V busy week, but mostly good.

• Played my first run with Sidewalk Prophets this week. They’re good dudes, and good players. It’s always weird subbing in with a bunch of people you haven’t played with before, with about an hour of rehearsal under your belt, but it turned out great despite that.

Since most of the week was spent prepping for the run of shows, I’ll go a little more in-depth about it.

• Sidewalk Prophets stuff is straight lifehouse style rock, with a bit of organs and CCM-type stuff included. I kept it really simple this run, using just a Nord Stage 3. We did a church and a festival, and at the festival I really wished I’d had more out just for the look. We live in an odd era where keyboards can do so much in a small package, and while I feel like 90% of the time I don’t need more than a Nord Stage 3, it would LOOK cooler to have more onstage.

• I made the mistake of learning/charting all the album versions of the song, and checked the board mix (rough recording of their live set) second. Because they play so much, almost every song was quite a bit different. That put me at two disadvantages: 1. I had timed it out so I’d have time to memorize the whole set, and switching the arrangements made me behind on that goal by almost 4 days, and 2. I had to rechart everything to get my head around the arrangements.

• Unfortunately that meant I ended up bringing cheat cards (small iPhone-size nashville number charts) onstage with me to make sure I had everything locked in, which is always cumbersome. Lesson learned.

• Still, the shows went well overall, minus the usual speed bumps of playing with a band you’re not used to.

Festival date in Oshkosh, WI. I haven’t played to a crowd this size since pre-pandemic.