McCruddo & The Hornets have Arcobar all to themselves 8.12.21
9.12.21 – Maria and I crawled back to Mt Evelyn from Canberra at 5.00-ish on Tuesday evening. It was always going to be pretty tight schedule, but the journey was uneventful, despite Maria not being able to take the wheel due to a debilitating hip problem, and I woke relatively fresh the next morning.
Craig and Jeff had added a couple of new tunes (to me) to the list, but I’d had a listen to them that night and sussed them out OK, I thought.
The traffic on the way to the gig was horrendous, but apparently it was even worse from Craig’s direction and I actually arrived in Heatherton before Craig, Jeff and Bruce Haymes, (the keyboardist who had played with us the previous MC & The Hornets’ gig at Arcobar).
We still had time for a short run-through and skimmed through a couple of tunes before Arcobar’s Franz declared the sound-check was over.
The usual paralysingly long wait until showtime was broken up enjoying the delish dinners provided by the venue and chatting to the odd patron that stumbled through the door. However, a long wait is a long wait and a sound check followed by a long wait doesn’t necessarily guarantee everything will be ship-shape when you finally arrive on-stage. On this occasion everything seemed to be working fine, although I noted that I’d left my equipment turned on and plugged in after sound-check, including the only effect I was using on the night, the classic Cry-Baby wah pedal - the wah being the weak link, being equipped with a 9-volt battery that must be yonks old by now.
So, disappointingly, the wah pedal was a non-event, endorsing the old muso’s adage that everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Eventually.
I must say that despite these minor upsets I thoroughly enjoyed the night and I think the other Hornets were of the same mind. Franz had suggested that given the small audience in attendance we condense the projected two sets into the one 75-minute set and I think that helped give the impression of cohesion that the usual two sets format tends to undermine.
Some of the blues-inflected tunes we selected sounded very rootsy to me and this outfit’s characteristic absence of bass and drums reinforces that impression.
There are still some things to work out if we are to continue this congenial project, but if we put our minds to it I’m sure we can overcome any of the current shortcomings.
That’d be nice.