Squirrels in Traffic does The Dinosaur... Gig report!!

[Greg Bogoshian]

Well, we've been talking about getting to their Open Jam night and last night, it finally happened. The Dinosaur is a rib joint/blues bar that often books national acts, but every other Tuesday, they have an open jam with their house band. We knew nothing of their setup or anything about the level of talent they pull except that they always have a good crowd and we knew they had an excellent blues house band but hadn't heard just HOW excellent they were! They did almost an hour set before they called us up to play, but they did a great job of warming everyone up. It is a bit intimidating following a group that good though...

 

When we went up to play (it is really cool hearing your band announced...), I plugged into the guitarist's Marshall (I didn't even think to see what model) and prayed I would be able to hear Kelly sing as I need to get cues off of what she is singing... I could barely hear her, but that is all I needed. She is used to singing into electret condenser mics and those were SM58s. I told her that next time, just throw some lip balm on and swallow them. That's how they work. The crowd could clearly hear her though. Their sound system is HUGE! Kelly's husband Chris said it was so good to hear us sound so BIG... Having a sound guy took so much pressure off...

 

We were the tightest we have ever been! For the three, we went with White Lightning and Wine by Heart, then Living in the Past by Jethro Tull (which we got the highest praise on), and finished them off with the Joan Osborne version of Son of a Preacher Man where I switched to the acoustic and Kelly just whipped them into a frenzy! I get the feeling from our intro that it is unusual for them to have a full band come in and play for the Open Jam, but I also think they were surprised by what we brought to the table! The announcer gave us a great "send-off" and the crowd responded in kind! More people were dancing to us than the house band!!! People were asking where we were playing next and practically begging us to come back in 2 weeks (their Open Jam is every other Tuesday) and one of the people in the crowd called the owner of another bar to try and get us booked to play there the end of this month!!! They have alrready gotten back to us and wants to schedule!!!!!! It just could not have gone any better if we scripted it ourselves!! I couldn't fall asleep until about 3:45am (and up at 5:00 for work) because I was so wound up. It was just too damned short!! What a night!!! Boggs