Ok, so I missed a day blogging yesterday because we had our hands full some issues. We pulled Brent's amp apart and realized he had fried a portion of one of the circuit boards, which was beyond our capacity for repair. It's a relatively inexpensive fix, but we don't have anytime to drop it off for repair. So we took a trip to the local Guitar Center to see if we could find a good deal on something. Let me preface this by saying we usually avoid Guitar Center like the plague. Up north it's packed with over eager, high pressured, commission-only, sales people. Our experience in the South has been much different. The employees were friendly, helpful, and just laid back while we looked for what we needed.
After we explained our situation (being on tour, busted gear, etc) Brent began to test out a few amps. In order to get an accurate sampling, Brent brought in his multi effects processor to best replicate his sound. Well after pulling everything out, he couldn't find his power supply for the effects processor. No big deal, we could just buy another power supply we are at a huge music store right? Nope. Brent's pedal board is over 10 years old and runs off of an odd 14 Volt supply. OK, let's focus on one problem at a time. Brent was able to settle in on a new Epiphone rig to replace his amp. 1 problem down.
Brent testing out some amps.
Right as we're searching out Radio Shacks in the area to find a 14 Volt power supply for Brent, Will was messing around with drums in the store and just got hit with a bolt of lighting "I forgot my bass drum pedal in Philadelphia" (we're now 4 hours south in Richmond, VA).
So, now we're faced with another problem; (keep in mind we're down to $20 for band money and everything is going on a credit card.) do we buy another bass drum pedal, try to borrow one, find on on Craigslist? Just then Jason, the friendly associate at Guitar Center chimed in that he had some extra drum gear of his own that he may be able to help us with. Realizing that we only had 20 minutes to make it to Radio Shack before they closed (for Brent's power supply) we took down his phone number and hit the road.
We made it to Radio Shack with 5 minutes to spare, scoured the store and the only thing we could find was a 13.5 Volt adapter (.5 volts shy of what we needed). We plugged it in, it powered up the board and we were back in business. We decided to give Jason, the Guitar Center associate a call. He said he had an extra kick drum pedal that we could just have it free of charge. He hand delivered it to us at 10am the next morning at the Wal Mart we were staying at. Wow, talk about southern hospitality. Oh, and just to put the icing on the cake, his mother's name is WANDA.... We should be buying lottery tickets at this point. Jason runs a great recording studio called Track Attack Studios, definitely support this guy, he's a class act.
Feeling good about our recent luck, Brent decided to test out his pedal board to make sure it's actually working. It powers right up, but...... no sound is coming out of it. After every test in the book we could try, we realized that back in Philadelphia, the same exact thing happened but we were side tracked by Brent's amp breaking. So long story short, Brent's amp broke, he lost his power supply, bought a new amp, bought a new power supply, only to find out that his pedal board was broken to begin with. Back to guitar center. He picked up a new board (buy now, pay later) and we were finally on our way to Winston Salem, NC.
A few days ago an old friend & neighbor of mine had contacted me and informed us she lived right near Winston Salem, NC and offered to cook us a home cooked meal on our way to the gig. We stopped by, took a warm shower, ate a GREAT meal, and headed to the venue.
Enjoying our first meal that didn't originate from Wal Mart
The show was a blast. Everyone was super friendly and the room sounded great. After the show we met a bunch of new fans, one of which who was a MA transplant who had been living in NC for several years now. He was so friendly we dropped him off his house down the road and he offered up 2 bottles of unopened North Carolina moonshine. Of course moonshine is illegal so we declined ;)
'The Garage' in Winston-Salem NC, Photo Credit: Lia CarrollWhat a night. On to Charlotte, full steam ahead!
What a night. On to Charlotte, NC. Full steam ahead!
Cheers,
Ross