs and played at least a dozen gigs- bars, an auction, carnivals, and parties large and small.
A few observations – each of which should be its own blog post, but I’ll collect them here for now and maybe expand on them later:
The night before my St Patrick’s Day gig with the Drop Daddies, we were setting up at a rehearsal space for a last minute practice. I powered up my gear, and none of my pedals were working!
After a bit of trial and error, it was clear that my ancient SKB PS-25 pedalboard power supply had finally keeled over. I never use batteries, but fortunately a couple of the pedals had old 9V batteries still in them, so it was enough to scrape by for the rehearsal.
The following morning, just a few hours before the gig, I went through my box of old guitar gear to try to find a replacement 9V DC negative-tip power supply.
Hey, here’s the power supply for my Digitech Jamman Delay which I’m not currently using in my live rig. It says 9V, 1.3A. Strange, it doesn’t show a polarity, but it’s a power supply for a guitar pedal, and the plug barrel fits, so it must be good, right? What could possibly go wrong?