A Christmas Miracle?

We couldn't have done it without a little help from our friends and family.
John, Ray, Tina, Sylvia, and the terrific staff at Oasis made our night easy and fun. Thanks for your support!













Becky brought the walls down with some Led Zeppelin--I wanted to put my bass down and just listen to her sing!






Loud Nine hopes that all of our friends and fans have a safe and happy New Year.

November 25th @ Oasis

We had fun, and it sounded like our friends and fans did, too.













Loud Nine wants to thank John for all his contributions. We couldn't have done the show without him.
(BTW--despite the credit, I took this picture)



My new 8-string bass finally made it's public debut. It sounds as good as it looks.

See more photos at Tom Craig's Flickr Set

Loud Nine Is Moving Forward

People seem to like (or tolerate) us!


Instead of borrowing a trailer, my share of the gear got stuffed into a Honda Civic like some kind of puzzle.

The club (Oasis!) didn't want to move too many tables outside, so as a compromise I used the one that was in my way to hold a setlist, song notes, smokes/beers/phone, etc.
But since it was located at the exact spot where we needed to place a vocal monitor, I got the idea to drop the speaker's pole into the table's umbrella hole.
Speaker's at the perfect height, and you can still use the entire table.
(A small victory, but it set the tone for tonight)

Loud Nine's new subwoofers got taken off a shipping pallet and uncrated today.
Unreal specifications and they were designed to perfectly match our existing mid/high cabinets.
Would have put the 2 stacks together but the only available space was on either side of the tiki-butt king who is bolted to the floor.
We made the best of a difficult situation.
The new subs are incredible!!
Once I changed our cables' Neutrik wiring from 2+/- to 1+/- everything worked and we were very pleased.

Action photos from Sylvia and myself follow...









John Jarrett played bass on a Foo Fighters song through the ricockulous Eden amplifier system he let me use.
Loud Nine owes John a bucket of thanks--he took a lot of physical and technical labor off my back and provided the best bass amp I have ever used.
Thanks again, my brother!










An old habit--I see a camera pointed my way and I try to ruin the photo. This time I whipped a flashlight out of my pocket but failed to kill the shot.
(This is also a ©2009SylCan2 photo despite what I typed on it. Hard habit to break).

Loud Nine would like to thank everyone at Oasis for their great service and friendship.
Sorry we packed your club and filled your cash registers without sufficient warning, but we're cool now, right?

We also want to send out a huge special thanks to Mike Leavell for handling Loud Nine's sound tonight. He did a great job (as always) which made it possible for me to relax and concentrate on playing bass.
I'm jealous that he got to play with our brand-new subwoofers before me, but it was well worth it.
Always a pleasure to work with professionals.

Loud Nine also wants to thank our crazy-ass fans.
The 3 of you sure do drink a lot.
But it keeps us working and we appreciate y'all coming out and supporting live music in San Antonio.
We hope to have some free original recordings for some of you to take home next month.


To see more Loud Nine photos from this show, check out Tom Craig's set on Flickr.

Photo Session And Practice

David pointed out that a very cool thing about Loud Nine is how self-contained we are.
He's a whiz at recording with ProTools on his Mac and assembling a killer sound system, while I'm an experienced live sound/light engineer and photographer.
But more importantly, Mike & Steve can.....drink beer really fast?

I poke fun because they are the real stars of this band--me and Dave are just along for the ride.


The (loud) four of us can handle pretty much every aspect of the band's product without having to make endless phone calls to schedule outside help or discuss our goals.
No wasted time.
We get together and make it happen.

OASIS this Saturday @ 10pm.

Loud Nine Doesn't Suck

The band wants to thank each and every one of you for making our debut such a success!
The list is long on names so we'll go by category:
Club Oasis and staff
Friends and family
Strangers who wandered in and stayed
Staff from other clubs who offered us gigs on our first night

And of course all you crazy Hitmen fans who are willing to give this new project a fair chance!











I also want to thank my assistant photographers, Sylvia and Mike.
They did a great job, right?



Mike also deserves a special thanks for his help with the sound.
Just remembering how to play the songs while not falling down took every bit of my concentration tonight, so his assistance was critical to our success.
He was my soundman the last time I performed in front of people (playing guitar) some 24-odd years ago--it was only fitting that he was there for me again.





The return of Mike Gallegos is a pretty good story, too.
I like the part where he sings and makes people happy again.

Scot Taylor helped us entertain you by singing Judith. He sounded great as always.
Other Hitmen who brought the love are Jaime, John, and Matt. Thanks, my brothers.



Loud Nine
It's very hard to get more than two people in a photo to look sane.


Loud Nine also wants to thank Rikk of BLISS for filling the big holes in our equipment and transportation situations.
Couldn't have done it without you!