big bassy debut!

well we survived our debut with mollys chamber.  learning 30 new trax in 2.5 weeks was a daunting task to say the least and we put our best foot forward.  some missteps along the way but we kept things pretty bassic and low key in order to put the best sound out.

here’s a pic of the stage that night:

mollys stage at black cat

it was nice to have some light at the back but also odd to have some light if u know what we mean.  good times and good ppl at the venue and can’t wait to return!  the black cat pub and grill on dundas has a sweet menu and plenty of wellington on tap so that made the evening even better!  a few songs into the night though we developed for the first time a thumb blister:

thumb blister after the first set

we’ve been trying to incorporate more thumb into our playing and we think the mix of the outburst of energy and lack of a decent callus gave us the blister.  we worked around it for the rest of the evening but it was defo difficult and the thumb was burning hot by the end of the night! on the advice of just about every1, we did not pop it and have let it heal on its own.  so far, so good.

peggy at the jam space

in other big bassy news, our 2×10 ampeg has found a new home at the jamspace for Mollys Chamber.  it suits the tone of the band nicely and puts out just enough to keep up with the jam volume.  peggy is a heavy one so hopefully she stays put for awhile!

current rig

our current rig for shows:

eb3 with tu3-sft-bassballs-bf2 into a little mark 250 and a 1×15 fender bassman

lots of headroom and sound.  we can dig! can’t wait to take this rig out again soon!

bassmorgasborg II

before we get to the bass, as we’ve stated previously we are keeping up with are drumming on a every other day basis.  we think its a good to keep tabs on the ol’ kit and tricks just in case and to help keep that sense of what its like going.  anyways, the other day we responded to an online request for a drummer to come out to a casual jam and play along to some songs by the Clash.  well, being that the Clash are our fave band of all time, this was a no brainer for us and we wholeheartly took up the challenge.  we blasted thru 15 or so songs in 2.5 hrs and at least 60% of those would have been stage ready IMHO.  it was crazy good and met all our expectations!  plans are to have another go at some songs in sept.  can’t wait!

peggy's buddy!

we scored a bass cab the other day.  15″ that can handle 300w easily.  its pretty darn big and weighs about 60 lbs but the price was right and its not like we’ll be using it at every gig.  the plans are to use it mainly for outdoor shows.  we took the grill off as it was rattling and then took the Fender logo off that since the look of logo wasn’t that retro.  the rattle was the grill hitting the edges of the speaker so we added some weather stripping to the points where the 2 were touching and put the grill back on.  it bows out a bit but sounds great now and thats what matters.  we plan on taking the direct out of peggy the amp and feeding that into a PA amp(thats all we have for a head right now… ah, the search for a bass head is ON!) and enhancing the low end signal that way.  we plan to debut it next weekend at one of our outdoor gigs.

peggy's buddy with the grill on!

finally an update on our pedal situation.  we were not using our EHX bass big muff as much as we woulda liked and our BBE sonic stomp was always in use but we never quite 100% happy with what it was doing to our sound.  so we’ve been casually searching for a replacement for both and we think we found it with a Catlinbread SFT.   it not only add some variable grit to our sound but also is quite nice at allowing us to tweak our tones.  we took it out to our gig last weekend.  we had only really spent about 30 mins with the pedal to make sure it worked and sounded ok.  it took about a set to get used to her sensitivity(it responds to how hard or soft u play!) and once we locked in a setting that was right for the sweet reggae vibe it was perfect the entire night!  any pedal that inspires you and makes u anxious to get back to playing again just so you can hear it HAS TO BE GOOD! its also likely that her sensitive side will make us a better bassist in the future.  here’s a pic of the august pboard set up.  looking at the pic makes us think that less is more. the sft is a good step fwd in usefullness and quality so we can’t wait to enjoy it more!

august pedalboard!

catching up with tone

its been a busy few weeks on the bass.  after this coming weekend, it will add up to 7 shows in 5 weeks.  slightly more than the one every other week we thought we’d have when we started this whole learnin’ the bass business.  we’re not complaining though.  every show has been so memorable and for various reasons.  for instance, we played our first “dry” cafe event this past weekend and by the sounds of it, you’d have thunk ppl we’re getting sloshed.  the small but vocal and energetic crowd blew away many a bar crowd with their level of intensity. great times!

skipapalooza was also a great event.  we packed the joint with a crowd to see the debut of “Those Handsome Hooligans” and the return to the area of “TooNice“.  the 5th/last set is still a blur and we managed to keep the energy level up throughout. 3 regrets from the THH debut though:

1. not happy with how we played “come together“.  it was ok, but we would have liked to have played it better (more on this later).  maybe it was just too early in the set for our “A” game.  this has happened b4 to us on other songs.

2. having a blank out moment in the middle of one song.  too funny!  we still don’t know what the heck distracted us or what our mind changed to, but it sure wasn’t about the song!

3. not being able to share a drink with the other Hooigans post set as we had to get back onstage asap for TooNice.  ah well, thats what we get for booking both our bands on the same night!

Hooligans are busy on adding to our 30+ songlist and making promo material.  follow us now on twitter and also here’s a slice from our recent photoshoot.

Those Handsome Hooligans Promo Pic!

in our “spare” time, we’ve been attempting to bring our bass playing up a notch.  a lot of the songs we do in both bands we can either “get by” or is what we consider “sufficient“.  we’ve really been trying to improve on those songs in particular.  we’ve been noticing that the songs we do improve upon bring more enjoyment the next time we play them live.  perhaps it might have to do with the fact that by the end we’re not thinking that “geez, wish we could play that better” and instead the new thought is “thank goodness we learnt that song properly. it sounds so much better now!”

another issue we are dealing with this week is our reggae bass tone.  its slowly slipped into a murky mess in the past 2 shows and its gotten to the point that it needed to be rethought out from scratch.  it used to sound ok but somewhere along the way it changed.  all part of the learning process we gather.  so we took advantage of some free time the other night and just worked on tone until our ears couldn’t take it anymore.  we tried a slew of different settings on the bass, on the amp, on the pedals and mixed and matched til’ we couldn’t any more.  we think we’ve got it nailed down now though. we’ll see how it goes this weekend and likely that will be next week’s post.

last but not least, thanks to clashblog for posting our last post on the strummer nights on their website.  that was fantastic and much appreciated!

Reggaelicious Skanksgiving

It was a Reggaelicious Skanksgiving for the TooNice crew this past weekend.  What a blast to play to a crowd that appreciated our roots reggae style and every1 was a great humour as of course, the Leafs won.  That always helps.  The challenge of the night was playing whilst our Canucks were playing on the BIG SCREENS.  What a distraction!  Luckily the timing with the sets worked out perfectly so we could watch the last 5 mins of the 3rd period get into OT at least.  Can’t wait to play again and hopefully get the chance to put “Maybel the Amp” on a bale of hay again as well!