Madi Meeks was invited to perform on the Big Daddy G Show which is shot, live, on our local public access TV channel here in Austin Texas. Madi decided to use her full band for this one, so she asked me (bass), Joel (Drums) and Francis (Keys) to join her for the live show. It was really a pretty cool experience…we arrived early, around 8pm, the show was to go live at 10pm, so we had a few hours to get ready.
The setlist for the night included the following:
- Loved Less
- The Beast
- Narcotic Cold
- Cigarette Rain
- Blood for Blood
We set up our gear and ran through the set, 5 songs, a few times to get sound levels etc. It sounded really good in the studio and then we just chilled out before the show started.
I didn’t see the host, “Big Daddy G” until just about 10 minutes before the show…he walked in, drink in hand, sat at his desk in front of the green screen and then we just watched the clock tick down until show time. It’s always very interesting to see how these are done behind the scenes. Anyway, they had told us earlier in the evening that he was to interview each band member so when he called our names, we each went out on the stage for a 5 minute interview.
My interview went well…I had know idea what he was going to ask me or what we would talk about, I assumed it would be about Madi, but G asked me where I grew up and when I started playing bass etc. He had some connections to the Valley, so the interview just sailed by….
After the other band members and Madi were interviewed, we only had 4 minutes, during a commercial break, to quickly get up and get things ready for the first song. They had moved all my gear off the stage area to make room for the interview segment so while I was moving my speaker and amp back into place, one of the stage hands accidentally knocked my bass over while he was pulling the curtain over the green screen. I cringed as I saw it fall to the ground, but yeah, it’s a road worn model so what’s a few more dings in the finish?
Anyway, we managed to get all the gear back in place but my bass had slipped out of tune, due to the fall, so, I was scrambling with it on live TV, over the first few songs and managed to get it back in tune while I was playing, whew! It was all a bit tricky but worked out in the end, you couldn’t really tell I was having issues at all, which is how it should be….
