Mood: crushed out
Now Playing: If You had Eyes in the Back of Your Head - Lee Harris 3
Topic: Lee Harris 3 Gig
What a hectic weekend. The Tsunami show was postponed 2 weeks from the end of January to February 13th. I hired a helper for my paper route - and was in bed around 8 AM Sunday morning. I woke up I don't even remember when and gathered up my guitar and "amp-in-a-box", shaved & showered and headed downtown for the hour drive to the Canal Club.
I arrived around 4 PM - and Page Wilson was telling me to find the rest of my band, 'cause they were running a little early and we would go on as soon as Susan Greenbaum was finished. She was just starting her set - so I got on the cell phone to call the boys. Turned out they were standing in the audience watching the show.
I paced around nervously and counted my patch cords over and over to make sure I had everything I needed. Guitar pick, strap, wires, AC plugs...There was nothing to do backstage so I wandered downstairs for a beer and a smoke. Talked with my old friend Jason down there for awhile and noticed Corey beckoning me from the balcony.
Wandering back upstairs, Susan was coming off the stage and I gathered all my stuff and went onstage and plugged in as Bill Bevins was at the mic thanking corporate sponsers and whatnot. He turned to us and asked if the orchestra was ready - but I still had to tune so I said no - in a second.
Then it was time to start - and I belted out the a capella intro to song 1, "Poor Me." All I could hear in the moniters was myself - the guitar and vocal. No bass, and Monty seemed like he was 1,000 light-years away. I've been in situations like this before, and have learned in my 20 plus years of playing live to soldier ahead and hope we were all on the same page. I sensed they couldn't hear me either, but we know these songs inside and out, so all I could do was hope.
We had decided to do an all-guitar set since we only had 20 or so minutes, and switching between piano and guitar would be a hassle. Make it short, punchy & sweet. "Poor me" is about 2 minutes long, so I pounded right into "Without You" which also has a short a capella opening. These two songs were written by Monty and me in our "let's write songs like Weezer" phase that lasted a few weeks, and were probably the 2 newest songs of the set.
The next one was something we'd only learned a couple of practices earlier, "I'm Not Gonna Let You Break My Heart." I recorded a demo of this with Greg Garner on drums, Corey and Nick on guitars. It was something I wrote on a 20-song writing bender over the course of a few days when I was unemployed. Other songs from this period are Country Sunshine's "Waiting to Hit the Stage," "Out of Her Elements Again," and God knows what else. We did okay on this one considering, but due to the moniter situation we flubbed the end up a bit. Oh well.
"Remember Me" was next up to bat, and it felt really good. Seemed to get the biggest audience response. Then we closed it out with what IS actually the newest song of the lot, "Nancy #1," which I wrote about 5 months ago, and "Powhatan, Virginia."
I managed to remember to plug this website, and we were off the stage. I had no idea how we had sounded, but me being me assumed we must have sounded horrible. I had another beer downstairs, chatting with Corey & Kristi. I went backstage again to gather my guitar and stuff, and found myself standing between Tim Kaine, who is the former Richmond mayor and is running for Governor, and Cheryl Miller, a local anchorwoman-type person. They were rocking out with the paperboy from Powhatan.
A week later a DVD showed up in the mail of the show. I wasn't expecting this at all, and was a bit tepid about taking a look - but when I got the nerve up (about ten minutes) we actually sounded good. Hooray!
Posted by Lee Harris
at 1:00 AM EST