Leather Monument Live
The Fourth Quarter in Terre Haute, IN is the place where it all started: our first live shows.
We had some songs that we thought might sound cool played live (and maybe we wanted to get some fame too), so in the late summer of 1998, we decided to sign up for wednesday night's open mic night at the Fourth Quarter, a modest bar. Me and Travis went down and asked if we could play, it was cool. At home we frantically started rehearsing our songs because we didn't really remember how we played them before. Also some lyrics had to be witten because our first recordings were initially only instrumental.
Driving over in Travis' truck, I have to say I felt kind of nervous. Once there we had to wait for 3 artists before us, all pearl jam and the grateful dead covers... How would we fit in? By the time we were up, the bar was already getting kind of empty, but nothing could burst our bubble.
Our soundcheck came up and everything seemed fine. Travis started with 'Superstar Billy Grahm', the song we think has the most potential to become a hit. But the sound people turned the sound all the way down!!!! They thought we were blowing their speakers! The bar by now had become totaly deserted except for an old drunk lady in the back. We decided to blow the whole thing off, this was no fun...
Yet we didn't gve up, we decided to play again next week, at an earlier time, with new ideas for our sound system. SO off we went again, with our transformed tv table, more polished songs, and great expectations that this time we would rock the house. When we stepped in the Fourth Quarter, the bar was packed, ready for some action. After the first band, 'the Loop' a local band, we set up our gear, turned the volume up and specifically asked the sound engineer not to turn the sound down. When Travis started with 'Superstar Billy Grahm' it echoed through the bar in all its glory, the funky way it was supposed to sound. The people in the front started getting down, victory! People liked it! Up next was 'School girl Party' with Chris and Travis both doing the vocals, me on the keyboard this time. 'School Girl Pary' with vocals is hilarious, so I was laughing all the way through. Two other guys in the front asked if we could play it again when it was over...I guess they realy liked us. We got out some other instruments and started playing our best show yet, all new songs.
When we were done, we felt great, of course, this was what the Leather Monument was all about: Live shows, great music and maybe some fans (let me get carried away). After this show we decided to go back next week and videotape the whole concert. So we did. Our third concert, however, wasn't as great as the 2nd one and we wanted to look for new places to play, with different kinds of audiences. We checked out some places in Broad Ripple, but never got to play live there yet.
Now we are tryin to work on our next songs, and playing live has been postponed for awhile. We'll inform you when new live shows are coming up, so be on the look-out, probably early next year.
For me playing live is pretty cool and I've enjoyed our concerts so far. I think our show is major entertainment.
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