Awakening Pictures November 1987

Pictures Of The Awakening - November 1987

These were taken by Jeff Woertz and sent to me in the mail years ago. This would have been a show in the days leading up to Into Thy Hands being recorded. I'll point out some details, picture by picture. Enjoy!

Here's a shot of Al Powell with his customized Fender bass with EMG pickups. Notice a few of the metal-heads with their trendy wrist-bands on!

That is Mike Holst, our sound tech and friend from years ago. Perhaps one of the reasons we were not a rich band was the fact that we carried our own sound system to every gig. (In the world I live in now, you get the promotor to supply all the sound and lights, and you just worry about your personal gear. In fact, at a lot of the travel dates I do these days, I don't even have to bring an amp!) But back then, we felt we needed control over our live sound, so we had a large rig of speakers, monitors, lights, effects, outboard gear and the console. It was Mike's job to make it all work, and he did.

I recall one story from around this time, perhaps slightly later on into 1988. The trend of the time was to have a "gated reverb" sound on the drum kit, especially the snare. It would have that fuzzy, 80's sound to it that everybody loved. Our live recordings from this era have that "SPX90 Gated Reverb" sound all over it! I seem to recall doing a sound check somewhere, where I interfered with Mike Holst's job and asked whether we could hear the snare WITHOUT all that crap on it. I don't remember if Mike and Andy agreed with me, but even then, I was pretty tired of that synthetic sound. Again... weren't the 80's grand?!!

Here is Mike Powell writing down some lyrics before the show. (or else he was drawing pictures of me making fun of my slowly emerging gut!!)

There I am in one of my lovely 80's-type sweaters!! The place we were in must have had a grand piano, because we certainly never travelled with one!! Plus, our sound never would have made an organic instrument like this necessary in our live show! Oh, nice hair eh?!

(Compare this picture to a few of the videos of me on YouTube from this era!)

That's Al, but I'm not sure who that is with him, or who's amp that was. I don't recall Al being a Peavey man. Note Al's Two Worlds sweatshirt. I think I still have some of these in the basement!