A recent gig... terrible recording... but a tiny taste of what I do...

Hello fellow keyboard / piano players. Figured I'd offer a tiny taste of what our band sounds like. It's a terrible recording taken at a recent gig in a kinda cool place. It was supposed to be an outside event but the weather didn't cooperate for that. We made the best of it.

I was playing my old Casio PX-590M at the time. It's nothin' all that special but for a gig like this, nobody is listening for high end ultra-realistic piano sounds. I did have the RD-2000 in the car if I had felt like I needed to get that out. I do kinda hope that one day we can do some decent recordings, just hasn't happened yet.

Anyway, you can throw rotten cyber tomatoes is ya want. LOL!!

TC3 , yes, affectionately known as "the stick". He does joke around that he plans to buy the other half when he can save up enough money for it.

Pallas , it is a great place, and wonderful people who run the place!

They're somewhat famous for their "fried bologna sandwiches". When I first heard that, I kinda thought to myself that a fried bologna sandwich couldn't possibly be anything I'd wanna eat. But we were there for a different musical event right there where we were a few months ago and my dear wife ordered one. I had a bite. WOW! That thing was a surprise in a very good way! I now understand.

Anyway, it's one of those "old country stores" that is a sort of historical treasure that the current owners are trying to do good things with. Hoping we'll be back one day to do another gig. It was fun for both players and audience!

Simonb, I'm not even sure who recorded the video, I think it was one of the people who own the place. It was uploaded to Facebook, and I just linked to it there.

There are definitely times when I wish we had another player of some kind. Al, the "stick player" (bass player) does some vocals so that kinda takes the load off of me sometimes. But it can be pretty draining for me to try to keep the keys going, and interesting, for such long stretches of time. For the most part, I never get to "pull back" or "relax". I sometimes joke about wanting to play in a 20 piece jazz band where I can read the Wall Street Journal for most of the performance but just have something to prompt me to play my 30 seconds of actual piano here and there. LOL!! (I know, that's not how it works, but it's a joke I still like to tell on occasion.) In all seriousness, it can be a real workout and tunes like "Take the A-Train", Chattanooga Choo Choo", "Satin Doll", and a few others that are quite fast and all over the keyboard. ("Take Five" is actually a little more laid back.) I'm sweatin' big time and really physically workin' for some of the tunes. (I kinda scared the drummer one time when I did not keep hydrated as well as I should have and started to cramp in my arms, during a gig. He thought I was having a heart attack. Turns out, my dear wife took my bag that I normally have on stage, with several bottles of water, and didn't leave it within reach. And it only took a minute or so after chugging a pint or so of water for the cramps to subside. It was odd, calling for water, and the audience didn't understand, had to ask several times. My wife finally figured it out. But yeah, that's a real thing, at least for me.)

Just for reference, that video was from a 3 hour gig. Over the course of about 4 hours (including setup), I believe I drank about 3/4 of a gallon of water. And my shirt... completely soaked. But it was a good show, lots of fun, and the owners tell us they want us back again.

And thank you all for the kind comments! I'll never be a Dave Brubeck at the piano but... hopefully I can bring a little joy and happiness to some people out there who wanna listen for a while.

Sophia, funny thing is, some of the really good stuff happens at "warm up" and "sound check", when "no one is listening".

Had a gig a few months back where we set up in the room but were pretty early. The guys were on their way to get changed, no one really there at the event yet, and I just was sitting at the keyboard letting whatever flow that wanted to, "loosening up". Turned out I played "Waltz for Debbie" quite nicely, and someone I didn't know was listening mentioned how beautiful that was. Maybe that's one reason I have in mind a quiet piano bar setting sometime, just background, mostly playing for me with others allowed to listen. LOL!

Thanks for the kind words.