Bose L1 Portable Systems Help Houston Band The Guzzlers Celebrate 20 Years of Rockin’ the House
Framingham, Massachusetts, November 1, 2016 – The Guzzlers, known as “Houston’s favorite party band” is celebrating its 20th Anniversary, and the L1® portable line array system from Bose Professional has been an intricate part of the band’s sound for the past decade. “If we hadn’t gotten these L1’s back in the day, we probably would have quit playing music years ago,” stated lead guitarist Harriss Lauderdale.
In addition to being an in-demand party band, The Guzzlers, made up of veterans of the oil industry and related sectors including David Wilde (lead vocals), Harriss Lauderdale (lead guitar/vocals), Bill Collin (drums), Carl Lauderdale (bass/vocals and Harriss’s brother) and Larry Volz (keyboards/guitar/vocals), played 90 gigs in 2015 – which, when you consider they all have day jobs, is quite a lot. “We do a gig every Tuesday night at Mo’s, which is an upscale steakhouse in the Galleria area of Houston, and our L1 system is right there to make sure our music is heard loud and clear,” states David Wilde. He continues, “Being in the oil industry, we have a big oil-field following as well as supporters from age groups 25 to 65 – and we LOVE playing anything from classic rock to blues to country, disco, and so on. We do old soul music and have one of the top heart surgeons in the world sit in with us on trombone, and sometimes he shows up with a sax and trumpet player, and we do a whole soul set. And the L1 systems handles the horns perfectly.”
For the past 10 years, The Guzzlers have been relying on their Bose L1 systems with B1 bass modules for all their gigs, big or small. “Everyone in the band, and more importantly our audience, loves the L1 system. It’s compact, easy to set up, sounds great and is perfect for our jobs,” said Wilde. “We do so many different kinds of gigs, and the L1 works great in all of them. Take Mo’s — it’s got a great patio, but there’s a little half-moon of windows that look on to the patio and we set up right there. There’s no way that any band could play in that space with a conventional PA. The only way to do it is with the Bose towers.”
The Guzzlers are also heavily involved in charity work, performing at functions for Ronald McDonald House, K9s4COPs, Sky High for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, Dan Pastorini’s celebrity golf tournament, the Offshore Technology Conference, and one especially near and dear to the band’s membership: Oil Field Helping Hands, which helps those with catastrophic illness in the oil-workers community. Last year the band was even asked by baseball legend Roger Clemens to play the Roger Clemens Softball charity event at Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros baseball team. “We were playing to a section of the park, and the stadium’s PA system and stage were not available for use at the time, so the band set up at home plate and played to the crowd, powered by four Bose L1 systems and several B1 bass modules. The results exceeded expectations, both sonically and from a setup standpoint.
“Another great thing about the L1 is that I always tell people, ‘You’re hearing exactly what we are hearing up on stage, so we’re not going to blow your eardrums out,’” said Wilde. “It takes them a while to get that concept, and then they say, ‘Oh yeah, got it.’ And there is never a feedback situation with the L1, regardless of how tight the space is we are performing in. It’s funny, so many times we have a guest harmonica player sit in with the band, and they always want to plug in a bullet mic, and I always say, look, just back away and blow into my vocal mic, that’s all you are going to need. As soon as they try it, they can’t believe how great the sound is.”
Wilde says that 2016 has been another great year for The Guzzlers. “We’ve done a whole bunch of gigs already, including a benefit for St. Jude’s in Houston at the Armadillo Palace. They had their annual Fun Run that we played, and when that was over, we loaded our Bose systems into the car and headed right over to College Station to do the Ronald McDonald House annual dinner – all in one day. AND, we could not do two gigs like these with setup and teardown if it were not for our Bose L1 systems.”
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