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Howdy Folks, a great night in Jannali started with a warm almost summer temperature drive down South, with Vertical on Roadie duties in our beat up, hired van.

Cheers Dave...of course a few hours after this picture was taken we were asking Dave a different question (more on that in a moment)

The last time we played Jannali was as a support for the mighty Radiators, and it was good to be back there, especially with such an enthusiastic crowd.

We had some very special guests drive all the way down from Newcastle to see us. Cheers to Linda and Gina, also to Jenny, Steve and all the other folks who made it a grand evening.

Once again we tried introducing some of the new songs, Black Crow was well received, but unfortunately 'Country Radio' didnt make it out of the starting gates, despite a rehearsal this week, after Mr Wizard decided it wasnt cooked enough yet (sigh) oh well, back to the oven for that one.

We were glad to be joined by Redline, Mr Mike Rix on Bass for the night, and as per usual, he put in a great show, here's a moment of Redline doing his stuff.

 And what would a blog be without my recurring fascination for signage:

As the evening wound down, the crowd were not going  to let us go without a few extra numbers and we had recourse to the Boogie (its title is Over Yonder), a song  about a band being pulled over by the cops for playing too much Canned Heat,  when all of a sudden the local Constabulary arrived in numbers, with dog!

Too late to stop the song, we plunged ahead,  but it gave me the opportunity to paraphrase a great line from the Blues Brothers 'I'd especially like to thank all the members of  Law Enforcement  who've chosen to be with us tonight'.

I thought it was downright hilarious (I am easily amused), the crowd thought it was funny and an unsmiling policeman looked at me with an expression that suggested he didnt share my sense of humour.

Heh. Funny thing is, its been two years since we played Jannali (or thereabouts)  and they had a sniffer patrol wander through that night too. Fortunately for us, we're all law abiding citizens ;-) For a band we can be soo tame. Ahem.

 Thus with the Police leaving empty handed but still slightly grumpy (hey we were playing that song anyway and its not like we were singing NWA's F*** Da Police..), the lights getting turned up and the crowd well danced out, we began the pack up process only to have the conversation with the Roadie no band wants to have...'Who's got the keys to the van?'

Uh oh.

With 6 speakers, 2 amps, 1 desk, 2 mixers, lights, cables, stage box etc etc not being able to get into the van is Un Grande Probleme, vraiment!

Whilst we retraced our steps, checked seats, bathrooms, the lost and found, the car park, the street, the van, the stage area, all pockets, other peoples pockets,  discussed the pro's and cons of a tow truck, the NRMA (wouldnt work, they could get us into the van but wouldnt be likely to hotwire it for us), various suggestions about contacting the nearest under age car thief, things were looking grim.

However, our eagle eyed barman had seen Dave drop the keys into a bag of cables and after rechecking it twice, we found them lodged in the midst of a rolled up power cord. Hoorah! From tragedy to triumph in half an hour!

Hurrah!  a great evening of playing and dancing, a brush with the Law (nice doggie!) and a lucky escape from the Tow Truck Pirates, what more can you ask for?  We look forward to getting back down that way soon.

We've got the next two weekends off while we work on the new material, then we plunge back into it at the Bald Rock on the 26th of November. As we continue working on the new stuff, I'll try and post some snippets from rehearsal.

MJEB

We've bragged before about Theo's drumming chops, but this is getting silly :-) After a long day at work, Theo opted to come straight to rehearsal and well, just beat a rhythm out of  anything he could get his hands on, in this instance, a desk drawer!

Yes, Theo can make even a prefab IKEA desk draw into a percussion instrument. I love this guy.

Last night we continued work on two new candidates for the next album, Country Radio and Black Crow. What do they sound like? Well, you'll have to come to the gig at Jannali this Saturday night to hear'em, as we continue to roadtest new songs...Two song enter, 1 song leaves...no actually, both of them look like they're going to make it...well..at least to a live gig. After that, we'll see. 

Mind you, we might need to start bringing various bits of furniture with us to gigs so we can recapture that sound from last night :-)

Looks like the live recording we did on 2MCE 'Sounds Live' will be on air tonight from 9pm, if you're in the bathurst area go to FM92.3 or 94.7, for the rest of the web,  visit 

http://www.2mce.org/ and you'll be able to hear us live (pre recorded) in the studio, doing a mix of stuff from various albums, including live versions of songs that will appear on our next album!

Big thanks to Mark, Ketih and Mal!

What a great night that was. David Roman invited us in for a chat on his Mystery Train program and pretty much let us run riot for the evening :-)

We got to play some of our favourite tracks from our fave artists and Dave gave a bunch of our tunes a spin as well. Cheers Dave.

Dave was running the station singlehandedly tonight and was a consummate professional, here's a few moments of Dave doing His Thing on live radio.

Of course, there were the usual funny signage moments:

and the sign next to the studio building is perfectly innocent...as long as you read left to right.

Dave asked us some great questions and played some good tracks (alabama Train, some Tedeschi Trucks, Los Lobos) as well as doing a retrospective look at our last 4 cd's.

It's interesting to listen to early stuff we did with 'fresh' ears, as we're so used to playing it live we've forgotten how it sounds on the album. Ok, maybe I am speaking just for my own part there, but I'm not ashamed to say that I prefer the current live gig versions of a few tracks, such as 'Mississippi Meltdown' (I like the revised Harp parts).

Be sure to check out Mystery Train on 2SSR on Tuesday nights, from 8pm 99.7FM in the Sutherland Shire or online at www.2ssr.com.au

Lock your Doors!