Walking down the memory lane… Our first Canadian live show with the cover band took place right at one of Toronto’s best-known live music rock bars, The Hideout. Our keyboardist Herve Bassett (on the far left), who had been on the music scene for a while and had played with numerous reputable musicians over the years, recommended us as a cool new act. He was excited about our project since, according to him, I was one of the very few singers in the city who could actually sing in tune live. Well, the music school I finished in Russia served its purpose, I suppose. Both Herve and I finished classical music schools.

We had been practicing for months to put together a 3-set program. We learned about 40 songs and had developed a pretty good work ethic while at it. We would learn our parts at home independently and get together to polish them.  I really liked this approach as I do well with independent learning when no one is hovering over my shoulder.

This cover band project was necessary for me to get good at learning songs efficiently so it wouldn’t be a struggle in the future once I would get exposed to a more hectic lifestyle as a traveling artist. I was committed to it. (As I normally am with Saturn in the 5th House of entertainment, for those of you who study astrology and already know that wherever Saturn falls in our natal chart is where we are required to put in the extra effort and commitment before it becomes our power point in life).

And so we got booked for our first cover band live show as Lera Salt with Preamp at the legendary Hideout, on January 23, 2015.

The guys had voted on that temporary band name for themselves, by the way. Preamp actually gives 11 as a sum of the numerical values of all the letters involved in the name, in tarot-numerology. “11” is not an “angel” number despite popular belief. It actually requires overcoming adversity and competition, and it gives a competitive edge to its owner. The downside is that when left unchecked, it can lead to arguments and fighting. And jumping ahead, that is what ended up happening with them as part of Preamp. But not before we had rocked The Hideout several times!

So back to January 23, 2015. Lera Salt with Preamp.

The opening act: ahm-ahm… my other, original, band. Ahhh. Say what?

Yes, more on that in this post but somehow I figured that if the Artist Formerly Known as Prince could do 5 hours on stage, then I should be able to do 4.

In the very first band show.

Well, that’s what you get when you start to rebuild yourself psychologically and go from scared and insecure to pushing your own limits as a way to overcome those fears and insecurities.

Despite the cold and snowy winter weather, we were set on opening with a bang!

But then we had a disappointing hiccup before the show.

Upon our arrival at the bar for soundcheck and set-up, we discovered that all our show posters that we had put around the venue and outside, to promote our event, had been stolen days prior to the 23rd. Apparently, this wasn’t the first time the poster thief did this so if one day you see this poster on eBay from a random seller, you’ll know the backstory. Until then, enjoy the digital copy I had on my computer.

Not having physical posters displayed at the venue sure jeopardizes an opportunity for pass-by traffic to see and remember your name and even consider coming out to a live show. Did that mean that we could lose some of the crowd?

Lucky for us, we had a good turnout! A full house, actually!

Cam the sound guy was awesome and as you can see from the photos, gave us a cool light show plus a smoke machine for a more dramatic effect.