.:Boom! Secret Ingredient to an Amazing Reception:.

Many of you may not know, but I (Brian) consider myself a musician first and photographer second. I've been playing and composing music for as long as I can remember. Recently I've been able to set up a rockin' home studio, and hope to get that business going just as soon as our crazy busy wedding season concludes this year. Mallory has been pleasantly insisting I write a blog post about my new venture. This is NOT that blog post.

I mention all of this just to say: the single part of a wedding that I am most critical of is the music. A bad DJ will have me complaining for days about how he couldn't blend one song into the next, or how his EQ was off, or how his speaker's treble sounded to tinny. And then of course the DJ has to be a good emcee. A good DJ can keep the party rockin'. A bad DJ can ruin the entire day. We've encountered a handful of really good DJs, and a ton of really bad ones.

Before I started shooting weddings with Mallory, I had only attended two weddings. My entire perception of weddings came from the movies. Have you ever noticed in the movies, weddings almost always have live bands and not DJs? (see Adam Sandler's "The Wedding Singer") When we started shooting weddings, I remember thinking to myself, where are the wedding bands? What's with the DJ? While I've grown accustomed to DJs, I still find myself longing for a real wedding band. Saturday, I got my wish.

From the first few notes the bass player played warming up, I knew I was in love. The band is called Boom (you can find them at boomstl.com), and they, without a doubt, had the party jumpin'. There was many a time Mallory would look over at me and catch me grinning ear to ear, nodding my head in auditory enjoyment. I couldn't help myself. The drums were tight and driving, the guitar solos were soaring, the vocals were full of energy and emotion, the keys were rounding it out, and the bass..... oh that bass. I have a soft spot for the bass guitar (it is my instrument of choice), and let me tell you, if you like to groove, you'll love Boom. That's really the only way to describe them:

Pure Groove, Pure Fun.

They were playing covers of popular songs like "Soul Man" and "Hit Me With Your Best Shot", and of course doing a fantastic job. But what was even better, they were injecting their unique personalities into the songs and making them their own. On "Hit Me With Your Best Shot", which is a straight rock song, the bass player was filling it in with these deliciously funky Detroit Mo-Town licks that had me laughing out loud they were so good. These guys went way beyond just learning the songs. They took the time to make them their own, while still maintaining the original work. The end result: an amazing performance that I think they enjoyed playing just as much as I enjoyed listening to.

That's all fine and good, but what does it have to do with you?, I'm imagining you're asking. Well, I have never been to a reception with this much of a party atmosphere. I've never been to a reception where this large of a percentage of the guests were dancing. I've never been to a reception where people had more fun than they did tonight.

I know I'm at risk of gushing endlessly and becoming long winded, so I'll sum it up:

If you want to have the most fun possible at your reception, hire a real, live wedding band. If you want to know the best one I know, it's Boom. And that's saying a lot.





































Keep on rockin' in the free world,

Brian