If you’d like to see a miracle, I have some photographic proof. This is our gear, after a fire:
That’s our PA and power amps, powered up and working. You can see from the road cases that they’ve been through something nasty, but they did make it through. We’re floored and very grateful. This would have been the toughest to replace.
We lost the rest of that drum kit, all our cables, our mic stands, mics, some amps, one of the subwoofers, our main 15″ speakers, our entire monitor system and wedges, and of course, all the banners, flyers, and memorabilia we’ve ever put up in the space to make it feel like home. Some items are still being looked at; Bistie’s POD may be operational if the water from the fire hoses didn’t damage it. But miraculously, guitars that were in cases — including my little Fernandes Nomad, apparently — survived. The cases are toast but that’s kind of their job, isn’t it? Disaster protection. If my case melted but saved the guitar in the process, I’ll be very happy indeed.
This weekend the band is cleaning everything. Tuesday we’re going to have a run-through with our recovered gear plus everybody’s personal replacement gear filling in what’s missing (I have a PA of my own with 15″ mains, so they’re going back into service for the band) and then we have a wedding gig on the 6th. Not quite like nothing ever happened, but at least we’re not going to lose any gigs. And the gigs will pay for replacement gear.
I already ordered a new Nomad case. I’ll probably get a new mic too, ’cause I liked the old one.
And the beat goes on.