Victorious cantata and UnCharted @ Skip's Lounge

This past weekend I had a number of concerts. Saturday evening I performed "Victorious" at EABC (http://www.eabcministries.com/) in Auburn with a choir and small ensemble made up of bass, drums, violins, guitars, flute, harp, trumpet and piano (I may have missed someone). It was nourishing-- I got to play the violin again, I got to see my old concertmaster Sue Herrick,  and the music was uplifting with a good message.

The moment it was done, I went to do the polar opposite-- play with UnCharted at Skip's Lounge-- a bar in Buxton.

Getting there was no trouble-- it was near a Hannaford that I remember visiting before. There was a dump literally behind the bar (which was unsettling), but I pulled around back and knew that I was in the right place.

I started to set up my gear once I saw everyone else on the stage.

Then I somehow missed something-- I had forgotten the bottom to my keyboard stand! How was I going to put two heavy keyboards on it and have it stand upright? I thought about placing it against a wall, tried a metal bar in the bottom, but ended up with the help of a hired light guy. We had a lighting guy for this gig and he was more than equipped with lights, cables and clamps.
He secured two clamps on the bottom of my keyboard stand and it ended up looking like this:

After this was fixed, the next ordeal was setting up a million cables and connecting mixers and monitors...a process that I constantly want to streamline. It went slow, the sound was not optimal, and a mysterious buzz appeared. It turns out that the light guy had his gear plugged into ours-- interference. We solved that and then we were set.

The night started without a bang, and we had issues with sound and having the stage go black after every song (I couldn't see my keyboard patches). Because of the limited power, or too many amplifiers plugged into the same power source, we lost power twice during the set.

You can see how our drummer has his own control station-- that Rack Ryder was providing power for all mains and monitors (over 10 speakers).
I had two monitors that were killing my ears on stage, until I turned one down.

It was a learning experience. For the next gig at Club 302 in May, I will have LED lights, my in-ear monitor system, the bottom of my keyboard stand, and a LCD monitor system for the band setlist. Let technology make the process easier!

Thanks!