Live Performances

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On the early afternoon of May 22, 2021, Ivy and I made our way to the venue. Even though Gibsonville is in Guilford County, Grove Winery & Vineyards is nestled at the end of several winding back roads. We arrived around 2:30 pm.

I drove right up to the stage and unloaded my gear, which consisted of four guitars, an amp, a floor board, and a keyboard set up. We didn’t start sound checking until about 4:30 pm, so Ivy and I walked around the grounds for a bit. My two favorite parts of Grove Winery were the vineyard rows and the lake behind the stage with the loud bullfrogs. The rows of grapes reminded me of some kind of rustic farming–idyllic in its own way. The bullfrogs called from the lake every now and then during the daylight hours. As night fell, they croaked constantly.

Ryan did an excellent job with the sound production. It didn’t hurt that he’s the front of house engineer for My Morning Jacket. He and James, his assistant, rung out the PA and dialed in the monitors quite well. Sound check was relatively effortless in that we were able to use the time to get used to the stage rather than mitigate flaws in the staging.

As people arrived, I spent some time reconnecting with friends and fans that I hadn’t seen in ages. What I enjoy most about Collapsis reunions is hearing how our music was a soundtrack for a particular part of a person’s life. About an hour before the Grove show, one couple told me that they listened to Dirty Wake everyday of their daughter’s first year of life. And, when they saw that we were playing within two hours of where they live, they had to make a family road trip out of it so they could share the music with their now 20 year old daughter.

Chris started off the show with some original acoustic songs. Before his set, Chris shared with me his rationale for using a Martin acoustic guitar. This particular guitar had two pickups and allowed for a nice blending in the PA. Chris’s songs would sit well in a playlist of Gram Parsons and Chris Bell songs–a very good performance.

I played some songs on the piano for the next part of the show. I performed “Gravity Affects Me,” “Semigloss Albatross,” “Oceans,” and “End.” The first song was from my 2004 EP of the same name and the third song was from my 1996 album, The Lessons of Autumn. The second and fourth songs were from my most recent album Semigloss Albatross. Performing on the piano is not as fluid for me as performing on the guitar, but the only way to get better at something is to keep trying, live, without a net.

The next part of the show featured just Scott and me–I played acoustic guitar and Scott played light drums with hot rod sticks. We did “Trouble in the Barynard,” “Crocodile,” “Believe in You,” and “Wonderland.” The first two songs were from The Lessons of Autumn and Building a Hole, respectively, while the last two were from the Collapsis album, Dirty Wake.

After a short break, the Collapsis set began. Chris made the set list and it flowed quite well. We tried to put songs in places we hadn’t usually put them. “Stumble,” for example, was almost always a transitional song in our sets. But for this show, we opened with it. “High Caliber Grease” often got relegated to our encores for one reason or another. But we played it mid-set this time.

We tried a handful of new cover songs and peppered them in the set here and there. “Eminence Front” by The Who was never a song I ever anticipated covering, but Ryan pointed out that it’s in the same key as “Dirty Wake” and would transition well out of it. “Feel” by Big Star added a chance to showcase Chris on lead vocals. “Corduroy” by Pearl Jam transitioned well out of our version of “Breathe” by Pink Floyd. Our show closer was “Life’s What You Make It” by Talk Talk. We invited James Chen to play keys with us on this song. Dillon Fence alumnus Chris Goode just happened to be sitting in the front row, so we invited him to play bass on the last song. Chris Holloway moved over to floor tom and added a polyrhythm to Scott’s groove.

As the set ended and people began to leave, I contributed to helping pack up the PA and getting the stage straight. Just before leaving, we took a band photo.

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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.