The live band I have with my three oldest sons, Bonne Nuit, played a charity gig this past weekend. I’ve written in a previous post about how playing a gig at a charity function is an excellent way to get free exposure for your live band. Not only are you supporting a great cause but your band will get to play for people that normally wouldn’t come to your shows.
So Bonne Nuit played at the H2O For Mexico Benefit Concert on Saturday May 8th, 2010. We were one of nine bands slated to play and we got a time slot right in the middle of the festival lineup. We would be playing outside so we kept a close eye on the weather forecast all week. Fortunately the weather turned out to be beautiful and we were really excited to get to play outside.
One of the most important things you need to do as a live band when you play at a festival type gig is to get there early and check out the P.A. setup. Naturally the organizers told us there would be a P.A. System on-hand but over the years I”ve learned that there are a lot of seriously deficient P.A.’s out there. This was no exception, when we got to the gig a couple hours early to check out the P.A. setup we found that it consisted of two small powered speakers and a 12-channel mixer. We knew there was no way our band would be able to run through such a small system. Luckily we had plenty of time to swing back by our practice studio and pick up our P.A. System.
There was plenty of room on the stage to set up two bands so while the band before us played their set, we set up our P.A. System and all of our equipment. When you play a festival gig there is usually no time for a sound-check between bands and this was no exception. Being the seasoned veterans of gigging we are, we had our P.A. System all dialed in at our practice studio so all we basically had to do was plug in, power up and set the master volume level. We were up and running in about 10 minutes which left us with 45 minutes to play our show.
Even though we passed out flyers, did marketing on Facebook and had the concert promoted on the radio the attendence left something to be desired. We ended up playing for about 25 people which was far less than what we were hoping for. Still, we played extremely well and everyone that was there had a fantastic time. The crowd was very complimentary to the band and we scored free meals from Brincos which was the location of the gig. Brincos has excellent Mexican food and we all got stuffed on fresh enchiladas.
We did get to pass out some contact information and made a good contact at one of our local Universities who sponsored the show. So I think it was time well spent even though the crowd was small. We still got to play excellent rock-n-roll through our powerful P.A. System on a beautiful spring day. Who can ask for more? So keep your eyes open for upcoming Bonne Nuit gigs because this band is starting to make some very good music.
