fenderfan
Joined: Jul 13, 2008
Posts: 779
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Posted on Dec 20 2018 03:19 PM
High points? And, maybe any low points?
For the Royal Aces in Denver, a high point was most definitely playing at the huge annual gala for the Denver Children's Home, at the grand Denver Center for the Performing Arts. This year's theme for the gala was beach/surf, or else we never would have gotten a foot in the place!
A low point: A club (which shall remain nameless) where we had many great gigs in prior years, got a new person who books the bands, and this person wanted only bands that play "da blooze" (imagine a monotonous Stevie Ray tape loop playing over and over, but by local bands of questionable quality). So, we got no gigs there, when we often would have several per year. Fortunately, we will be back there in 2019, due to a change in booking procedures.
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amnesiack
Joined: Feb 06, 2014
Posts: 105
Seattle, WA
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Posted on Dec 20 2018 03:29 PM
The Delstroyers played a total of eight shows in 2018 without a single bad one among them. Highlights include playing Winter Surf Fest in CA; opening spots for The Tremolo Beergut, The Boss Martians, Daikaiju, and Frankie & The Pool Boys; and organizing our first local Seattle Surf Music Social.
2019 already looks like it's shaping up to be just as good, if not better. Viva la surf!
— Four String Fender for The Delstroyers & The Woodhavens
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Taifighter
Joined: Oct 31, 2018
Posts: 225
Indiana
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Posted on Dec 20 2018 04:00 PM
The Tentakills had 3 gigs in a 3 month span after forming in late summer, the first with Daikaiju and the last with Elvis Hitler/the Koffin Kats.
We have a mix of originals and renditions of classics, all of which have gone over well with the crowds we've been in front of. The first two gigs were punk rock... no PA, no monitors, no stage, no nothing, which was awesome. It was raw and loud. Our drummer could barely hear anything but he pulled through. An extension cab from me to him will be an option going forward, as we fit in with that basement show crowd very well and may find ourselves without monitors again. It was good to get that ironed out sooner rather than later.
Our lead guitar player has settled in with his tone, which is distinguishable from mine (in a good way!) and our bass player is approaching songs from different angles to try to find the best sound.
We are playing our next gig (with the Madeira!) in February.
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revmike
Joined: Feb 26, 2006
Posts: 3801
North Atlantic
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Posted on Dec 20 2018 06:51 PM
2018 was a great year for USK, and for me too. USK’s hi-light was without a doubt our SG101 Convention/ California shows in August. This was our first time in the birthplace of surf (and certainly not our last). SG101 certainly made this possible, and a I am forever grateful for this site and the connections and friends I have made because of it.
Here in Nova Scotia USK got to play for a couple of thousand at Dartmouth’s Multi-Fest, and we were a featured performer at Nova Scotia Music Week. We also played a good number of local bar shows that were always fun!
Outside of USK I got to go to Montreal to perform for the Indigenous dance show “The Bridge” (choreographed and developed by my sister, with music composed by me). A lot of people from our Mohawk community of Kahnawake were there to see it. This was a great honour for me.
On the ukulele side, I got to perform at several uke-centric festivals, and share the stage with Canadian rocker Matt Mays at the ScotiaBank Centre for several thousand people.
All in all it was a pretty exciting year. I/we feel so lucky to play music for others. It is not something I take for granted.
Can’t wait to see what 2019 brings.
Rev
— Canadian Surf
http://www.urbansurfkings.com/
Last edited: Dec 20, 2018 18:52:27
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stratdancer
Joined: Dec 11, 2013
Posts: 2533
Akron, Ohio
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Posted on Dec 21 2018 05:15 AM
It was a great year! Dozens of gigs from clubs to theaters. Hopefully 2019 is even bigger!
— The Kahuna Kings
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Kahuna-Kings/459752090818447
https://thekahunakings.bandcamp.com/releases
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josheboy
Joined: Mar 13, 2009
Posts: 2365
Twin Cities, MN
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Posted on Dec 21 2018 05:34 AM
The only official gig I had was at Winter Surf Fest in January. I played in Depth Charge with JONPAUL, Duff (from The Torquays), and John Blair. It was awesome!! And also such an honor to perform with them. A major highlight in my guitar “career”.
I did also play a 3 song jam at the SG101 Convention with JonPaul and Ran and Amir. We played 3 Astroglides songs and had so much fun we decided to put more of a set together! We all love the downtuned high-tempo songs heavily infused with middle eastern influences, so we’re bringing more of that to next month’s Winter Surf Fest as The Scimitars! Come check out our first real gig!!
Hopefully The Scimitars can play a few gigs in 2019 
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Clarry
Joined: Oct 01, 2014
Posts: 519
Streatham, London
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Posted on Dec 21 2018 05:44 AM
josheboy wrote:
Hopefully The Scimitars can play a few gigs in 2019
Great name!
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Taifighter
Joined: Oct 31, 2018
Posts: 225
Indiana
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Posted on Dec 21 2018 09:31 AM
josheboy wrote:
We played 3 Astroglides songs
I'm curious, which 3 songs did you guys play?
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Samurai
Joined: Mar 14, 2006
Posts: 2235
Kiev, Ukraine
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Posted on Dec 21 2018 10:23 AM
Some nice gigs in Kiev and even around the Ukraine (Odessa beach party was the best!!!)
Due to my family and business duties not so much as we wanted, but nevertheless. Good year. Also was so much inspired by Surfer Joe’s, a lot of plans and fresh tunes)
— Waikiki Makaki surf-rock band from Ukraine
https://linktr.ee/waikikimakaki
Lost Diver
https://lostdiver.bandcamp.com
https://soundcloud.com/vitaly-yakushin
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summerfun
Joined: Sep 16, 2013
Posts: 259
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Posted on Dec 21 2018 01:21 PM
Taifighter wrote:
josheboy wrote:
We played 3 Astroglides songs
I'm curious, which 3 songs did you guys play?
One of them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIcRb3QstQc
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Taifighter
Joined: Oct 31, 2018
Posts: 225
Indiana
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Posted on Dec 21 2018 01:29 PM
summerfun wrote:
Taifighter wrote:
josheboy wrote:
We played 3 Astroglides songs
I'm curious, which 3 songs did you guys play?
One of them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIcRb3QstQc
Cool.
The Tentakills cover Turkish Delight and Guitar Cha Cha, we even have a trumpet player sit in on Cha Cha. Good times!
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synchro
Joined: Feb 02, 2008
Posts: 4441
Not One-Sawn, but Two-Sawn . . . AZ.
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Posted on Dec 23 2018 10:07 PM
There’s good news and there’s bad news.
The bad news is, we only had one gig in 2018. Our drummer has been out of town almost all year. He’s one of the best drummers either I or the bassist has ever worked with, so we didn’t even give thought to replacing him. The one gig we did was with a substitute drummer, a friend that helped us out, but we weren’t able to develop any finished products with a substitute drummer who had other commitments, so our live show and recording projects came to a halt.
The good news is that we were able to work our a lot of new songs between the bassist and I and the drummer will have no problem learning these, because they are right up his alley. Surf is still a big part of the show, but we do some early sixties Top 40 material that includes vocals, as well. We’ve also branched into some very hot swing tunes, think Charlie Christian meets Chet Atkins, so we intend to surprise our audience with a few of these as non sequitors, when we need to break up the pace of things a bit.
RV parks are a significant source of playing opportunities around here and, while there are more than a few Surf fans among those patrons, a few real oldies from the Swing era will probably go over well with this audience.
The best news is that we’ve really challenged ourselves over the last year and both Andy, the bassist, and I, are reaching further and have grown musically during this year.
— The artist formerly known as: Synchro
When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.
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arny
Joined: Aug 22, 2010
Posts: 611
Netherlands, Europe
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Posted on Dec 24 2018 07:40 AM
Can't say we had a bad gig year with an average of 2 shows per month, but it was the lamest festival summer we had so far. Although we got to play the Sjock festival in Belgium for the second time, which is a huge rockfestival and a stellar line up this year (Reverend Horton Heat, MC50, Mummies, Messerchups, Descendents, Dead Kennedys, Pennywise and lots more. It still gives me a kick to see our name on that poster!
Funny enough, november was our best month with 6 gigs in total (Hamburg and Groningen), allthough we had to cancel one weekend due to the sudden death of our drummers father.
One last show coming up:
— www.alohasluts.com
Aloha Sluts on BandCamp
www.arnyzona.com (my photography)
Aloha Fest on facebook
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PolloGuitar
Joined: Feb 26, 2006
Posts: 5094
San Francisco
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Posted on Dec 24 2018 09:11 AM
Best year ever for the Pool Boys, I wish we could be so busy every year, but we did have to get concessions and hall-passes from our families and work to pull it off. It was great to play 4 festivals, but all the club gigs were a blast as well. 25 gigs!
— Buy Speed of Dark @ Bandcamp
Buy Spin the Bottle @ Bandcamp
My Blog- Euro Tour Blog
Pool Boys on Spotify
INSTAGRAM
Frankie & The Pool Boys on FB
Pollo Del Mar on FB
DJ Frankie Pool Boy on North Sea Surf Radio
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CrazyAces
Joined: Jul 31, 2012
Posts: 4052
Nashville, TN.
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Posted on Dec 24 2018 02:05 PM
"How was your 2018 gig year?"
Non-exisitent.
But we're working on it and thanks to this website we've been able to live vicariously with all the great shows, events and releases that many have posted.
Here's to 2019!
Cheers,
Jeff
— http://www.facebook.com/CrazyAcesMusic
http://www.youtube.com/user/crazyacesrock
http://www.reverbnation.com/crazyacesmusic
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zunrj5
Joined: Jul 16, 2015
Posts: 259
ID
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Posted on Dec 26 2018 09:36 AM
The Seatopians ended up playing a total of 14 shows this year. It was a good first year considering our location and having to recruit a new bassist after our 3rd show. We had one out of state gig and it was a blast! We plan to do some more away shows in 2019 and hopefully see some of you out on the road!
— -John
The Seatopians 2017-
The Seatopians on bandcamp
Last edited: Dec 26, 2018 09:39:18
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Patrick_Strain
Joined: Feb 20, 2017
Posts: 70
Gilbertsville, NY
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Posted on Dec 29 2018 05:18 AM
Definitely down from the previous 10ish years which typically saw 120-150 gigs per year. I think I may have hit 20 gigs in 2018.
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simoncoil
Joined: Sep 28, 2012
Posts: 914
Berlin, Germany
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Posted on Dec 30 2018 01:19 PM
Gigwise this year was as "uneven" for me as in any other aspect: To me it feels like we haven't played at all, but all in all we had six concerts, which is about average for us, even though we really would like to play more. However, the bigger part of these gigs was in the first half of the year and surrounded by lots of private and job related problems, which are more or less settled now thankfully but somewhat clouded my memory.
Highlights for me were trips to the Aloha Fest and the Moorlochfest, a gig together with the Hicadoolas and Boris Bond as well as our final gig a few weeks ago.
Next year we will hopefully have a few more gigs and I am also really looking forward to play two reunion gigs with my first surf band in June and July, although it will also be quite a technical challenge.
— Los Apollos - cinematic surf music trio (Berlin)
"Postcards from the Scrapyard" Vol. 1, 2 & 3 NOW available on various platforms!
"Chaos at the Lobster Lounge" available as LP and download on Surf Cookie Records!
Last edited: Jan 01, 2019 03:26:31
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Surfing_Sam_61
Joined: Jan 15, 2019
Posts: 1515
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Posted on Jan 16 2019 08:08 PM
Yeah where I live the only musicians that work a lot are solo guys that make a 100 bucks for 4 hours. The bands are mostly from out of town and only work on Friday and Saturday (This in the Summer). I live at the beach on the East Coast so its pretty much seasonal here.
Its hard for any band that does work a lot to be really good and know how to be entertaining etc. Its just pure economics, if the club isn't making money they can't support paying for a full 4 or 5 piece band everyday. Even on weekends can be a loss. I'm going to try playing out solo this year and have a good plan and contacts. But surf instrumentals may be a hard sell here - will see how it goes - there are like 100 bars here in the summer.
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da-ron
Joined: Jan 02, 2009
Posts: 1305
The original Plymouth, UK.
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Posted on Feb 28 2019 07:35 AM
For The Waterboarders, 2018 was very similar to 2017. We played a couple of small festivals - a rockabilly one and a punk one; a few out of town shows and a couple of parties. The rest were gigs in our local pub that we do to mainly support the pub.
We released a new CD, which took up a lot of time where we should have been out chasing gigs, and this year I've just bought a house which has the potential to take up even more time. Hopefully not. This year we're playing at the Worthing Surf Music festival in May.
The most important thing is that I still love playing with The Waterboarders, and I still love playing surf music. I wish there was more interest in live music than there is, but we do our bit, putting shows on and inviting new bands to play.
— http://thewaterboarders.bandcamp.com/
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