June 07, 2010

Jaywalkers Jamboree 2010

I had a great weekend. On Friday and Saturday, I played at the 53rd Annual Jaywalkers Jamboree here in Camrose. This event is one of Alberta's longest running annual street carnivals/festivals. It was fun to play some blues again, on live stage. Myra, Al, Brandon and I played for about an hour on Friday, and we even had a small crowd for the whole set. The weather was really hot on Saturday, and a bit cooler on Friday with mosquitoes chewing on me.

For this gig, I brought my Suhr Classic and my Mack Heatseeker. The pedals I used the most were the Rc Booster, Maxon SD-9 and the Line 6 M9. I got a wicked good tone through my Avatar 2x12 cabinet.

Here is a tip for you. If you want a great tone, the kind of tone where you can really hit the strings hard on a Strat and get that woody, rich tone, you need to have HIGH action. It's definitely harder to play the guitar this way, but you won't get string buzzing issues. If you don't have a high action, you'll have hit your strings carefully, or else you get that annoying raspy buzz happening. I am mentioning this because that's what I did for this gig. I raised the action by quite a bit, and my tone was incredibly good, even when I pulled on and hit the strings hard.

On the Saturday, Myra and I did an acoustic set, under our duo name, Fundamental Things. We played softer music, but even a couple of blues tunes snuck in there. I used my old SX acoustic, which still has the original strings on! I know, that is lame - to not change strings after several years! Well, I guess I just don't end up playing acoustic very much, so I've never really worried about changing strings.

I also used my Line 6 Relay G30 wireless unit for the first time in a live situation, and it was fun. I walked into the audience at one point during a song, because our little 6 year-old daughter was watching me play. As I walked over to her, she had a million things to tell me, not realizing I was actually still playing with the band! It probably didn't look like it to her. The G30 Relay is a killer unit, sounds incredibly good and it's reliable. Highly recommended.

Some Photos From Saturday

jaywalkers myra marshall robert renman camrose

By Robert Renman - www.dolphinstreet.com

» RSS

Posted by Robert Renman on June 07, 2010