Ever since the Beatles played a live, unannounced  concert on their rooftop in the film Let It Be, every band dreams of doing an outdoor gig until the police show up and shut it down.  Well if your band is going to do an outdoor gig one obvious problem is how to power all the equipment and PA system.

My band, Tebucky Jones, faced a similar problem this past weekend, doing an outdoor gig on the streets of San Francisco.  It was our second year doing the gig and the first year we had rented a generator equipped with wheels that put out 5000 watts - way more than what was needed for two 50-watt guitar amps, 100-watt bass and a PA system.  The generator ran so loud, we had to run an extension cable from around the corner to help keep the noise from interfering with our sound.

This year we rented a little Honda EU 1000i that was able to run the whole show with hardly any background noise. Check out Honda’s Generator Wattage Calculator to determine what size genny you might need.

Our gig called for us to be able to play to about 1 city block worth of people.  With our sound bouncing off the buildings lining the street, we were able rack up 4 noise complaints from residences.  We were plenty loud.  Lucky for us this was a registered event, the San Francisco Marathon, so we were able to play without having the police shut us down.