3 If By Air - Wool Street, Cary 1.2.10

Wow. It's 2010. Another year older. Not necessarily another year wiser.

Anyway.

I saw 3 If By Air at Wool Street in Cary last night. They seem like a nice enough group of guys. 3 If By Air is a four-piece endeavor with the standard guitar, drums, bass and vocalist lineup. To put it simply, these guys showed a lot of heart and drive but are also a group still in the middle of the "getting their act together" stage. They did have a a pretty good "flow of the show", as I like to call it. They moved fairly well from song to song. They had a few glitches in the beginning getting the sound dialed in but what band doesn't have that problem when they do their own sound. Once they got the guitar volume up in the mix by about the second or third song, they sounded much better but the bass was still too lost in the mix. That's not a good thing because what turns spectators into dancers is a loud bass drum sistered up to a thumping deep bass guitar. That's what gets people moving. I didn't hear a lot of that in the first set. Just an observation.

The drummer and bass player were good. The guitar player showed some good chops. The singer was adequate but violated one of my biggest pet peeves .... trying to reach for notes that he shouldn't be trying to get to. Again, this is the number one problem I see in most bands. If you as the singer can not do the song justice because the key is too high, don't do the song. It's as simple as that. You can have killer instrumentalists but if the the singer sounds like he or she is stretching to far to get those high passages, the song will sound bad.

I'm not saying the singer in this case was bad. He wasn't. He was a bit pitchy but many singers are at the beginning of the night. It's those high notes. What band doesn't want to perform "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" by JET. I have not heard two bands in the last three years that can hit those notes believably. The same goes for just about any AC/DC song. Change the key or don't do the song. Or ... wait until the end of the night when the patrons are so loaded they wouldn't know a good singer from a dry-heaving cocker spaniel.

I'm sorry. The high-note thing is my peeve and I just got carried away and it wasn't entirely aimed at 3 If By Air.

Tim, you are good, you will be much better and keep it up! Same with all you guys. You had a packed house last night and I'm sure you'll be asked back. Like I said, it's the "getting it together" stage and it just takes doing gigs. You'll be great if you can all hang together. My only comment is, make every song sound great. There's TONS of material out there. Not every band has to do the same songs to be popular. Also, one last comment. I couldn't hear any "Ts" or "Ss" coming out of those speakers. It sounded like the speakers were stuffed with pillows. Could have just been the room ... but it wasn't.

Check out 3 If By Air at http://www.3ifbyair.net/index.html and tell the bartenders at the places you see them at how great they are. We all need to do that!