Last night was the first open mic since COVID ruined things for us in Traverse City. What was really unique is the owner of the Winery moved it into a new location. Being part of what ‘s known as “The Commons” in Traverse City, the owner upgraded one of the other buildings he owns called the “Barrel Room”. A 100+ year old building that was once used by the former old mental hospital to store potatoes. The acoustics in the upstairs room were fantastic. Much better than the original location. We all played very well, bummed my GoPro did not turn on properly, I pulled off some good looping with my HX Stomp. And then the host joined me as I used my Stick to do some bass lines while he improvised on his electric guitar. Hopefully this keeps going, it’s been over a year since we all last played. Some regular listeners were also attending.

Congrats, always nice to play a show after a long while without one! Also, I love little spots with interesting history like that. I've got a secondary passion aside from playing Stick and making music specifically, that is, photography of music venues, usually with no people in them. Always thought it would be cool to put a coffee table type book together filled with just such photographs.

Thanks! I'm happy to say Bob Culbertson used about a half dozen of my pics in his coffee table book from over the years, and one pic in particular he's used on some of his CD's. A couple of my pics of Gary Jibilian also got published in a couple of magazines. I've always considered photography as a "third college degree"; I'm somewhat self taught other than being trained in digital vision systems used in manufacturing. Knowing about cameras has helped me in what I do for a living as an engineer. That's a great idea. We have some snow coming tomorrow, so Monday night I'll bring a camera and hopefully get some nice pics of this place in a winter setting.

I did get a barrel room shot with my iPhone on the main floor:



My music gallery is at:
https://sb.smugmug.com/Music

Good for you, nice place. Hope things calm down so you can get down. The video thing is ahead scratcher at times.

What a beautiful venue! Make sure to get us more photos and video when you play there again!

Cancelled tonight due to the snowstorm hitting the upper half of Michigan's Lower Peninsula and the UP. Since no cars would be around and it's on my way home from work, I snapped some pics of the outside at night, detail is a bit better if you double click on the pic:

Got a somewhat decent video from my GoPro 9 with the audio accessory kit that has an additional mic on it. Was able to process the dark lighting OK, but the bass response in the mic is lacking. The Yamaha PA the host had provided a lot of bass, so I'm a bit disappointed. Something to keep experimenting with, next I'll try a Shure MV88 mic with the GoPro. My good camcorder will eventually be used, I'm just trying to balance how much I bring as I've gone back to using the larger Helix vs the Stomp. I also did bring lighting this night, just bought a NanLite LumiPad that adjust brightness and color temps. You mount it on a speaker stand. Works awesome for small events and any type of closeup photography where you need more lighting. Best of all it uses two Sony Camcorder batteries. Not expensive either, it's pretty impressive what we can get nowadays with LED lighting.

I'm sure the bass sounded great in the room 'cause you can hear the attack! Great stuff and applause!

Oh yes, the bass is just right. Did not take me too much time to get used to the week earlier as being something different to play through, and was perfect for that room.