Our yearly gig for the Duke Orthopaedic department holiday party. This is the best set list and the best put-together we have been, musically, in all the years we have been doing it. We really got organized on the set list and on the arrangements this year. Everybody played really well and there were really only one or two major mistakes. As usual, Ben had issues with his Zoom H4n batteries and so we only got part of the first set and started recording partway through the second set as well. Some of the songs are also partial recordings because the Zoom H4n ran out of batteries.

It's the Christmas Episode. And we played more than 30 different songs that night. Some of them are Gato classics. Others were not so well rehearsed or practiced. Ben also missed recording a fair bit of the show. This is only one and a half of three sets that were played. We will be posting the mix we got from the house sound as well.

This is the same evening as the other Nash Street recording on Dec 9. This one was recorded by the local sound engineer Rainbow, who runs multiple mixes at the same time. The vocals are a lot easier to hear on these, as is every single little mistake. Note that this is the Christmas episode, meaning there are some unusual things on this recording. Also we ran out of CD space, as we often do, and so the last take of Lean on Me into 1-2-3 is cut short.

This is the same night as the other entry dated Nov 3, but this is from the board that Rainbow runs. Rainbow is the resident sound engineer at Nash Street Tavern. This is what she captured that evening. Note that the third set ends right near the end of Are You Like Me because we ran out of CD space.

Another wonderful jam with our friends at Nash Street Tavern. Ben had the H4n running, but the batteries died and so we only got the first two sets. There is another whole set that was arguably the best set. We all agree that we were playing really really well at this particular gig. Rainbow also captured the house sound mix, which is available in the next BINK entry.

Paul had a boatload of people over to his house for his 50th birthday party. Gato was in attendance in and in full force. It was a VERY busy day. Gato's biggest crowd probably. The unfortunate result is that we only got two songs recorded. We forgot to start the recorder before we began playing and then it also ran out of batteries and died. There are a lot of videos from this event up on YouTube that are honestly a better way to experience it. We DID manage to grab our version of Sing a Song of Songs with Dave Finucane on that SD card though, and it's definitely worth a listen.

I apologize in advance for the horrible quality of this recording. Kyle got us a gig at this assisted living facility for their fall festival. And we went out and jammed out for the families who were visiting their loved ones. The reception was mixed. On some songs, it seemed like they absolutely loved it. On other songs, they didn't seem to notice we were there. Part of what's going on with the recording is that there was a lot of wind that day, and the recorder is really far away from the band. So I had to run it through a low-pass filter to remove the wind noise and then boost the heck out of the audio to make it audible. That being said, I think we played very well on this gig. Unfortunately, Paul couldn't come. There are no videos of this show, even on YouTube.

Making sure the book was still intact in preparation for Paul's party. We also had Lisa sit in on this to prep the tunes Paul asked her to sing with Gato on his birthday. We added two new songs with Lisa instead of the usual Feelin Good.

Robert was unable to make it on this particular day, but we had all the mics setup so we ran some of our book just to get some more recordings that we thought would be solid. Some good stuff happened during this rehearsal. In particular, the solos on You Dont Know What Love is are very good, as is our take of Reese Richardsons Peace.

Ben forgot to bring his MIDI cord today so we had to use the onboard samples on the keyboard at Dana's house. That keyboard sounds fine for piano, but there isn't a good Rhodes sample, so Ben had to use Vibraphone samples for Come Together, which did not sound very good. That said, we got a couple of new tunes read into the book, and they sound very good.