Last weekend, we played one of the odder gigs I’ve ever been a part of. Jababa did a happy hour set at the Topo Ranch, a t-shirt store on Pearl St. We set up in the window in the front of the store. There was a tub of free beer for anyone who stopped by. Not bad for a t-shirt store.
As part of our payment, we each received a free t-shirt, but there was a catch – we needed to wear the shirt while we were playing in order to get it for free. Not a big deal. We had no problem shamelessly promoting their product. Besides, they were pretty cool t-shirts. Organic cotton – nice material.
Since this was somewhat of a more relaxed environment, we responded with a more relaxed format for the show. We tried something new – something we may not experiment with again in the near future, but it was fun for one night. For the first set, the crowd got to pick the set list. We wrote all of our songs on a piece of paper and passed it around the room. A new person would call out the song each time. It made for an unusual flow to the set, but a good time for all who participated. Thanks everyone for choosing our set list.
Someone we have never met before had a sax with him. We brought him out to play a couple of tunes in the second set. One was The Chicken – a tune that we had recently decided to scratch from our set list. But we needed to find a song we all knew, and that one fit the bill. It was a worthwhile exception. We kept him up for Night Court as well. He was a pretty good horn player, and it was fun to have his energy for a few songs.
Due to the randomness of the first set, most of our more intense, intricate, dark tunes were left over for the second set. This was completely unintentional, since no one in the audience knew the names of our songs. Their requests were all random. It just worked out that the last five songs included Grease Fire, Suburban Jihad, I’m Gonna Eat Yo’ Sandwich, and Turncoat. I guess you could say we left everyone on a high note.
We never got to unveil my new tune, When One?, which is a little disappointing. That was pretty much poor planning on our part. It would have been nice to run thru it before Some Mountain Jam this weekend. When One? is actually an old Day-Old Jelly Roll tune (my old band in California). However, it has been completely revamped. It was always lacking something when we played it 8 years ago. I kept the head, but revamped the change and solo sections, essentially giving the song 3 new sections while only keeping one. So for the most part, it is an entirely new tune. Hopefully we will be ambitious this weekend and throw it into the set list at Some Mountain Jam.
The Topo show was a great tune-up gig for Some Mountain Jam. All of the people in attendance last Friday seemed to have a good time. For those of you who missed it, maybe we’ll get invited back to peddle some more shirts in the future.
There is still time to decide to make it up to Some Mountain Jam this weekend. Tickets are still available and will be sold at the gate. For those of you who don’t know what this event is, you should come and see for yourself. You will not be disappointed. For those of you who attended last year or who have been at the Hoot before, you understand how much fun these mountain festivals are. They are always some of the best weekends of the summer. And of course, the RV will be in attendance as well – I love that Jababa is one of the smallest bands in the country with its own tour/party bus.
You can find all relevant and important information about Some Mountain Jam on their website – www.somemountainjam.com. If you are planning on coming, please check the site. It is the only way you will get directions to the party.
Check back in a week or 3 and I should hopefully have a run-down of the events that will transpire this weekend at Some Mountain Jam. But if you are smart, you will take the trip up to South Park and check it out for yourself.
“The Jababa Chronicles”: All musings, anecdotes, philosophies, ramblings, rants, and tirades written exclusively by Andrew Martin unless otherwise specified.