Day 2 The return of Burn Out Mama

The next day we met up with Mika in the hotel foyer he was quite contrite and apologetic about the messy travel re-arrangements of the previous night.Mika had actually decided to stay in Helsinki overnight when he had finally arrived at the Airport and received the news that we had left on the bus for Turku. Getting up early the next day and taken the morning train to Turku.

We also now met up with Ed in the Hotel who had arrived early the day before and had travelled to Turku with Reija. That was when Ed announced that his Tenor Sax was broken and he needed to either find a Sax repairer quick or get hold of a good Tenor sax to play the show that night! Reija immediately got on the phone speaking to the Festival Promoter who luckily managed to locate a sax for Ed, A good Selmer Sax arrived at the venue for the Sound Check. Ed immediately started to try the Sax and broke out into the biggest smile beaming from ear to ear, happy that he wasn't going to do the gig with a paper and comb!!!

For my part the first thing that caught my eye when I stepped inside the club was a small Xylpohone? We always ask for good quality Marimba and Vibraphone on the Burn Out Mama gigs and luckily have always managed to have good quality instruments provided. However on this occasion a Xylophone had somehow been substituted for the Marimba. Not sure if they thought I wouldn’t notice or just had problems trying to get a Marimba! I headed over to the Xylophone and tried a set of mallets but they just sounded wrong as they were not Xylophone mallets plus the size of the notes were so thin that the heads of the mallets were way to big and looked like some kind of joke set had replaced the real ones. So I took the decision to play most of the show on the Musser vibes that they had managed to hook up for the gig! Meanwhile other news had reached us that the Bass Amp that Geoff's was to use plus the Electric piano for Mika to play on a couple of numbers in the Set would not be at the Soundcheck but would in fact arrive for the gig as they were being used by another band on the festival playing at the same time as our Sound Check! Which in this case meant keeping the audience waiting until the equipment arrived and was then rushed onto stage followed by the musicians making sure they were working properly!!!

The Burnout Mama music relies on some tightly organised grooves sampled and triggered through a Boss Rc50 Loop station controlled by Geoff's and he had done a fantastic job setting everything up in advance for us. The show went well and we had some very positive feedback with a few promoters present from other Festivals in Finland proposing some possible shows for the future.

Straight after the gig we went off to the obligatory festival Jam session where some excellent local musicians were playing! Mika and Ed got right up on stage and joined in immediately with Ed still able to use the same Tenor Sax that he had used earlier in the Burn Out Mama Gig! Reija also joined in and delivered some classy scat vocals with the Double bass chair taken over by the Promoter of the Pori Jazz festival. I must say it was a good night and featured some fine playing by all concerned at the Jam session.