Gig: Artisan Caffe, March 5th

So I guess bit of information I can add to the collective knowledge of the internet is this: whenever I have a gig, I'll post my setup! If I get a lot of gigs, as I'm hoping, that might not be practical, but as of now I can at least let you know how it's going down.

So, for my first post, here's the setup, except imagine it in a coffee shop, rather than my basement:


I'll be mostly on acoustic, but I do have two songs (I'm Gonna Find Another You - John Mayer, and I Shall Not Walk Alone - Ben Harper) that I'll play some sweet, sweet, solo electric on. Speaking of, has anyone else noticed that you can get a real soulful, jazzy, bluesy clean tone from engaging the neck and middle pickups and playing it clean? I don't usually like the mid-pickup settings, I find them to be kind of gimmicky-sounding, but it's exactly the tone I was looking for on the Ben Harper song. When I'm playing softly, finger-style, it's smooth and soulful, with no quack. Interesting. In either case, my electric setup is just, real simply, Strat -> tuner -> Blues Jr., and it's exactly what I need.

The other interesting thing I can talk about is my pedalboard for this event.


It's not too much changed from what I'd consider a standard acoustic pedalboard, at least not too different from what I'll usually run, but the chain is Breedlove -> Fishman Aura -> Boss GE-7 -> Ernie Ball Volume Pedal -> Boss DD-7 (with tap tempo) -> PA. The DD-7 is being used solely for it's looping capabilities, and I'm using the GE-7 exactly as it's shown, giving me a slight boost and adding some upper frequencies to give me a nice, cutting tone for adding in some lead lines over a loop. For instance, I'm trying to mimic an harmonica when I do "Shelter From the Storm" by Dylan, or just trying to add some mandolin-like lines into some of my various folk songs. The Aura pedal is always on, and the volume will let me control, well, my volume, as I need a big, bassy sound for finger-picking, but it quickly gets to be way too much when strumming. Simply playing with the volume works perfectly, giving me defined chords at a lesser volume and a big finger-picked sound at full-volume. And also, I'm doing Glen Hansard's Say it To Me Now, so I'll be cutting the guitar's volume completely at that point, and yelling without a mic. It's going to be great!

Anyway, I've got two and a half hours to fill tomorrow night, so wish me luck!