David Chen & the Muddy Basin Ramblers

The show at Witches was a whiz-bang.

We started early and finished early. I think the Ramblers had all cleared out by the time the police showed up after 11 sometime. I know most of us were already across the way in the bleachers when the black-and-white finally made an appearance. In my opinion, one of the best things about playing at Witches is that it is just across the street from a great place to hold a discrete after-concert party.

We played to a smaller crowd than we had in a long time. The only audience with fewer members was at the Chung Li-he museum in Meinung last December. One advantage of the smaller turnout was that we had room to move, and the audience had free access to the bar and WCs. Happily, Slim also had lots of floor on which to tippy-tappy. Toward the end of the show, when we unleashed an unholy Work Song, we made good use of the floor by giving in to the energy of the moment and dancing around maniacally.

In contrast to many of our recent shows, this time around Dave had us use the two condensor microphones. Setting up dynamic mics for each of the musicians and their instruments is a headache that does not always result in a better sound. So, like we do when we rehearse at the Sand Castle, we arrayed ourselves around the two microphones and tried to affect the mix of sounds by stepping towards or away from them. I think it worked pretty well, although we don't really have the chance to sample the audience's sound while we're playing. Our soundman for the evening was Wayne, an old friend from a one off show that I collaborated on several years ago. I didn't recognize him at first. I thought it was the haircut, but then he told me that he was married and had a one-year-old son. That can definitely change a man. So can trying to mix the sound for the Ramblers, and he did an excellent job.

Speaking of microphones, here is a link to a site that features an interesting collection of old mics. We've been hearing Dave talk about ribbon mics for some time now, and this site gives some fairly simple yet informative descriptions of some of the older microphone technologies. If you want to know a lot more about mics, check out his link.

Aside from working with Wayne again, another old school feature of this last show was the presence of an old friend currently living in Hong Kong. He was one of our earliest, most vocal fans, and it was great to have him in the audience again. He danced throughout the entire show and made his appreciation heard loud and clear.

As I said, after the show we adjourned to the bleachers for more merriment. Under the crescent moon we continued jamming until quite late, passing around instruments, kicking a soccer ball, and toasting our good fortune to be spending the evening together. We also made the acquaintance of a fan of ours, whom none of us remember ever having seen at an earlier gig. She hung out with TC, me, Slim and another friend until almost 5:30 in the morning.

For me, the evening ended not as I would have chosen. While running an early morning 50-meter dash on the rubber track, I strained/tore a muscle in my calf and effectively hobbled myself for the next week or so. My regret is that I did not have myself timed, because I think I may have set a record for a 40-year-old percussionist running the 50-meter dash barefoot.