Avalanche City Album release with Lisa Crawley

Did sound at the Avalanche City Album release last Tuesday evening at the Montecristo Room, Lisa Crawley played too. Not the easiest of rooms, but fortunately Riyan brought in a really nice rig and once people were in the room everything sounded pretty good. Heres some photos of the evening from SnapStar

 

Foothills.

 Photos from The Foothills. All photos taken by Esther Parker.

 

Christmas Album - The Crawley Christmas Singers

The picture above is for a very special joint effort going on to the Christmas Album. The Crawley Christmas singers, featuring Lisa Crawley, Matthew Crawley and (the lesser known for music but still very important) Emma Crawley.

Real life family band.

Also in the photo is Simon, cameraman for Nightline. They did a little feature on the Christmas album that you can see here

http://www.3news.co.nz/Bands-big-and-small-get-into-Xmas-spirit/tabid/728/articleID/186599/Default.aspx

Back to the recording, we recorded all 3 vocals, Acoustic guitar and Piano live and then overdubbed a toy piano solo.

Not long after the photo was taken I put an SM58 in front of Emma (on the left) as a placeholder to stop her getting too close to the KM184 which was popping a bit. The KM184 sounds great on a female vocal and as Emma was taking the high harmony I gave it to her, while Lisa took the Kiwi (set to supercardioid to cut down on piano bleed) and Matthew sang in to the warmer Baby Bottle.

Thats all the songs tracked! (although I think we might be adding some drums to Cool Rainbows track on Friday)

Farmstock

For the past few months I (plus a few helpful friends) have been organising Farmstock, a concert/mini-festival at my house (which is almost a farm) in Oratia.


Last night it happened and went great! Avalanche city had to pull out due to vomiting+187 Gangsters (a comedy hip-hop act who may or may not also be a popular local band) plane from Sydney got delayed and cancelled but it worked out well as it made for a more relaxed running order.

Right now I am exhausted. I was out the door at 8 on Saturday to pick up the PA from Musicworks (who kindly sponsored the event) and almost didn't stop (excpet for a lunch break) till 5 when I had a quick shower and was back out ready to do sound for the whole evening.

When the "stage" was delivered at about 11am I discovered that the lady on the phone hadn't looked at the stage and just read from her computer screen the dimensions and it was considerably smaller than she had said... We ended up sending the stage back and getting it refunded. Dad and I collected pallets from neighbours and used the massive super heavy pallet thing from behind our packing shed to put together a stage at least 3 times the size of the one I had booked!

That was the only major hitch, otherwise everything ran smoothly, no noise complaints, no rain, enough people showed up. Overall I think a good time was had by everyone!

Here are some photos of my hard work+bands and some videos too (slightly poor quality on my cheap camera, but its the thought that counts right?)

Chelsea Jade

John Bristow

Mali Mali
The Wicks


Phil Austen and the Bayonets

Subterranes

Lisa Crawley



The Gladeyes

Great North

Jocee Tuck