Jonny cooper experience & vintage boy’s 50’s show
Two gigs over the weekend were with my band the Jonny Cooper Experience wwww.jonnycooperexperience.co.uk at the Last Drop Hotel, Bolton on Friday night and then with the Vintage Boy’s 50’s rock & roll show at Middleton Arena on Saturday night.
Having not played together for a good few weeks, Friday’s JCE gig felt like coming out of retirement in a weird way. Having said that we were forced into a bit of a situation, which I’m sure many bands have been in before. As we were setting our gear up the staff asked us how long we would be so they could let the guests into the room. “Not long, about 20 minutes” we said, hoping to finish setting up and getting a sound check in. 5 minutes later people started pouring in to the room 😬
Even with the awkward finishing of setting up and quick tidy up of cases on the dance floor, we still managed to make it sound pretty good. Good thing as the first thing we played after that was the first dance, “Amazed” by Lonestar. Not one we play all the time but one we’ve played before. We had the additional task of making the song last as long as the video montage that the groom had set up to go on the projector. This is where having live musicians really helps as we managed to time it almost to the second that the video ended to end the song. Nothing like added pressure but we like it really. After that we had a couple of sets including being joined by Tommy on the Sax who played some Ibiza tunes to keep the crowd going and we were also joined by the groom singing Sweet Caroline and the stag party boys singing Can’t Take My Eyes Off You. Great moments like that are what make each wedding different and memorable and we’re very lucky to be able to play a part in those.
Saturday was back to my days of theatre production performing and, as usual, was done pretty much flying by the seat of my pants. Nothing like playing a show you don’t know while sight reading music and also standing on stage in full view of the audience to really heap the pressure on! Again though, I love it really. This was a 50’s rock & roll show by the Vintage Boys https://www.facebook.com/TheVintageBoysUK/ and I was filling in for the usual guitarist. This gave me a an excuse to find some decent 50’s sounds on my Kemper, which I’ve been meaning to get round to for a while. I could actually do with sitting down with it and sorting out some decent sounds for different eventualities but I’m more the type to just find it when I need it. I could bore you death with more about this (if you haven’t already fallen asleep) but I’ll leave that for another time.
The gig went fairly smoothly with a pre-show death run to tesco and back for some food - showbiz glamour, eh? - and then jumping straight in to the show. The 3 singers really work hard throughout the show and when Paul’s acoustic guitar stopped working he came over and asked if I could play lonesome tonight for them to sing too - GOOD GOD, THE PRESSURE! - but I played it and they sang it and everyone clapped afterwards so it must have gone well. Great to play with my friends Chris Jopson on drums, who I played with in a funk & northern soul band a few years ago and also Lee Muir on bass who lived not far from me in Bolton for a while and is also a fellow practitioner of geordie. Always great to play with people you know, it really takes the edge off the crazy business we call show (credit to Steve Truman for that quote).