Hey gang! In case any of you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’m playing with a band I really like this weekend, a couple free shows that are early enough even for my bedtime. Woud love to meet some forum fam! Here’s the scoop:
Friday August 4th:
Hook and Ladder Winery
2134 Olivet Rd
Santa Rosa, CA 95401
5-8PM
Sunday August 6th:
Julliard Park
227 Santa Rosa Ave
Santa Rosa, CA
5-7PM
Here’s the band on Spotify, I’m not on this record, but I’m on the one that’s coming out this year!
Would if I could. Best of luck with the shows!
i need a gofundme lol
It’s a 2,000-mile ride by car to Santa Rosa from my house. The Uber bill would be a mofo.
Hey, I’d have a few cocktails during the show!
Bit too far away for me, I’m afraid 
Good luck and have fun!
I want Josh to tour again so we can see him on the east coast.
Woo Hoo, I live in Santa Rosa, CA!
Hey, @JoshFossgreen - how did the gigs go?
Who’s the drummer on these things?
How funky did things get?
How many pedals did you get to use?
How many bass solos per song / per set?
Any reports of melted faces (local papers never report these things)?
Was it shaded?
Was it terribly hot?
Were diet appropriate snacks and beverages provided??
These are the questions we have.
I have.
Also, none of these gigs really happened without videos, pictures or other visual proof.
Fun!
Ben Lauffer
Moderate with spikes of severe
A bit of octave, and one Stevie tune where I did a bad mini Moog rip with some drive+filter. Oh and a TUNER PEDAL WHICH WAS VERY EXCITING
1 total, during the first tune, which is like, the most awkward time for a bass solo. For me, anyway. It feels like “uh hi human audience, i don’t know who you are or even if you’re listening yet, but here I go WEEDLY WEEDLY”
It was mid 90’s but good shade. But it made everyone sleepy with minimal dancing. Isn’t it weird playing funk to people who aren’t dancing???
Every gig is BYO Everything in Josh world, lol. I wish I drank wine, I would get so much more free stuff at gigs if I drank or cared about wine.
Most importantly Terry Dilbeck captured this very dumb bass face of mine. 
It’s quite easy: Wine glasses have a large hole on top; just apply mouth to lip of glass and tip the glass stem upwards until the desired flow amount commences. The liquid sunshine will then flow at a rate commensurate to the angle of glass tipitude. 
My morning brain initially read this thread as being about Sonoma, and I wondered how much Funk you could bring to Sonoma without triggering some kind of Ghostbusters-like event.
That town could definitely use more of Dr. Funkenstein.
Is that your Fender Japan Jazz Bass?
Thank you for humoring me and my post-gig interview.
Bass solos, if there is an audience of innocents (meaning not bass players or otherwise identifiable music nerds), always feel like a terrible idea.
Don’t get me wrong - I’ll still weedly my way through with my Tube Screamer turned on… but I know how many people like it.
One.
The guy in the back (probably one of us forum-ites) who wants to talk bass gear at the set break.
As for wishing you liked wine…
I hear you.
It’s like if you lived next door to Disneyland, and your friends and family were always wanting to go Disneyland tasting, and you were like… stop giving money to these mono-crop, tax-write-off, water-table-devouring Disneylands!!!
Kinda like that.
I played a very hot and sweaty gig on Saturday where we played original music with zero rehearsals, and where I knew 20% of the other musicians.
It was really fun.
The first song was a dramatic reading (in E minor) of Eric Carle’s The Very Busy Spider.
No wine was offered, but a kid did bring ice cream sandwiches to the band at the break.
Which was great.
Oof!
Hoisted by my own petard!!
Well played @eric.kiser
My drummer was named Nick. He was a nice guy and a very good sport. Weird to jump into the middle of a completely improvised set where you’re playing songs that are not collectively known and have no charts.
Um, not that funky.
Funky weird - often.
Funky ala Bootsy? only momentarily. I too stepped on an envelope filter at one point.
I may have both slapped and popped.
But it was still much more weird funky than Parliament funky.
Can’t say enough about them tuner pedals! I had a great moment (I’m spoiling the next question here) where I went for my one bass solo… I stepped on the tube screamer and the POG (to get up in the guitar octave. I was going to play some serious lead.) and everything went quiet.
I had no sound.
It took me about 25 seconds to figure out that it wasn’t a connection issue - I had accidentally stepped on my tuner pedal and the bright, burning sun was so blasting that I couldn’t see the LED.
Damn tuner pedal!
I have an MXR bass fuzz octave that I click on once per gig. It’s in my rider. Once per gig minimum.
See above for the whole high-tension epic saga
Lots of post-gig reports among us band members about how hot we were and that our faces were melting. But it was a highly tasteful, listening-ful, musicianship-ful gig. Very satisfying. No melting faces.
Food is the most important thing to me in my day.
When a gig has you play though mealtime but doesn’t provide food, I am sad. When the band leader doesn’t make this explicitly clear, remember to ask.
I didn’t ask.
Luckily I too have learned to always bring snacks.
But I was hungry.
I was drinking some hard cider during the gig to keep me… hydrated? (that’s how it works, right?) and to keep my glucose up. It was effective. Very effective.
Gigs are never not weird.
This one was lots of fun.
My best friend since 7th grade was the sound engineer. We played our first gig together 30 years ago this year at a talent show hosted by Wavy Gravy.
There are some cool things about staying in the same area for a good while.
This gig was one of them.
Somehow I didn’t see this until now. I could have gone!
Similar feelings here, but more of a near miss for us. I live on the east coast and transited Sonoma County last week for the first time in 10 years. Went right through Santa Rosa on the 10th. Close but no cigar. Damn.
