April has been a long month, but a fun one! The month began with the first of the Haven Holiday Camp gigs with Spinoffs! We started at Thorpe Park in Cleethorpes, then to Reighton Sands at Filey. The following week, we were at Blue Dolphin and Primrose Valley holiday parks in Filey, and the next week we saw Haggerston Castle and Berwick Holiday Village!
It's been really great to work with the Haven staff and the Funstars to play for some really appreciative audiences! These gigs have been tremendous fun so far, I'm very much looking forward to the coming weeks! And yeah, at each camp we've been putting Quackers the Duck on top of the bass amp as a Spinoffs tradition. The staff told us only to return him safe and sound once the gig was over.
Quackers atop the bass amp at Blue Dolphin Haven Camp Filey
These gigs were my first with my new Minerva In Ear Monitors! They are simply fantastic and have really given live performance a new perspective for me. The monitors are fantastically clear and extremely useful for live backing vocals! It's a novelty to actually hear the other 4 members of the band singing! Joking aside, a massive thank you to Minerva for all of the our in ear packs, we look forward to using them every gig!Also this month, I was fortunate enough to receive some tuition from guitar legend Mike Walker with the band "Alcajazz." This consisted of us playing a variety of different styles of music (INCLUDING STEELY DAN'S SONG PEG WHICH FEATURES BACKING VOCALS FROM THE ONE AND ONLY MICHAEL MCDONALD). All in all, a fantastic couple of days that really opened my eyes to playing as part of a rhythm section, with a lot of helpful tips for playing different styles of music in a stylistically correct manner. Let's just say I have a tendency to overplay. Didn't see that one coming!
Finally, April also saw two absolutely electric RNCM Session Orchestra gigs! Some absolutely fantastic playing across the band and for me, a really great feeling to hear it all come together after months of hard work! So a massive well done to everyone who was involved in the project from me, but a special mention to my arranging compadres who really helped to add an extra kick to the whole band's sound. I'll look forward to sharing the footage when it comes back, but for now, here's a picture of me doing a bass slide. (For those of you who remembered the title of this blog, we did the Michael McDonald versions of Higher and Higher and For Once in My Life on the Session Orchestra gigs amongst other great songs).
Playing Bass for RNCM Session Orchestra in the RNCM Theatre
That's it for now! May is about to start, my assessments at college are looming ever closer, but for now I'm excited. The sun came out the other day, that's good? I'm going to stop typing now.Alasdair
P.S. I don't like Michael McDonald
The man himself
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