In advance of NOT FAST ENÜFF’s August 18 appearance at the Perrysburg Music at the Market concert series, the Perrysburg Messenger Journal ran a nice article profiling the band. At least as far as local cover bands, these sorts of articles typically offer little more than a bare-bones paragraph stating where and when a performance takes place. But the Journal went quite a bit further here, doing a great job highlighting NFE’s newest members, Terry Rice(keyboards) and Melissa Toth (lead vocals). Check it out below: 
Category Archives: Gigs
Acoustics for Autism schedule update
Today, the band line-ups were released for the Acoustics for Autism event in Maumee on March 6! The schedule is a “who’s who” of Toledo musicians, with performances at five venues, from noon until 1:30am. The complete schedule is posted below. NOT FAST ENÜFF will hit the Bier Garden stage from 8:45 to 9:30pm! Earlier in the day, I’ll perform with Black Swamp Rebels on the Buster Brown’s stage from 1:45 to 2:25pm! Don’t miss this special event!
Photos from Skid Row show
I’m a bit behind posting these images (below the fold…hit “Read More”) from the Skid Row show. Most of these are mine, but I also found a few shots of our opening set. Enjoy!
Mid-afternoon load-in:
I snapped this photo of the crowd minutes before we started our set:
NOT FAST ENÜFF on stage!
Me ‘n Rob Green throwing down the harmony lead in “Round and Round”:
After our set, it was a treat to hang stage left and hear Skid Row tear it up!
Of all these photos, this one is my favorite. The spirit of 80’s rock lives on!
NOT FAST ENUFF rehearsals for Skid Row opener
This Saturday, NOT FAST ENÜFF will open for Skid Row at Bar 145 on Monroe Street here in Toledo. Given that Skid Row will attract a crowd of 80’s hair metal fans, we chose a set of favorites from that genre, including Def Leppard, Guns ‘n Roses, Bon Jovi and Ratt. When covering this type of material, the economics of the typical cover band gig don’t allow for two guitars. This means no rhythm guitar during solos, and otherwise not being able to cover all the parts. For this show, we enlisted the help of our friend Rob Green (guitarist for The Bridges) to round out the ensemble. Among other advantages, this presented the opportunity to do some harmonized twin lead guitar work, which I never get to do in other settings. Check out this excerpt of Ratt’s “Round and Round” from rehearsal last night:
I think we’re almost there. It will be a blast pulling this off at the show!
WTOL-11 Promo for My Brother Nature
This spring and early summer, I did some session work at Wade Paul’s Guerilla Studios for My Brother Nature, a band featuring original compositions by Scott Fish and Clayton Jagodzinski. Last week, Scott Fish contacted me about performing two songs from the My Brother Nature CD for two television appearances on Labor Day. This was a challenge to pull off, given the short timeframe and various schedules of the personnel. For instance, I had gigs scheduled for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, in addition to guitar lessons on each day (and a wedding to attend on Sunday!). To prepare, I started by reviewing the tracks on CD, and put together some detailed lead sheets. Although it is ideal to have parts memorized for a performance, I do run into short-notice situations where lead sheets are a life-saver. Also, it may be months before I perform these tunes again. In that case, I’ll already have these sheets in my Ipad, which will shorten the time to refresh my memory.
Fortunately, I was able to schedule a short rehearsal with Fish and Clayton on Saturday morning to work out our parts. Other than that one rehearsal, we were able to run the tunes a few times with the full band after loading in at the studio. We did two performances, one for WTOL and one for the local Fox affiliate. A video of the WTOL segment is below:
My view of the WTOL/FOX studio:
For these performances, I used my Fender Blues Junior and Reverend Reeves Gabrels axe. On the pedalboard, I used a Boss mini volume pedal, Vox Ice-9 and MXR Carbon Copy.
My Brother Nature with WTOL’s Ali Bradley. Personnel from left to right, Scott Fish (lead vocals & keyboards), Art Bishop (saxophone), Clayton Jagodzinski (acoustic guitar), myself, and Wade Paul (percussion):
Rig for “Not Fast Enuff” cover band
I’ve been rehearsing with a new cover band for a while now. As our setlist developed, we gravitated toward a hard rock sound. This shaped my decisions about the gear I’m using with this band. For some other recent projects, I’ve been using smaller tube amps (mainly a Peavey Delta Blues or a Fender Blues Junior), running the amp clean and using pedals for overdrive and distortion. But in this case, doing the cover scene, I know we’ll play a lot of smaller stages. And, I’ll need a lot of high-gain tone, but won’t need (or want) a lot of volume. So, rather than the tube amps I’ve been using, I decided on the Peavey Bandit 112 for my amp. The Bandit is solid state, but delivers solid clean and high gain tones, and has other useful features like a foot-switchable volume boost and a keep-it-simple direct out.
In advance of our first gig tomorrow night, I also picked up a new pedalboard. I anticipate doing a lot of gigs with this band, so I wanted to do a board tailored to the sounds we’re after. Pre-input, I have a Jim Dunlop volume pedal (with the Boss tuner hooked up to the “tuner out”) and a Morley “Bad Horsie” wah. Through the effects loop, I’m going with the Boss Giga Delay and the Line 6 Modulation Modeler. As this is a cover band, I wanted to have the broadest palette of effects with the fewest pedals. The Giga Delay is programmable, and has the useful feature of toggling between two delays. I generally have a short delay on, and use a longer delay for solos. The Line 6 offers a nice array of choruses, flanges, phasers and tremolo. Those two pedals easily cover the ground of six “single” stompboxes. In all, I’ve got a good range of sounds for this band, with the simplest setup (and lightest-to-lug amp) I think I could get away with.
To mount everything, I picked the Pedaltrain Pro, which is simple, has plenty of room for the layout I’m using (with room for future expansion), and a nice sturdy gig bag.
Here’s a look at the Pedaltrain Pro: 
Here’s the board loaded up, ready for tomorrow’s gig:
Though I’m always looking for possible improvements, I think this setup will work well for this project for the foreseeable future. If we book some events in bigger rooms, I will be tempted to mount a wireless on there, though!
NOT FAST ENUFF featured in the Toledo Blade
NOT FAST ENÜFF is a cover band I’ve been rehearsing with since spring. The personnel are Rob Distel (vocals, formerly of Backseat Fare), Mike Toth (percussion, also of Nine Lives), and Chad Sin (bass, also of Nine Lives). We’re doing a fun selection of covers (classic, 80’s, modern, country, rap/R&B) with a hard rock edge. With months of rehearsal behind us, we’re starting to book gigs, with dates into mid-2015. In advance of our first outing later this month, we’re promoting the band at every opportunity. Mike is our marketing guru, and his promotional piece de résistance was landing us this write-up in the Toledo Blade:
Acoustic duo at Bar Louie in Perrysburg!
John and I will be laying down the acoustic jams tonight at Bar Louie in Levis Commons, Perrysburg. Cheers!!
Opening for Mike Posner at the Omni
Last night I played a sweet gig as a sideman for Chavar Dontae, opening for Mike Posner at the Omni in Toledo.
Though this was an awesome gig and a rewarding experience, I had one moment of vivid terror. There were several opening acts, and a super-tight schedule. We had all our gear on stage before the show, but things had to be shoved back and covered for the first opener. So Chavar didn’t have to appear on stage before we started playing, I was responsible for moving his pedals center-stage during the very short break between bands. Unfortunately, none of his pedals are mounted on a board, so the process involved scooping up an armful of pedals and cabling, moving it twenty feet, and trying to not make a royal mess of it.
So I move the pedals, and check Chavar’s guitar. No sound from the amp! This is maybe 3-4 minutes to showtime. Is the amp on? Check. I checked the power supply for the pedals, and all cabling. Still no sound. Fortunately, Chavar came over to see what was up, and we were able to determine that the volume on his overdrive pedal had been turned to zero. From there, we were able to start on time, and played a killer set!
So, if you have more than one or two pedals in your setup, I’d strongly advise you to mount ’em on a pedalboard, preferably with a lid!
Also, here are a few shots from the evening. Hangin’ with Terry Rice and Chavar pre-show:
Mike Posner’s setup, just before soundcheck:
During our set, crowd shot from my viewpoint (stage left):
Crowd shot (stage right):
Mike Posner on stage (it was a packed house!)
Lebowskis acoustic gig at Casa Barron!
Great acoustic gig at Casa Barron last night. Good to see so many family and friends out! And, of course, I never argue with a gig where the band gets a good meal. I’ll hopefully have some new Casa Barron dates to announce before the end of the week!
