By Ronny North
I thought I’d pick up this column where my last one left off: Well, it’s now the day after I played my first show with my new pal Kandace Ferrel and I’m exhausted. I had four days to learn the songs from scratch and to do it without ever rehearsing with the band.
Let’s start from the day before the show: On Monday Kandace and I got together for the first time to run through her songs. Since rehearsals with her band weren’t possible Kandace decided to come over my house and we ran through the songs in my living room. Fortunately, I did my homework and we just ran through the songs once and we were cool except for one little tweak in one song.
Kandace is really great to work with and her songs are well written. The stuff sounded cool and we goofed around and talked most of the time and I even showed her my X-Scale and she picked it right up. She was very supportive - and I felt better that she liked what I was playing on her songs.
On Tuesday morning (show day) I woke up and felt horrible. I really can’t seem to shake this bad cold that’s going around. I figured I could rest all day and then get up and do the show at night. Well, when I decided to check my e-mails at noon I saw an email from Kandace to call her asap (not good!!) It turned out that she had called as well but my cell phone was in the other room so I never heard it.
It seemed that she wanted me to learn a few more songs. I couldn’t learn them until she came over since they hadn’t been recorded yet. She arrived at 4:30pm and we had to leave by 5-5:30 pm to make sound check in the bad LA Traffic.
She arrived at my house and we did go through one of the songs and I also tried out my new rig while we were playing since I just assembled it just for her show earlier in the day. I put together a new pedal board for the gig. In the board I had the amp’s footswitch to change amp channels, a Morley Volume/Chorus Pedal and a Morley Tremonti Wah. I also decided to use a delay pedal to give my sound a little more space and just a touch of echo.
Even though I really don’t use volume pedals I decided it’d be good for this gig because I could bring the guitar up and down in volume to get out of the way of Kandace’s vocals (it worked!!) I was able to play more dynamically for the songs that way. I used one of my Pedalsnake audio snakes to wire up the pedal board to the amp. It's a definite life saver as it eliminates all the cable spaghetti. I really don’t know what I did without my Pedalsnake. Everything in the rig seemed to work and Kandace liked how it sounded so we were cool.
When I do projects and sessions for other people I play for their songs and tailor my rig accordingly. Carvin was kind enough to lend me a V-3 combo amp and for guitars I decided to use a Brazen Dynasty Standard, Single Touch custom Strat and my old White Tipton Custom with a Floyd loaded with prototype WB Ronny North signature PSYKO BOMB pickups. I cut down on my rig since there was a second guitarist in the band so I didn’t need to cover as much space.
After going through one of the songs she decided that we were ok. We managed to get to the club on time for the sound check. The first time I met anyone in the band was when we ran through half a song to get levels for the show. Everyone was cool and the song sounded great. When we dove into the set everything went great and I had a blast playing with Kandace and her band. The only hitch was my new pedal board decided to die two songs into our set. I messed with it for a minute and decided to just unplug it and plug straight into the amp. I was good to go. Everything went smooth and the crowd really dug it.
I’d also like to mention that my assistant Karen and my guitar tech Tim were a great help at the show. I couldn’t have done it without them.
I’m going to be playing a lot more with Kandace and I’m very excited about it. I have also been invited to play on her new CD. If you would have asked me a week ago if I would be playing in a pop band with a female singer I would have said you were nuts.
I survived my first Kandace Ferrel show and I’m looking forward to what's next. It’s a new year with new opportunities and I’m ready for them! I can’t wait to see what’s in store for me in 2007.
Next stop Winter NAMM Jan 18-23rd!!!
Ronny North plays his own signature brand of instrumental guitar rock and is fast becoming a So Cal guitar hero. He has appeared in several national and international music publications, including this one each week.
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