Hiya!

-So here we are with our show recap at Malarkey's in Cortland,NY. We've never really played in this area before (unless you count a Nikstock a few years ago, but that's more south than here) and we were looking forward to breaking into a new area.

-After getting soaked by a sudden rainstorm right while getting out of work, I made my way to the show. While loading gear, I somehow injured my left hand while loading gear. It was aching on top of my hand near the middle/ring fingers and inside my forearm. I was concerned about it, but it didn't really affect my playing this night-which was a relief.

-Malarkey's is a smaller bar-nice place. Knuckle Burn was going on 1st and put on a good set. They're heavier than we are-so it was a little surprising when they did "Rebel Yell" (Billy Idol), but they did a good job in covering it. They're tight and we look forward to working w/ them in the future.

-After a change over, we hit the stage. Here's the set list

-Nothing Will Satisfy You
Bad Girlfriend (Theory of a Deadman)
-Sober (Tool)
-Shout at the Devil (Motley Crue)
-Locked & Loaded (Halford)
-Living Dead Girl (Rob Zombie)
-Where the River Flows (Collective Soul)
-Pain
-For Whom The Bell Tolls (Metallica)
-Sex Type Thing (Stone Temple Pilots)
-Slave to the Hourglass
-Voodoo (Godsmack)
-Man in the Box (Alice in Chains)
-Welcome to the Fold (Filter)
-Out of My Life (I Want You)
-Paranoid (Black Sabbath)
-Wish (Nine Inch Nails)
-Mine,Mine,Mine
-You've Got Another Thing Comin (Judas Priest)
-Detroit Rock City (KISS)
-I've Seen The Light Tonight
-Seek & Destroy (Metallica)
-Dirty Deeds (AC/DC)
-Love Me or Leave Me
-Enter Sandman (Metallica)
-Ace of Spades (Motorhead)

-Overall, we did good. I think Joe didn't have a monitor and me & Doc had to share one-course, it was on the side of my bad ear. Oh well. We also had a volume problem-but not that we were too loud. My guitar was too low-but part of that was cause I had to turn my cabinet towards Doc so the audience didn't hear me as much. My amp was as high volume wise as it can go (at least till I get the cabinets that are made for the Fender Amphead I have). We had a few "hiccup" moments, but overall we did good. During "Voodoo" this old guy came up to me and started waving his hands like he was casting a spell on me :) Too bad I didn't have that necklace w/ the Wiccan symbol on this time. We made a bunch of new friends and even got a bonus w/ our pay! Signing body parts was a nice plus too :)

-Then we went to an after show part, which was fun. There was a photographer at the show named Chris Sanford who took some great shots of us performing. We'll get those up as soon as I get all of them (I have some of them now) and I'm done re-sizing them. I have to admit, it felt a little strange to be at a party and hear CAROLINE BLUE music blasting in the background. One funny thing happened-the owner of the house has a little puppy. I was sitting on the couch and the puppy came up to me & started licking my hand (right where the injury was in fact)-for 15 minutes! I think I made a new friend :) We were there late so we ended up staying overnight at Knuckle Burn's drummer's place-coincidentally, he & Joe look a lot alike when they're playing. Joe managed to get a wine glass as a gift from the part. I think it was around 5 or 6 AM when all was said & done. We had a great time & look forward to playing in the Cortland area again in the future.

-Thanks to Leyda for setting this show up for us. Also thanks to both Malarkey's & Knuckle Burn for letting us play there/with them. And thanks to all the people who were there and checked us out. WE look forward to performing for you soon.

Hi Everyone!

-Well, here we are w/ another show recap! This one is from last Saturday night (4/25/09) at Boneshakers Tavern in Ogdensburg,NY. For those of you who have been reading the CB blogs for awhile (and if you haven't been-why not??), you may remember that CB had a great time & an awesome response to our 1st show there a few months ago.
With that, we were anticipating a similar show and it turns out we even had a better time-and a better response to our show! Let's get down to the skinny shall we?

-We were to meet at Joe's place at 10 AM (!) to get started to Ogdensburg-about 3 hours. This was Doc's idea-so we could get there & have plenty of time to rest/relax before the show. Well, I was about 40 minutes late (big surprise right?), but I did almost get into a car accident. I was on the road and approaching an intersection. A woman in an suv was at the corner waiting. I'm almost there when she decides to pull into traffic! And no, there wasn't a stop sign on my road. I swerved to avoid getting hit while blasting my horn. I was ok-so was the car-but I was covered in CAROLINE BLUE sampler CDs. What a way to start the day....

-Then we're on our way to Ogdensburg. I spent some time working on an interview for a website in Belgium. I was glad to finish it-till I realized I left 2 pages of it at home (it's a total of 13 pages-41 questions).
I should hopefully get this all done soon.It was a bright, sunny day and pretty warm-a nice day for a drive. Course, on the way we had to stop at a Cracker Barrel and eat more of their great food. The waitress, Jess, who served us last time wasn't here. It wasn't too crowded & we made good time.

-Then we got to the hotel room. I was told it would be 2 rooms with a wall/door separating them and 2 beds per room. What we got was one huge room with 2 beds-one on each side. Joe bravely volunteered to sleep in a cot. We contacted the desk and requested that they bring a cot & some pillows/blankets to our room. We then left for Boneshakers to unload the gear.

- We arrived at around 3 and got everything unloaded. We weren't sure how the load up for the stage was being done till Greg-the owner-just told us to put our gear up there. We did so and sound checked with "Pain" Then me & Andy went back to the room to shower & change while Joe stayed w/ the gear.

-There was no cot when we arrived so we notified the desk again. Then we got ready. I have to mention the soap in the shower-I think it was just a mineral bar or something. No lather and pretty useless. Oh well...

-Then we get back to the bar. Pulling in, we heard "Over the Mountain" by Ozzy and Andy commented that someone must have the jukebox on. I said "That's no jukebox-that's live." Crazy Train-an Ozzy Tribute from Boston,Mass. had arrived and were sound checking on stage. They sounded really good and extra kudos to Doug-who plays Ozzy. It's freaky how much he sounds,moves, talks & looks (when dressed up) like Ozzy. They were really great guys & treated us well. We talked about doing some more shows together in the future.

Hi Everyone!

-Here's the show recap from CAROLINE BLUE's performance @ Shamrocks in N. Syracuse,NY on Friday 4/11/09-brought to you by the letter W :) This was an interesting show. The last time we were here we had a good sized crowd thru out the night. We didn't have a huge crowd this time around. Part of that was because it was Easter weekend. A number of people that we invited out to the show said they couldn't come because of this. In addition, the most popular rock cover band from CNY (Under The Gun) was playing about 5-10 miles away- in addition to some other bands, so that affected the draw as well. It's ok-big or small draw, we still do what we do. Here's the set list for this night...

SET 1
-Hard Life
-Piece of Me (Skid Row)
-Living After Midnight (Judas Priest)
-Deny
-Scars (Papa Roach)
-Man in the Box (Alice in Chains)
-Ace of Spades (Motorhead)
-Wish (Nine Inch Nails)
-Hey Man Nice Shot (Filter)
-Detroit Rock City (KISS)
-I've Seen The Light Tonight
-Voodoo (Godsmack)
-Shout at The Devil (Motley Crue)
-Bad Girlfriend (Theory of a Deadman)
-Sober (Tool)
-Love Me or Leave Me
-Rock & Roll All Nite (KISS)
-Bulls on Parade (Rage Against The Machine)
-Enter Sandman (Metallica)

SET 2
-Cold Gin (KISS)
-Dirty Deeds (AC/DC)
-Dead or Alive
-Far Away From Home
-Breaking the Chains (Dokken)
-Talk Dirty to Me (Poison)
-Seek & Destroy (Metallica)
-Living Dead Girl (Rob Zombie)
-Where the River Flows (Collective Soul)
-Slave to the Hourglass
-You've Got Another Thing Comin (Judas Priest)
-For Whom The Bell Tolls (Metallica)
-Pain
-Sex Type Thing (Stone Temple Pilots)
-Out of My Life (I Want You)

ENCORE
Ace of Spades (Motorhead)

-This was a mixed show for me. We started off pretty good. Then we got a request to do "Ace of Spades" from the crowd ("Already??-HA!) . So we're doing that and, at one point, I dropped down to 1 knee. Well, in doing that, the headstock of the guitar hit me right in the head! In addition to that, the guitar went out of tune-and would go out of tune at various times thru out the rest of the 1st set. This was really evident on "Enter Sandman" where the tuning changed from being a touch out of tune to being like at least 1 1/2 steps out-if not more-UGH! There's not much you can do when you're in the middle of the song but soldier on.

-Then, at the start of the 2nd set, I forgot to raise the volume up on the 1st note-thankfully it was just a holding chord. It wasn't long, though, before we got our groove back and really put a great finish-hence why, I believe, we got the encore.

-Sound was much better this time around than last time. It also helped that my new Fender Metalhead amp was here. Last time, w/ the Carvin, my sound was buried and thin. This time it cut right thru and was thick. I believe the overall improvement in sound also helped us deliver a better performance.

-We want to than everyone @ Shamrocks for having us there & being great to us. (Steve-I still say there's a box in the back that has all your 80's hair in it-HA!). We also want to give thanks to all the great people who came out to see us & to those who helped us out w/ stuff. We'll be back here in July.

-It's a week off the road for us & then back to Ogdensburg!

-Hi Everyone-time for another CAROLINE BLUE show recap! This time we were back @ The Lost Horizon in Syracuse,NY on Friday 4/3/09. Before we get to the show, let me just do a lead up to this night....

-We booked this show back in 2/21/09 right after our show here with Silent Fury. I was contacted 4 days before the show & informed that there were still no other bands on the bill. Usually there are 3-4 bands on any night @ The Lost. Admission would be dropped to FREE in order to try to help w/ the draw (meaning we wouldn't get paid) and I was asked to see if I could get some other bands on the bill. I did look around, but very few bands would play for free on such short notice-and the few that might wouldn't do it because they're be hardly any time for them to promote it (newspaper deadlines had already been hit & I don't believe there was anything radio wise). So we were on our own-and we went forward on....as I said right when we started to the crowd of people that did show up "We who are about to die salute you." :) It didn't matter how many people were there though-we still give it our all...

-We played from 10:15 till 1:00 this night. Here's the setlist...

-Hard Life
-Bulls on Parade (Rage Against The Machine)
-For Whom the Bell Tolls (Metallica)
-Detroit Rock City (KISS)
-I've Seen The Light Tonight
-Man in the Box (Alice in Chains)
-Nothing Will satisfy You
-Bad Girlfriend (Theory of a Deadman)
-Sober (Tool)
-Shout at The Devil (Motley Crue)
-Living Dead Girl (Rob Zombie)
-Where The River Flows (Collective Soul)
-Love Me or Leave Me
-You've Got Another Thing Comin (Judas Priest)
-Sex Type Thing (Stone Temple Pilots)
-Fish Heads (excerpt)
-Mine, Mine,Mine
-Rock & Roll All Nite (KISS)
-Enter Sandman (Metallica)
-Ace of Spades (Motorhead)
-Dirty Deeds (AC/DC)
-Slave to the Hourglass
-Voodoo (Godsmack)
-Stay
-Seek & Destroy (Metallica)
-Deny
-Living After Midnight (Judas Priest)
-Wish (Nine Inch Nails)
-Dead or Alive
-Love Me or Leave Me
-Pain
-Out of My Life (I Want You)

-Overall, I think we did fair. Not as good as the last show. We did get more energized as time went on. I'm watching the video as I type this and this show wasn't as tight as the last one. I have to say that whenever we play the Horizon we should change our name to "Caroline Red" cause steady red light is pretty much all we get onstage. :) Monitors were intially good, but quickly all I could hear in the monitor-for the most part-was bass. Course, I'm slowly going deaf so... :) I was told by several people in the crowd that my vocal was buried in the mix much of the time. At least I could hear my guitar better due to my new Fender Metalhead amp-and gain wasn't a problem at all.

-It was kind of a crazy night though. Me & Doc did a little tribute to the 80's by singing ,acappella, part of the song "Fish Heads"-our 1st & last time doing so (HA!). Unless it gets requested of course....

-On behalf of Doc & Joe, we wish to thank the following: The Horizon for having us here to play, Jo for bring a bunch of people here to see us, Gretchen & Daisy for traveling for many, many miles just to see us and everybody who was here to check us out (Greg, The Smite Guys, Anne, Melanie, Leeanna, Dave, Michael, Joell & all the rest...). We really appreciate it and hope you had a good time. We also hope to see you at another show.

Next stop-Shamrocks!

Hi Everyone!

-Sorry for the delay in writing this. I had to work some OT and then try to get everything caught up. But enough of that....

-Last Saturday CAROLINE BLUE travelled to Boneshakers Tavern in Ogdensburg,NY. For those of you who don't know, Ogdensburg is about 25 miles away from the Canadian border. When you say "Upstate NY", you don't get too much more upstate than Ogdensburg. We all met at Joe's place in Utica and left around 2:45. It was a nice sunny day-a nice switch from the times we travelled to Connecticut & Oswego in the snow! It was a pretty easy ride for the most part. Typically, me & Andy make jokes from time to time at Joe's expense-especially this time considering what happened last Wednesday at practice (if you didn't read about it in the Blog entry-"a not-so typical CAROLINE BLUE practice", go read it now and then come back. We can wait...:)

-As we were leaving Watertown, Andy spotted a Cracker Barrel resturant and we had to stop over there to see if Andy's claims of their great food were true. Speaking just for me-it was damm good. We received a pleasent surprise when our waitress, Jessica, asked if she could take a group pic of us. We said sure and posed for the pic-in the middle of a crowded resturant. Not a problem for us. Joe got a pic of her w/ me & Andy and you can see it along with the rest of the pics from this day.
Andy says she wanted me, but he says that in regards to half the women we run into :)

-So we arrive in Ogdensburg and proceed to get lost! Our directions were a little messed up. We back tracked to a gas station and, as luck would have it, Jason from 101.5 The Fox (radio) was there and he led us to the bar. The Fox was going to be there this night and do a short interview w/ us before we hit the stage. We get to the bar and start unloading the gear. Cain-the main band-was already there and we were using their sound system. They're a bunch of great guys and were great to us in everyway. Then we met Greg-the owner of Boneshakers-who treated us great as well. This bar is fairly new and it looked great. Nice layout and a good stage area. We got our gear set up and relaxed a little before show time.

-A few things before we go further. One, I was coughing at various times like crazy. Andy was even a little concerned for me. It turns out that as long as I avoided the cold-the temp. outside was cold & windy-I was ok. I was a little concerned myself-but I was confident I'd be ok by show time.

-This night was the debut of my new amp head-a Fender MH-50 Metalhead. Andy has one of these and turned me on to them. When I 1st heard it I said "This is a great tube amp". Turns out it's actually solid state-and 550 watts! It has a ton of gain on it-something my Carvin head lacked. I didn't have the time to test it out so Andy put his settings on it and loaned me his effect pedal for it. In hindsight, I'll have to tweak the settings at a later date, but so far so good....

-While we were getting our gear set up, we also met the lovely 101.5 Fox girls! The radio station brought them and asked if they could have some pics of us w/ them. Not a problem! I talked with several of the girls before we went on and they were all really nice, great people.

-We also had Mike (Scruffy) from 4th Coast Entertainment Magazine there-he was the one who contacted me about the show. He also took alot of pics of us performing this night. He's a great guy and was very helpful. I asked him how many people were here-cause it seemed like quite alot. He told me at least 300. Mike also told me that we were booked on the basis of our originals and that this bar was original oriented-and it was true. Having said that, it also didn't hurt that we had cover songs and, in fact, we were also asked by Greg to extend our time slot and play some of them. No problem from us-we're adaptable.

-Last night we were in Oswego, NY playing at Dominicks. This was the 1st time CB had been here. I was here 2 months ago when I subbed in on bass for a band called White Noise. I had to work a full day and arrived later than I would've liked. I usually take 1/2 days off for Friday shows cause otherwise you're rushing around and going into a 4 hour show like that isn't fun under those conditions. Last week's show was the worse in that regard so far. Tonight was a lot better for me. Here's our set list...

SET 1

-Detroit Rock City (KISS)

-I've Seen the Light Tonight

-Living After Midnight (Judas Priest)

-Hard Life

-Love Me or Leave Me

-You've Got Another Thing Comin (Judas Priest)

-For Whom The Bells Tolls (Metallica)

-Deny

-Man in the Box (Alice in Chains)

-Ace of Spades (Motorhead)

-Mine,Mine,Mine

-Dirty Deeds (AC/DC)

-Cold Gin (KISS)

-Paranoid (Black Sabbath)

-Talk Dirty to Me (Poison)

-Dead or Alive

-Seek & Destroy (Metallica)

-Stay

-N.I.B.
(Black Sabbath)

-Rock & Roll All Nite (KISS)

SET 2

-Shout at the Devil (Motley Crue)

-Living Dead Girl (Rob Zombie)

-Nothing Will Satisfy You

-Bad Girlfriend (Theory of a Deadman)

-Sober (Tool)

-Where The River Flows (Collective Soul)

-Out of My Life (I Want You)

-Bulls on Rarade (Rage Against The Machine)

-Enter Sandman (Metallica)

-Hey Man Nice Shot (Filter)

-Pain

-Normally we mix up the classic stuff, our originals and the modern stuff so it doesn't stay in one area for too long. However, a number of people told me that this bar was more classic oriented hence why the set list looks the way it does. In hindsight, we should've stuck to what we originally do-but that's why hindsight is always 20/20....

-Like I mentioned before, personally I felt I did better performance wise this time-and the video playback bore that out. I did have a few embarrassing moments. During "N.I.B." I think I got maybe 1 verse right-YUCK!. And before "Out of My Life", I forgot to tune back up (despite Doc yelling at me to do so several times) so I had to transpose the song on the fly.
Always a lot of fun (sarcasm mode off) :)

-Joe injured himself early in the show. He did something to his hand. He's the most self-mutilating drummer CB's ever had (HA!). Now we have to get him some golfing gloves.... :)

-Unfortunately, we had a big feedback problem this night. No one could seem to isolate where it was coming from so we had to just deal with it on & off the whole night. Sometimes it was bearable. Sometimes it wasn't-but those things happen.

-I think we did ok. Alot of people were here watching the SU game and the place started to clear out after it was over. As "Bear" told me though, that happened at the bar he was at earlier too so...

-We want to thank everyone at Dominicks for having us there and Art & John for sound/lights. We also want to thank everyone who came out to check us out. Saw some familiar faces & made some new friends.

Next stop-CB heads up North....way up North :)

-Btw-if you haven't already, check out the pics from the show. Some of the settings were off on the camera and, as a result, we got some really freaky pics .
Enjoy!

Hiya people!

-Last night CAROLINE BLUE performed at Schultzies in Phoenix,NY w/ Special Guests Defect. It was an interesting night in part cause-until we got there-we had no idea who was doing lights/sound. We arrived and got everything set up. Defect when on a little after 10. I believe-on their 2nd song-a fuse blew and they suddenly had no lights! I went to my car, grabbed a flashlight and was actually their only source of light for a song. They were troopers though-they kept playing in the darkness. They did a good job.

-Then it was our turn. Here's our set list for the night...

-Living After Midnight (Judas Priest)

-Bulls on Parade (Rage Against The Machine)

-Love Me or Leave Me

-Enter Sandman (Metallica)

-Man in the Box (Alice in Chains)

-Deny

-Ace of Spades (Motorhead)

-Scars (Papa Roach)

-Living Dead Girl (Rob Zombie)

-Sober (Tool)

-Bad Girlfriend (Theory of a Deadman)

-Nothing Will Satisfy You

-Where the River Flows (Collective Soul)

-Detroit Rock City (KISS)

-For Whom The Bell Tolls (Metallica)

-Slave to the Hourglass

-Voodoo (Godsmack)

-Dirty Deeds (AC/DC)

-Seek & Destroy (Metallica)

-Stay

-Wicked Game (Chris Issak/HIM)

-Mine,Mine,Mine

-N.I.B.

-Hey Man Nice Shot (Filter)

-Out of My Life (I Want You)

-Sex Type Thing (Stone Temple Pilots)

-Pain

-Rock & Roll All Nite (KISS)

-Overall things went ok this night. The lights didn't blow :) Mike-from Cutter Productions-did a good job with the sound & lights for us. Some of the songs were a little rough, but that happens at times. One of the batteries in one of my pedals gave out in the middle of N.I.B. and I had to unplug/ plug in the middle of the song. Also-on me-I had some pitch problems (vocally) on a few songs. We did introduce a few new covers and I have to say that "Sober" came out very well.

-In addition, I found myself moving more than I have in the last couple shows-and, at the same time-having more fun in doing so. Maybe I was becoming a little self-conscious at times in the past and/or listening to certain people close to me telling me to "tone it down." I'm just gonna do what I do. You like it-cool. If not-oh well.....

-The turnout wasn't huge, but we did have more than the last time we were here-as long as we can do that consistantly we're doing something right. I want to give thanks to Schultzies for having us here & Defect for opening for us. Thanks too for Cutter Productions for lights/sound. And, of course, thanks to all the people who came out to check us out.

Next stop-Dominicks in Oswego, NY on 3/13!

Hiya!

-Here we are with another show recap! This time CAROLINE BLUE was playing at Shamrocks in N. Syracuse,NY for the very 1st time. This place has been open for less than a year and already has quite a buzz going about it in the scene. 1st off, here's what we played that night....

SET 1

-Enetr Sandman (Metallica)
-Bulls on Parade (Rage Against the Machine)
-Hard Life
-Man in the Box (Alice in Chains)
-Detroit Rock City (KISS)
-I've Seen The Light Tonight
-Bad Girlfriend (Theory of a Deadman)
-Where the River Flows (Collective Soul)
-Nothing Will Satisfy You
-Living Dead Girl (Rob Zombie)
-Love Me or Leave Me
-You've Got Another Thing Comin' (Judas Priest)
-For Whom the Bell Tolls (Metallica)
-Dirty Deeds (AC/DC)
-N.I.B.
(Black Sabbath)
-Slave to the Hourglass
-Ace of Spades (Motorhead)
-Out of My Life (I Want You)
-Deny
-Rock & Roll All Nite (KISS)

SET 2

-Living After Midnight (Judas Priest)
-Scars (Papa Roach)
-Mine, Mine, Mine
-Pain
-Breaking the Chains (Dokken)
-Dead or Alive
-Voodoo (Godsmack)
-Man in the Box (by request) (Alice in Chains)
-Cold Gin (KISS)
-Ace of Spades (by request) (Motorhead)
-Seek & Destroy (Metallica)
-Won't Be Home Tonight
-Stay
-Love Me or Leave Me
-Get the Fuck Out (Skid Row)

-We had a good sized crowd in here and a good chunk of them stayed till around 1 or so. We started around 10 and ended at 1:30. For me, this was a very long day cause I'd been up since 6 AM due to my normal job-and we got hit really hard there this day-so I was already tired by the time I arrived at the show. I was also alittle late due to work, but the other guys already had my gear there. I got all things I had to do set up and then we went up and started playing.