Wow you guys... last night I played a show with my original band. We lost our bass player on the first of the month, which is a good thing, because he is basically a loser. He never paid rent to my guitar player for 4 months, and for a month he'd been telling him that someone else was moving in and he needed to move out. He even told him he could stay on the couch for free. The dude was like "he's not getting MY fucking room" and stuff like that. Then when the other guy moved in, he flipped his shit, said a bunch of crazy stuff, broke some things, and stole a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff, and claimed it was a total surprise and he had no idea this was going to happen. My friend is thinking of taking him to small claims court over it. Anyway, needless to say, he's out of the band. But, this week we have 2 shows, the one last night, and another Saturday, so it was terrible timing. But a girl that my guitar player works with said her boyfriend is a bass player and he was interested in filling in. So on Tuesday we had him practice with us. Turns out he's amazing, and he also loves our EP and listens to it a lot. We taught him most of the songs, and he picked them up insanely quickly. Also we jammed (full improv) and the jams were so tight, he's a great listener, and in school for music.
Anyway we didn't even get a chance to go over all the songs we were gonna play, so I was kind of worried about it. But the show kicked ass! Probably the best we've ever sounded. I couldn't believe we only played together once, he remembered almost every single intricacy we taught him. The booking guy for the venue was there and afterwards he said he loved it and that we need to come back on a Saturday when there would be more people (lots more people there on Saturdays). Another cool thing was that these 2 guys showed up before the show and I was outside smoking a cig, and they asked me if this is where <insert band name> is playing tonight. I was like yeah, that's my band. They started fan boying on me! They said they were from Myrtle Beach and came all the way here to see us, they'd been listening to our CD and soundcloud and were really excited to hear some space funk. I was thinking wow, we haven't even played out a lot, how the fuck did two guys from like 8 hours away become fans? Anyway they were so into it, by the end there weren't a lot of people left but these guys were dancing their asses off and freaking out, and afterwards were totally geeking out about it. They totally made my night, I would have been bummed to play to a nearly empty room except there were people there who were as into it as anyone I've ever seen and who truly appreciated it... it made it worthwhile.
Really looking for to the show on Saturday, it's gonna be even better and we'll have a larger crowd and be playing in a way nicer venue with an outdoor stage (the place we played last night is indoors and in a concrete room and the acoustics are famously terrible... and we're a loud as fuck band, it's been described as a wall of sound).
And in other music news, with my other band, just like 20 minutes ago, I got a text from the lead guy of a band that we're opening for in 2 weeks (actually we're playing 3 shows in 3 nights, all with them). He said for the last night of the run, his keyboard player has an emergency and can't play and he said he's been listening to our live recordings online and really likes what I play and wanted to know if I could sit in as their keyboard player for that one night. He showed me the music and it reminds me a whole lot of Jamiroquai, who I fucking love. It's kind of intimidating because every song has sheet music, like full, written out parts, and they're not easy. And we will have no chance to rehearse together even once (they're from somewhere not anywhere near where I live). He told me he likes what I play so he's totally down with me going my own way with it and not expecting me to play exactly, and he's sure I'll do a good job. I thought about it a bit because it's pretty intimidating and then I accepted... basically because I keep trying to put myself in intimidating/new musical situations because I always learn a ton and grow as a player. These songs have some jazzy chord progressions that I recognize but am unfamiuliar with playing, but I have been wanting to venture into some other realms like that. Now I'll be forced to. I'm nervous but excited. Feels pretty fucking good that I got requested because they specifically wanted me to do it!
I'm putting more and more time and energy into music. With this new bass player in my original band, he has a ton of connections to venues and wants to book us at more places around town, so I'll probably be playing a lot more shows with them too. It's gonna be crazy but the best kind of crazy. At this point I'm putting at least 30 hours a week into music, if not more. It's a second full-time job, most of my free time is during my actual job because I sit at my computer and generally have a lot of gaps of time with nothing to do. Like almost exclusively I post at Bluelight during work. Fortunately my job lets me work from the road... bring a power inverter and turn on the mobile hotspot and I can work while we're traveling. It's perfect.
Haha oh shit, my guitar player just told me that the guy whose band I'm filling in for is from Brooklyn and he thinking he can use this to get them to bring us up there to play some gigs. Shit's happening man. %) Charlie you might get to come to a show soon!
