Lately, we’ve been booking more indoor gigs. This is fun for two reasons.
- We get to stay warm! It’s really cold outside, so we love a chance to stay warm and play inside.
- We get to play more quietly. It’s a different sound than we are used to, and it’s kind of a welcome change once in a while to tone things down and play the same songs with an entirely new sound.
If you’ve ever heard us play, you may be wondering how this is possible. I mean, we’re a big band with a big sound! So, how can we just tone it down?
Well, for starters, we change from the normal drum set to either electronic drums or Al’s Cajón. A Cajón is a box that’s made just for drumming. It has special stuff inside it to make different parts of it sound different when you hit them. So, you can hit one part and it sounds like one thing, and you hit another part and it sounds like something else. It’s great for the band because it’s much quieter than a traditional drum set, so we can all turn down the volume and sometimes even unplug.
Of course, Vern laughs that we spent all these years acquiring all this equipment and now we’re playing without it. And Al says, “Turn on, turn up and tune out!” So, there you have it. We sometimes play quietly, and sometimes play loud. But, we always have fun and so will you.