The Shotgun Band (Wilkes County)
The Shotgun Bands Equipment
Our PA and sound equipment was owned by myself, Bruce Evans, and Keith Hamlin. I owned the power amps, Bruce owned the speakers and some of the lights and Keith Hamlin owned the remainder of the lights. For front speakers Bruce caught a couple of rock bands breaking up and bought their equipment at a steal.
We had two huge 2-15 inch JBL bass scoops which had to be hand trucked powered by a Peavy CS 800 watt amp, two 2-10 inch JBL cabinets, powered by another Peavey CS 800 watt amp, and two large JBL horns powered by a Peavey CS 400 watt amp. We used two 1-12 inch floor monitors and 2 Peavey SP-2 with one horn and one 15" speaker for side field monitors powered by a Peavey CS 400 power amp. We used two 16 channel mixing boards, a rack mountable effects, and a rack mountable crossover. On each side of the stage we had a tree with four 500 watt par can lights and four 500 watt par cans across the back trestle. That was a total of 12-500 watt par can lights. We had two 100 feet snakes one for sound and the second for lights.
Bruce Evans purchased a Charles Chips potato chip step van to haul our equipment in and we painted over the Charles Chip logo and Keith Hamlin the sign artist painted on it our Shotgun logo.
Some other things that we did were that we had names and addresses of our fans and mailed out a monthly newsletter so they could come and see us wherever we performed. We had all types of Shotgun outer wear with shirts and jackets and bandannas to sell. All of this equipment doesn't include our stage amps and guitars or instruments. The power amps back in the day were twice as heavy as they are today. One CS-800 Peavey power amp weighed 75 pounds. We would set up all of this equipment and break it down at least 45 weekends per year. There would be a good hour and a half to set it up and a good hour and a half to tear it down. As a musician you get a lot of heavy lifting. There is also a lot of sound checking involved. Each location has different acoustics and the drum mikes have to be adjusted individually. It is worth every dollar that you make. You also have to buy all of your gas and food. There also is a lot of hours spent driving to and from the clubs and back to your home in the wee hours of the morning. You lay there at night as the song says "the amplifiers were ringing in your head" all just for a little time of the fame of performing on the stage. You have to love doing it because you never get rich.
1 comment:
Keith, this is Janet Evans, Bruce's sister. I had not seen this latest of your articles. Thank you. This last 2 weeks I have been watching a PBS special on the history of USA music and have been reminded so many times of Bruce and how much he enjoyed his music and entertaining. When he was a teenager and living at home, Bruce would be so wired after a performance that he would sit up in his bed while still asleep and start playing "air guitar" and singing. He would wake up everybody in the house and all you could do was laugh because we knew he was sound or unsoundly asleep. I am biased but Bruce was a wonderful person, father and singer and guitar player.
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