Too Tall & The Guilty Lineup
Labor Day Surprise Show
I got a email saying that Too Tall was
coming into town for a Saturday night last minute show. I'm not sure what
spurred this on but I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I honestly
had reconciled myself to the next gig being around Christmas break, so
this was a nice September surprise which helped soften the blow that Beans
Barton's show this month got cancelled. The forces of the universe however
were conspiring against us from the start, making a simple surprise gig
into a saga where the surprise is that they actually did finally manage
to play.
Three dollar a gallon gas didn't stop me from making the trek into town,
I even managed to get some friends who hadn't had a chance to see the
band to show up. Bob the owner of Dan Electros comes over to me and says
Too Tall is in Marshall Texas with a broken car and probably won't make
it in time to play tonight. I figure just
my luck. Well I make the best of the situation and watch the scheduled
bands, which luckily were not bad. But wait it doesn't end here.. (well
duh since you can see pictures on this page).
Sunday I get another email that TT&GL will be playing tonight. The
bands scheduled to play have made room at the end of the night for them
so 12:30 to close is theirs. Hmm another 40 miles of gas and it's still
a no brainer for me, I'm going. Unfortunately it's too late to get the
word out to the friends who showed up Saturday night. I head over early
intent on catching some of the other bands on the bill, though I'm thinking
they are definitely the polar opposite in styles, that's ok I like most
types of music anyway. For the most part it's a good evening of shows
but as it get's close to 12:30 and they still have bands to go on I start
getting antsy.. At this rate I'll be lucky to see a 30 minute set. I was
almost right. It was 1:40 AM when Too Tall finally takes to the stage.
It tells you something that the place actually had more people coming
in at 1 AM to see these guys. You know how as it gets later and later
the club slowly trickles out to where it's just us lastcallholics in the
place. It was just the opposite people kept coming in to the point that
at 2AM there were more people than an hour earlier all for a show that
we knew was going to be short to begin with and notice that was even shorter.
I guess I'm not the only one who loves this band.
Bob the understanding guy that he is says at 2:00 AM... PLAY ON. Yes!!!
They push the limits of legality and play til right near the stroke of
3:00. And by the end I'm thinking even at two 40 mile trips at 3 dollars
a gallon this show was a steal. Even if we didn't get our electric banjo
fix this time.. or bongos for that matter.
Naturally my battery on my minidisc recorder died in the middle of the set. I must have gotten a defective set of AA batteries or something. Next time I'm bringing the AC adaptor. So I'm less than thrilled with my recording since it was a short show (yeah I'm greedy), and I didn't get all of it on tape and lastly because where I had to set the mics was closer to the speakers than I'd like which means a bit overamped.. or maybe the show was louder than usual. Either way it's not as good as the tape I made last month that was just about perfect. One thing that was very different in tonights show was Will was back where he belonged, on the bass. Which means Big Al played guitar, now that sounded great. Especially on Triple A or is it AAA? The dual guitars work so well. I hope whenever they get around to recording a studio version they go that route.
I didn't get great shots of the
show in my opinion. And I didn't do any post processing on the ones I've
posted here. As always I intend to revisit it and edit when I can. On
the other hand they brought down a friend from Nashville who was shooting
with his film camera, and towards the end of the set I let him borrow
my 20D. He took a unfamiliar camera with unfamiliar lenses and all that
and shot some really neat stuff. I'm adding his photos to a little subpage.
I'm actually happy he took the pics he did. I always feel like you can
learn from what other people do, and it can point out the shortcomings
of what I'm doing, hopefully forcing me to get more creative with my shots.
His behind the band shots made me envious as hell that he thought of it
and did it. I've been working on technical a lot and I need to strengthen
my artistic approach to shooting I think. So here are the
(oh damn I went blank on his name) photos.
Satyr
9/5/2005
One of the unexpected benefits of this fiasco of timing is that I got to spend a fair amount of time actually getting to know the guys in the band and oddly enough some of the parents of the members. A nicer group of people you'd be hard pressed to find. I don't know how the hell they managed to find so many down to earth guys who can really play. They even put up with old fogies like me. I'd come to the shows for the music alone, but getting to know these guys has been one hell of a bonus plan.
