Live Performances

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If you haven’t heard, Collapsis is getting back together for a show on May 22, 2021 at the Grove Winery & Vineyards. It’s an outdoor show with limited, spaced seating.

The last time Collapsis performed was at the Cat’s Cradle anniversary show in the fall of 2018. That show was the first time I used the Line 6 Firehawk as my main amp. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to rehearse with the rig much more and explore its many features.

My favorite thing about the Firehawk is that it allows me to approximate vintage amp tones without the excessive volume needed to fully realize those tones. A hundred watt Marshall sounds great wide open, but that kind of volume is generally inappropriate unless you are playing a stadium. Power soaks and power breaks offer negative volume solutions, but sometimes to the detriment of one’s tone. The Firehawk allows me to select an amp, dial in the tone I desire, and then set the output.

Here’s an example of what I mean. I love playing a VOX AC-30 with Top Boost. Every time I’ve had the privilege of using one live, I’ve enjoyed the result. The Firehawk interface allows me to select the AC-30 model with the amount of drive I like. I can also select a distortion pedal, phaser pedal, and delay pedal from a variety of options. And then, I can turn the output up or down as needed. Before, when the sound engineer would ask me to turn down, it meant sacrificing the delicate balance of tone obtained by driving the amp tubes a certain way.

What’s more, this single amp setting gets saved in the Firehawk and is switchable with an ethernet floor controller. Within the amp, I can save over a hundred different amp/pedal combinations. I only have four for the Collapsis show, but that’s more than enough.

The other three amp models I’ll use at this show are a 200 Watt Marshall Plexi, a Matchless DC-30, and a Fender Vibrolux. I’ve paired the Marshall for a semi-gritty tone that works well with my Stratocaster. The Matchless is a darker complement to the AC-30. The Vibrolux gives a more robust tone, when needed.

Do you use digital amps? Are you an analog only person? Let me know on Twitter or sound off in the comments below.

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The Songs about Trains show was great fun for me. Broadcasting live on StageIt usually goes off without a hitch. However, on a long enough timeline, technical difficulties are inevitable. My apologies to anyone whose feed dropped out mid-show. For some, it did not. So my assumption is that the error was attributable to something outside of my control.

Doing a themed show invited light research about the topic. Did you know that the term “train” comes from the French verb, traine, which means “to drag”? And, back in the 1800’s, people actually thought that their bodies would melt if they traveled at over 50 miles per hour. And–one more factoid–ghost trains run in the United Kingdom because the cost of abandoning old lines is more expensive than running an empty train every now and then.

The set list was a mix of cover songs and original songs:

  1. Crime Scene Part One (originally performed by The Afghan Whigs)
  2. Gone, Gone, Gone
  3. Driver 8 (originally performed by R.E.M.)
  4. Seminole Train
  5. Manic Monday (originally performed by the Bangles and written by Prince)
  6. Slow Moon Rising
  7. Interstate Love Song (originally performed by Stone Temple Pilots)
  8. The Original Pullman Palace Car Dream
  9. Ghost Train (originally performed by Counting Crows”
  10. Where’s the A Train?
  11. Jumping Someone Else’s Train (originally performed by The Cure)
  12. Don’t Stop Believin’ (originally performed by Journey)

I’ll return to StageIt the first Saturday in June. Stay tuned for an announcement with details. This show and the preceding StageIt show will be available, in audio form, in the Community later this month.

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Back in October of 2020, I did a show on StageIt.com that consisted completely of songs from my 1996 album, The Lessons of Autumn, and my 2002 album, The Promise of Summer. In the spirit of promoting my most recent album, Semigloss Albatross, I performed the entire show on the piano. The show, called Equinox, Part One, is now available in the Mike Garrigan Community.

The setlist is:

  • Birthday Song
  • Rusted Radio
  • October
  • She Alone
  • When I Was Five
  • Sigourney Weaver
  • Oceans
  • God Lives in My Backyard
  • Milestone
  • Don’t Fade Away
  • The Lessons of Autumn

I hope you enjoy listening to the show as much as I enjoyed performing it.

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Join me for an all request show on Saturday, November 7, 2020 at 9 pm EST on StageIt.com. If you’d like to make a request, please leave one in the comments on the show page (you can access the show page here). Leave a tip. I’ll play the requests in order of tipping amount.