Memorial Day Gig

Way too much fun at Betsy's Memorial Day party... even though we didnt get to play outside because of the rain it was still a lot of fun. Got there early to set up and then ended up helping move gear back inside because the light drizzle turned into rain. They have a cute little area in the basement set up to play in so it was almost like having a stage anyway.

Outnumberd opened for us, played a few great songs and then people wandered off for more drinks and food while various other people played off and on. Mark and Bill played for a bit.

And then at some point Joshua came running up to me to ask me where my TAB

for "Wish You Were Here" was.

A few minutes later i thought i heard Pink Floyd coming from somewhere and when i asked someone said 'oh, your kids is singing'! I went flying down the stairs to see if i

could turn on the video camera, and someone already had gotten it for me. He manged to pull together enough people for a whole band (drummer, bass, guitar and backup) and get them to play it for him! He did a great job singing it too!

Most of the people were upstairs BBQing and eating for a bit and then most of us just kind of wandered back downstairs to tune up and suddenly it was our turn to play.

We did really well on most of the songs, including a few we were fervently practicing just a few days before because we didn't think they were quite right. We did totally trash one easy song somehow, but the harder ones were just fine, go figure. It was a heck of a lot of fun, and i really did well on the songs i played bass on. One the bass wasn't as loud as we usually do it, but there was no way for me to get it louder w/o stopping playing. I made sure i had it cranked all the way up for the next song though :-) Joshua even joined us for one song. It was a lot of fun even if we didn't get to play outside.

Woot! Playing Memorial Day Weekend!

We're definitely on for playing at Betsy's party! Got about 14 songs in the setlist, ran through all of them last night at practice but a few felt a bit off...one song we haven't messed up since we first started playing it we just couldn't get started right and had to come back to it... Just one of those odd nights when nothing was quite right. We went back and did it later and it worked just fine... I dunno. We're feeling good about this gig though, and going to practice again on Friday night and do a soundcheck before the party starts.

Why no, we don't have fun :-)

This is pics from our last practice.... we don't have fun or anything :-)

We were having too much fun messing around with the lighting in the room and on the camera and ended up with some kind of cool pictures out of the deal. Like the totally 'garage' pic of me on the bass?? Oddly i almost prefer the bass right now...it just seems more intuitive and my style of playing. I like using my fingers instead of a pick and it's a bit easier to simplify some of the songs.
Trying to practice more often now so we don't feel like we need to stay out so long. Aaron usually has to drive back up to Seattle for work the next day and Spouse isn't thrilled when i get home at midnight. We're doing a good job on the ones we do, adding in another simple one this week and attacking some more of the 'sorta' ones for next practice. We're having fun trying to perfect some more songs so we can reliably play at Betsy's Memorial Day party. Having lots of fun, which is the main thing anyway.

Just Keep Swimming...

I'm just kind of trudging along, practicing more with Supah Sweet and learning some new songs. Mostly on bass right now because i just seem to pick it up faster. It's kind of nice to be able to improvise a little bit on some of the songs, to know that even if I'm not hitting the exact note that one of the commonly used ones in the song will work as long as it's on the beat. Being the one that holds down the beat on a few of our songs is a little daunting but our drummer Mark is good and he can either adjust a bit or somehow cover me up and get me straight again :-) I did learn that while everyone else can jump up and down on "Steady As She Goes' I cannot, yet. Right now I'm trying hard to learn the whole solo in "Folsom Prison Blues" I play lead on it and i really want to do it but it still sounds mangled to me. I had to put the guitar down tonight because i was getting frustrated. But, I've got the shuffle parts of "Bad Mon Rising" down (i also play lead on that one) and I'm happy with that. We're practicing up for a gig in March, we'll actually be opening for the Rhythm Fire staff band at Betsy's birthday party :-) Tomorrow we'll be putting in a few hours of practice and figuring out our setlist. It may not be a full 12 songs but we have enough we can do a decent job on to pull this off. We'll be switching instruments around a bit because there's a few songs that Aaron takes my bass for and i play lead, and a few that we both play guitar on. One song Betsy is even trying to play my bass and sing on at the same time.... it's cool effect (the switching around instruments). I think the gig will be fun as long as we don't drink too much beforehand. We practice better w/o the beer, get more done, and more songs ' in the bag' but a good drunken jam is fun once in a while too. This is better right now since we're practicing for a specific event :-)