AMERICUS, GA
I just got done with a week of shows with Almost Elton John. We only did a total of three shows, but it was a very busy week, involving a lot of driving and plane rides.

We started out our run at the beautiful Rylander Theatre in downtown Americus, Georgia. Given that it was a “local” gig, backline was not provided for this show. I used this as an opportunity to break out all of the stops and I decided to set up the full rig. It was total overkill, but it was nice to have so many sounds right at my fingertips. This was a good chance to include the Moog Little Phatty as well. Setting all of this stuff up was a bit of a nightmare, though, and I won’t likely do it again for awhile.
The full rundown:

• Yamaha P200
• Yamaha Motif 7
• Yamaha MO6
• Moog Little Phatty played through a Peavey Delta Stomp
• MacBook Pro, Focusrite Scarlett, Korg NanoKontrol 2
• Mackie 1202
  

GREEN VALLEY, AZ
Our next show was at what can only be described as a high school lunchroom cafeteria (although technically I think it was a “recreation center”). The staff was quite nice, and the setup was decent. There were some limitations given their staffing, and they could only handle 6 discrete monitor mixes. But they had a nice green room, and the place was clean, so I had few complaints.

The rig thim time around was a Yamaha S80 and a Motif ES8. I couldn’t get a line from the FOH for my in-ears, so I just used the provided stage wedge. I also decided to use the audio inputs on the front of the Scarlett as a pass-through for the audio lines coming out of the S80 and Motif, which acted as a mixer to FOH along with the MainStage output.

PALM DESERT, CA
In Palm Desert, CA, we had the pleasure of doing a gig with our spinoff group, Piano Men, which is a tribute to Billy Joel and Elton John. This time we were joined by the Desert Symphony, a local orchestra who have a 5 to 6 concert residency at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert. This was an exhilarating experience, since it’s not every day that I get to play with a 50-piece orchestra. And to hear this material played with real strings and real brass was a lot of fun!

Since I usually play those parts, I was able to relax a bit on this gig (sort of). The venue apparently didn’t think that providing all of my backline was necessary, so I was scaled down to just a single Motif ES8, which worked fine as it happens. I did some pre-game programming in MainStage and managed to get everything split up enough to fit all across one keyboard.

I recently picked up a Moog Little Phatty from a friend of mine. This thing is a lot of fun, and pretty easy to move around on. I’ve used it on two gigs so far, using it alongside my Motif 7. It’s about the most stripped-down setup I’ve used in sometime (all in my ongoing effort to move away from relying on my MacBook rig). It’s taking some getting used moving around on the Motif with the splits and stacks I’ve set up, but it’s pretty functional. I’m using it for pianos, organs, and pads, while the Moog handles synth lead and bass duties.
The Moog is running through a Peavey Delta Stomp for delays and reverb.