Chapter 17: On the Road Again

Back in Concert

Wednesday, February 23^rd – Sunday, February 27^th, 2000

On Wednesday afternoon we all met at the studio, around 2:00 pm, I had my trailer attached to the Disco, we would use that to take our instruments to the venue. Alberts concert division would be transporting the PA and lighting equipment to the Enmore Theatre, they should have most of that set up by now. Mary Beth had the equipment list, and we had the trailer loaded by 2:30, and we drove the short distance to the theatre. When we arrived, Peter Jonas from Alberts was supervising the setup on stage, the riggers had the lighting in place, and were just finishing installing the PA and speakers.

We moved our equipment into position and were ready for the first sound check. This was always the most boring part of a gig as they would go through each microphone and mixer input, one by one, starting with the microphones on the drum kits. By about 5:00, they were happy with the sound, meanwhile the lighting techs had got all the stage lights set up and aimed correctly; as well as the main gantry lights, there were effects lights on the sides of the stage, and directional spots that could be steered out into the audience and well as on individual members of the band.

“Okay, let’s try a full sound check with everyone, can we run through ‘Time is Tight’?” Mary Beth said. “On your count, Will.”

I looked around at the others, they indicated they were ready, I adjusted my seat, checked the settings of the sound generator and the keyboard, and started the opening chords. The foldback settings seemed a bit low and muddy, but during the song, they must have made some adjustments, as it improved.

“Let’s go for something with some oomph,” I suggested. “How about ‘Crossroad Blues’?”

I moved from the keyboard bench, picked up my strat and made sure the routing switch was set for the clean channel of my Fender amp. A quick count in, and we were off. People at the mixing desk, and those out in the body of the theatre were pleased with the sound, we played a few more songs for them to get the equalizers set to their satisfaction, and we took a short break.

“You guys still have it,” George Young said. “The sound is big; you will make people want to get up and dance. I can’t wait to hear some of the new songs, see what the reaction to them is.”

After our break, we decided to run through the opening of the second set; some of the quieter songs, where Allison, Fiona, Mandy, and Megan would be doing the bulk of the singing, so the engineers on the sound desk could make sure they had everything set correctly for them. Then we decided to run through what our ‘encore’ set would be, ‘Make You Happy’, where Megan and I would sing together, much like Chrissy Amphlette and I would, a rocking version of ‘Walk Don’t Run’, and ‘Khe Sanh’. If we felt an absolute final song was required, we would do ‘Good Times’. Before we broke to have a meal, we all went through the set lists to make sure we, and those on the control panels all had the same schedule, we all knew who was playing what part for each song, who would be singing, and who would have each instrumental break. In the past, that had all been second nature to us, we had played the sets so often that everything flowed easily from one song to another. However, we felt that since we hadn’t performed live for some time, it was worth making sure everyone was quite clear with what was happening.

“Well, I think we are as ready as we’ll ever be,” I said. “I can tell you, it felt great to be up on the stage, playing, hearing our playing, seeing the lights changing colours. What time do we start, Mary Beth?”

“8:00, so we’ve got two hours until lift-off,” she said. “Enough time for us to have some food and get dressed for the show. Angie and Jenny, do you want to sit at the mixing desk with me?”

They were excited about sitting at the desk with Mary Beth and Chris, meanwhile, we all gathered in a back room, where there was some food provided for us. I sat down with a glass of ice water and my plate of food when Megan sat next to me.

“For ‘Make You Happy’, in the encore, what if we put our arms around each other’s shoulders,” she said. “Do you remember the way you and Chrissie sang it? I was thinking of something like that. What do you think?”

“We could do that,” I said. “What if you stand on my left side, I can hold my mike in my right hand, you can hold yours in your left?”

“That would work, if we tried to use the same mike, it would probably throw out the mixing,” she said. “Just to warn you, I’ll probably be all hot and sweaty by the end of the show...”

“I will too, so we will both be all wet and sweaty, nothing new about that when we’ve performed together.”

“With the emphasis on WET,” she said. “You still do that to me, after all these years!”

“Yeah, well, not much we can do about that now, is there?” I said, not wanting to encourage Megan to continue with this line of discussion. I found it interesting that she still got aroused when she was singing with me, just like she was when we first started performing together in 1975. She moved away, sitting with her brother, Mandy, and Fiona.

“That sound was incredible,” Angie said, sitting next to me. “I was fascinated looking at the controls that Mary Beth was sitting at, the racks of equipment, everything that goes into producing the sound. And don’t let me get started on that lighting stuff, I never realized so much went into a live performance!”

“You should see what we had when we did some of the really big outdoor concerts,” I said. “There would be a big truck with an electrical generator on it, big towers for the PA speakers, stacks of amplifiers, it was a major exercise getting the stage set up.”

“Do you think you’ll do any of those again?” she asked. “I can imagine us going on a road trip, touring the State as you all perform one concert after another, maybe even to interstate venues, like you did in the past.”

“I guess that’s a possibility, it all depends on how the album sales go, and whether Alberts thinks we need to do a tour to promote it,” I said. “We have to fit the Olympic Opening Ceremony into all that, too, so I’m not sure how we can do the scheduling.”

By the time I had finished eating, I had to get ready for the performance. In the backstage area there were the showers and dressing rooms, I was pleasantly surprised that I could still fit into the black leather trousers that I wore – I had been worried that since I really hadn’t been doing any regular exercise, they would be too tight, and I would have to visit Kinkz to get a slightly larger pair. By 7:45 we were all dressed and ready to go on stage, I could feel my nerves starting to kick in and my heart was beating a little faster than usual.

“Five minutes, everyone ... have that last minute pee before it’s too late!” Mary Beth said to us, before heading out to the control room.

I decided to take her advice, as did several others, and after a quick pee, we were ready to go on stage. As we walked out, the house lights started to dim, and the roar of the audience increased. I took my seat at the keyboard, made a quick check to make sure all the settings were still correct, then looked around at everyone, and got the acknowledgement that we were all ready. I started to play the opening chords of ‘Time is Tight’, and after a few bars, spoke the introduction.

“Good evening, everyone, we are the Roberttones. It’s great to be back performing for you, it’s been over eighteen months since we last played live. It’s great to be back here at the Enmore Theatre playing for you, and in the period that we’ve taken a hiatus, we have been fortunate that one of our original members, Megan Winters, is now back with us after a very successful career in the United States.”

The others started joining in, Chris had brought up some of the stage lights, and I could no longer make out the audience. It was always difficult looking out through the bright lights into the darkened arena; and unless the audience were really screaming, I had no idea of their reaction to us. Still, on with the introductions, there was a show to put on. By the time we were halfway through the song, I felt the familiar rush of excitement and energy from performing live before a crowd, I looked around at the others, everyone had huge smiles on their faces. The Roberttones were back!

We segued straight into ‘Good Times’, then continued with the first set; I was very happy with how my new pedalboard was performing, being able to switch between amplifiers and their inputs at a press of a footswitch was particularly useful, no more moving back to the amps, unplugging and plugging the lead, with the corresponding crackle and ‘thump’ from the amp speakers. The final song in the first set was ‘Reconciliation’, I stood at my microphone to introduce the song.

“Well, as you’ve probably realized by now, we are back performing after a long break,” I said. “We are calling our tour – and our upcoming album - ‘Reconciliation’, as our past differences are behind us, and we are now back together.”

With a quick nod towards Phil, we waited for the applause to die down, then started the song. The time that I had spent practicing my vocals seem to have paid off, the words flowed easily, I didn’t have to worry about forgetting anything, the timing seemed to work fine. There was lots of applause when we finished the song and took our first break and headed backstage to the break room.

“That was a great opening set,” Allison said. “It’s so good to be back performing again!”

“Sounding really good, guys,” George Young said. “I think that title song, ‘Reconciliation’ is album ready, the crowd reaction was perfect.”

We kicked around some thoughts on the first set, Mary Beth reminded Traci to keep her microphone close to her mouth when she was singing – Traci had the tendency to move around a bit too much, causing the level of her singing to vary as she did. But all in all, we felt the first set went very well. Then it was back on stage for the second set, the first few songs gave me a good break from singing, as Megan and Allison did most of the vocal work. We rounded out that set with the R&B numbers, ‘Treat her Right’, ‘Midnight Hour’ and ‘Mean Woman Blues’. The final set was mainly the new songs for the next album, along with some of our older songs from previous albums. Time for the encore, Megan moved up to stand next to me, an arm around my shoulder. Phil looked across at us, nodding his head to count us in, we gave him a ‘thumbs up’, and he started the intro to ‘Make You Happy’.

I felt Megan and I ‘blew it out of the park’, she then moved back to play sax on ‘Walk Don’t Run’, while I put my strat on, and set the effects to give plenty of reverb. I then had time to take a quick drink of water to sooth my throat for ‘Khe Sanh’, to close out the gig. There was plenty of applause and screaming from the crowd, they didn’t want us to finish. We were all really pumped up, it had been a great night’s performance, and we were all looking forward to the next few nights’ gigs.

“It still has the same effect, singing with you Will,” Megan whispered in my ear. “I’m soaking wet down there, just like it would be when we first started singing together.”

“Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about that, Megan,” I said.

“I know ... I need to get home and take care of things,” she said. “And you can probably guess just what I’ll be thinking about, what fantasies will be going through my head.”

“Fantastic performance, everyone,” Mary Beth said. “We’ll meet here tomorrow evening, 6:00 pm, just to make sure everything is still right. I think we’re now officially ‘back’!”

Since we would be playing here again tomorrow night, there was no need to pack anything up, our instruments would remain on the stage. Angie and I drove back to our apartment, and I had a hot shower once we were home.

“That sounded so great,” she said, once I had got into bed. “It was even better being able to watch from the side of the stage and see how everything was controlled. How are you feeling after the performance, are you tired? How is your voice?”

“I’m still a bit hyped up, but I can feel that soon enough, I will be exhausted,” I said. “My voice is fine, all the rehearsing I’ve done over the last few months has built up its strength. I will probably sleep in tomorrow, not getting up until 8:00 or thereabouts.”

“And you have to do it all tomorrow. But after things finish tomorrow night, you have to pack everything up?”

“All we do is load our instruments into the trailer,” I said. “The road crew will be responsible for the sound and lighting equipment, they will take it across to Selinas, at the Coogee Bay Hotel for the next two nights.”

“You can spend Sunday resting; I won’t plan anything for us then. I’m sure you’ll want to sleep in most of the morning,” she said.

“That will be good, I’m out of practice at the late nights involved in performing; being able to turn off all the adrenaline from the performance, wind down and fall asleep.”

“Do you think some lovemaking might help you fall asleep?” she asked.

“It’s always worth a try,” I replied. “Why don’t you climb onboard, and we can see?”

She bent over my groin, sucking my cock until I was hard, then she mounted me, and rode me hard until I spurted inside her. We were both exhausted, and fell asleep, with Angie still lying on my chest.

It was close to 8:00 when I woke up, Angie had got up a bit earlier, since she had to be in at work. I had a shower, then had breakfast, and drove off to work, arriving about 9:30. I didn’t have a real lot to do at work today, the Land Information System project wouldn’t start until Monday. I had been reviewing some design notes on a change to the multiprocessor locking routines when Jenny knocked on my office door.

“Come in, take a seat,” I said to her. “How did you enjoy the gig last night?”

“Oh, it was absolutely fantastic! Sitting at the mixing desk, hearing Mary Beth tell me what she was doing, watching how the sound was controlled, that was fascinating, I never knew just how complicated a live show could be. But all of you were so good, I mean hearing the rehearsals were pretty great, but you seemed even better playing live. I loved watching you and hearing you sing, I always thought you were good, but last night ... and when you did that Cold Chisel one, you sound just as good as Jimmy Barnes.”

“Are you coming tonight, too?”

“I wouldn’t miss it, and ... I probably shouldn’t tell you this, it’s a bit personal, but Allison was so incredibly horny when we got home ... she said playing live is such a huge turn on for her. Keep this to yourself, but her panties were completely soaked, she was that turned on. Does it affect you that way?”

“Yes, it can, not quite in the same manner, and the effects are not the same, obviously, but performing in public like that is arousing,” I said.

“It might be rather distracting if you were to come in your pants while you were singing,” she said, laughing.

“It all depends on the song, and the emotions and feelings that it generates, too,” I said. “Some are pretty benign, while other songs have a very strong emotional connection. Some songs have a personal connection for me, and they can bring up strong memories.”

“I’m so glad you invited me to come along, not just to the actual shows, but to all the rehearsals, too,” she said. “Otherwise, Allison and I would never have met, or at least got to know each other as well as we have.”

“I’m just glad you seem to have found someone for you,” I said.

“I think I have,” she said. “Now, I should get on with my work, I have a bunch of stuff to finish this week, before university starts. I’ll see you later, Will, maybe tonight at the concert?”

I continued with my work, then left at lunchtime to go over to Balmain and see how progress on the terraces was going. Most of the old sash windows had been removed from the first terrace, and one of the master carpenters was working on restoring them, working in the carriage house. The metal pulleys that help the sash cords move the body of the windows up and down had rusted over the years, they needed replacing, along with new sash cords and weights. Some of the glass panes were cracked or broken, so they were removed, the old paint on the frames was stripped off, the wood sanded, and new panes installed with fresh caulking. Finally, the completed window would be primed and painted, ready to be reinstalled in the walls.

Paul took me on a tour of the first terrace where everything had been stripped out, including the floorboards. The plaster from the walls had been tossed into the dumpster, and they were now ripping out the old electrical wiring, plumbing and gas lines. The staircases providing access to the upper floors had been removed, and temporary ladders installed in their places. Large sheets of 20mm thick OSB had been placed down over the floor joists to make walking around easier, and work had started on rebuilding the rickety front veranda off the front bedroom. I was impressed with the rate of progress, now that most of the demolition had been completed on the first terrace, the demolition team was now working on the next two buildings in the line.

The wood trim that had been removed was stacked in the coach house and was slowly being rehabilitated. The first step was to strip the many coats of paint that had been applied over the years; I was quite familiar with the process of using a paint stripper, we had done that on most of the woodwork that was originally in Banksia Lodge. Chris showed me how they would use a special planer, once the paint had been stripped from the wood, they had a special cutting blade with the profiles of the trim. He demonstrated passing one of the door pieces through the planer, it took a tiny shaving from the top of the wood, leaving fresh timber in the correct profile.

“Using the planer makes sure we have the trim at the correct thickness and profile,” he said. “It saves trying to get the last vestiges of the paint off, and we have a good, clean surface ready to stain.”

“We’ll have all the services re-run by the end of next week,” Paul said. “Did you want to talk to one of the cable TV companies about getting the terraces pre-wired for Cable? Now would be the time to get it done.; I’ve got a contact at Optus Cable who can give some advice, if you are interested.”

“It probably wouldn’t hurt,” I said. “We would need to work out where we would run each cable lead, I assume they all connect back to a common patch panel for each individual building?”

“Yes, that’s normally outside, adjacent to where the phone service would come into the building. I’ll get my mate to have a walk around, and we can probably put cable runs to each bedroom, the living room, and family room. What do you think, Will?”

“Makes sense to me,” I said. “Now, I personally would never want a TV in my bedroom, but I’m just funny that way. A bedroom isn’t a place to watch TV, there are plenty of other activities more appropriate for bed!”

“Typical, that’s what I would expect from you, Will!” Chris said. “But for most people, particularly those of us who have been married for a while, we want anything other than that!”

“We can run the coax, it’s probably far easier and cheaper to put it in now and have them terminated on the appropriate plates in each room, run back to the main coax patch panel. Now, for the first terrace, the big one, I’ll work on a plan for running ethernet twisted pair cables back to the space under the main staircase. No need to terminate them on RJ-45 outlets, we can leave them coiled up behind a blank plate until they are needed.”

“You still thinking that you might take the first terrace for yourself, Will?” Chris asked me. “I thought you were staying in the Eastern Suburbs.”

“Just keeping my options open,” I said. “Edgecliff is nice, I guess, but Balmain appeals to me far more. I think the big terrace house here is more in line with the sort of place I would like to live in long-term. I don’t have to make up my mind anytime soon, but now is the time to set things up should I decide to move in myself.”

“Fair enough, and now is the time to run all of those cables, same with power, gas, it’s so much easier before the drywall goes up,” Paul said.

I was happy with how the building work was progressing, of course it was still very early days in the project, but the signs were all good. One thing I should talk about next time I had a session with Doctor Sleigh was why I felt it was necessary to have a ‘backup’ plan, why I still thought I might want to move to Balmain, and not stay in Angie’s apartment. Was it just a feeling of dissatisfaction about the Eastern Suburbs lifestyle, compared with living in the Inner West, or was there something deeper?

Time for me to head over to the studio in preparation for tonight’s gig, Angie would be meeting me there when she had finished work for the day. We all had a quick discussion about how we felt last night went, there wasn’t anything that needed to be changed, the comments from George were that everything was sounding first rate. We reattached the trailer to my car, drove across to the Enmore Theatre, and made sure that everything on the stage was still in the correct position and connected properly. During the gig, I felt more confident and comfortable than I had the night before, since it had been some time since I had been performing in public, it would take me a few sessions before I had my old self-confidence back. At least these four nights, at Enmore and Selinas would be a nice, gentle introduction back to performing live.

Our second night at the Enmore Theatre seemed to go even better than our first night, I think having the practice at moving around on the stage, transitioning from one song to the next, and familiarity with using the lighting console all made a difference. When the show had finished, we had to load our instruments into my trailer, and drive back to the studio. Rather than unload everything, only to have to load the trailer again tomorrow afternoon and drive to Selinas, I left my car and trailer behind Megan’s place, and let Angie drive me home. I was exhausted when I got home, I fell straight asleep, and slept through until 8:00.

Friday was a quiet day at work, Michelle and I spent the day preparing for the start of the Land Information System contract, that would begin on Monday. We packed all the material we would need at the project office in the State Office Block, once things had started on Monday, we would have them transferred over to our rooms there. Just after lunchtime, I travelled with Mary Beth to the studio, and we made a quick check to make sure we had everything in the trailer, then I drove across to Coogee Bay. The riggers had the stage pretty much set up, the lights were in place, the PA speakers and amp racks in place, and the work was just finishing connecting the microphones to the mixer. We waited until the audio crew had finished on the stage, and then we unloaded our instruments, setting them up, getting things plugged into the power, and connected into the mixer. There wasn’t the need for the full-blown sound check, the levels of the faders would be much as they were back at the last gig, but we still had a quick check to make sure all channels were connected currently, and the levels were right.

Word of our performance must have got around, because by 7:30 the room was packed full; it was always interesting to me to compare the makeup of the audiences at the different venues. The usual audience at the Enmore Theatre would typically be some of the inner city ‘trendies’, people who were looking for the latest craze, whatever group was seen as the ‘flavour of the month’. Conversely, those at Selinas were the typical Eastern Suburbs young adults, a mix of the upper middle class glamour crowd, beach-going surfing types, and students from UNSW. It was like the typical audience at the Royal Antler hotel at Narrabeen, the behaviour of the young women who would line the stage and flash the performers was like no other venue I had played at. The first time I played there, I had the never-to-be-forgotten experience of having one woman toss her rather sodden panties up on the stage, where they ended up caught over my microphone. Those who had never played there found it hard to believe that the people there – specifically, the young Northern Beaches ‘women of loose morals’ – would behave that way, only to be surprised when they saw it for themselves.

However, we weren’t likely to see anything like that here at Selinas, not that the crowd here were always far better behaved – the Coogee Bay Hotel always had a reasonable number of bouncers on duty should anyone become a bit ‘unruly’. There were only a few times I had seen them in action, but they weren’t all that gentle in dealing with the drunks and troublemakers. We weren’t expecting any problems like that this evening, and right from when we started the opening song at 8:00, until the end of the extended encore, the crowd was really getting into the music. Unlike other venues, generally the crowd at Selinas came to listen to the music, and maybe have a few drinks, unlike other places where people would come to drink, and maybe listen to the music. Millers Manly Vale was one place where the amount of drinking far exceeded the ‘listening to the music’, and it was a rare night when several drunks weren’t ejected bodily into the car park.

When the gig was over, we were sitting in the back room discussing the performance; George felt that we needed to review how we made use of the keyboards and horns in the middle part of ‘Reconciliation’. He said we needed to make that break appear to be distinct, not just echoing the same riffs, with the same arrangement as the main melody section. Megan took it upon herself to work on that, she said that she had a few ideas that she wanted to try out.

“Will, are you going to be available next week for us to work on that together?” she asked me.

“Not during the day, I’m started a big new project for the State Government,” I said. “I could come over during the evenings, provided we don’t work too late into the nights.”

I drove back via Megan’s place, leaving the trailer behind her building, then it was back to the apartment.

“We can sleep in properly this morning, Will,” Angie said. “We don’t have to get up anytime early, so we can just sleep as long as we feel like.”

“I’m getting too old for this caper,” I grumbled. “I just hope Megan doesn’t expect me to stay too late each night working on some new arrangements next week!”

“Do you remember a month or two ago, me telling you that you should use the time before this new project started to have a proper rest? Did you listen to me? No, you didn’t, and now you’re wishing you did take a decent rest,” she said.

“Well, that was all very good, but there was just too much going on for me to take several weeks off,” I said. “I would have loved to have been able to do what Michelle did, spending several weeks lying in the sun at Noosa Heads, but it just wasn’t possible.”

“When do you think you might be able to take some time off?” she asked.

“Well, the Land Information System project will run until October, if all goes to plan. March and April, we will be recording the next album, so there will be some touring to support that, probably just around Sydney, Wollongong, the Central Coast and Newcastle. Then in September, we’ve got the Olympic Games. November might be a good time to have a break somewhere.”

“We could look at going up to Noosa Heads,” she said. “I could fly us up there, we could take it in stages, maybe Sydney to somewhere on the mid North Coast, Taree, or Kempsey, then up to Coolangatta, then to the Sunshine coast. That might be fun, what do you think?”

“Yeah, we could look at something like that,” I said. “But right now, I need to study the inside of my eyelids, I don’t think I can stay awake much longer.”

We got into bed, and I fell asleep quickly, not waking up until the sunlight was starting to stream into the room. Saturday morning – at least what was left of it after we woke up – was a very lazy affair. We made love, slowly and sensually, then showered together before a rather late breakfast (brunch) out on the balcony.

“What is the schedule for today?” Angie asked me.

“I think we’ll head around to Megan’s place early afternoon; I think Mary Beth will have the proposed recording schedule, and any other gigs coming up,” I said. “I also want to talk with Megan about working on revising the keyboard interlude in the middle of ‘Reconciliation’. I want to see if we can get Don Wilson involved in that, he’s a brilliant composer, and he knows how to build a tune that is catchy, emotional, and somehow works. It would be good to have Allison involved, too. The problem if it’s just me trying to work on melodies, I find it hard to come up with an original sound, I start on something, and it reminds me of some other tune I’ve heard in the past, and my mind seems to lock onto that tune, that riff, and I can’t get back to my original one. Having some others working with Megan and me should avoid that.”