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New Month, New Band, New Startby George Ziemann -- May 2, 2010 It was a bad omen when all of our gear tried to commit suicide at the last gig, plus a little cosmic debris clash between Tim and Cara. We probably could have gotten past all that. Unfortunately (for us), a week later, financial guru and Senate candidate Peter Schiff stole our guitarist and whisked him away to Connecticut. And I don't think Schiff even has a damn band. But we knew that was coming. Carl and I had spent a lot of time discussing the eventuality of his move. He even asked me for advice about the whole situation, despite my lack of knowledge of how his working world really functions, just because I have a way of analyzing things in an objective manner and finding a somewhat unique perspective. Even if the conclusion I reach is not the one I would like to see, the facts are the facts. As I probably said before, Carl has enough music still unrecorded to get us through to Category Five or Six, which we can easily do by zipping individual tracks back and forth. Tim is already asking about stopping by to do more tracks. Hurricane Alley isn't finished, the degree of difficulty has just been raised again. Today is Sunday (and it may be Monday before I finish writing this). It was Wednesday when Carl called and gave me the news. He is jazzed about the change, is thrilled to see green things again, and his future is bright. He's good at what he does and now he's getting rewarded for it. After I got off the phone, I couldn't help thinking that I can do recording in my little studio anytime, so the swapping tracks thing is no problem, but if I don't get to play with an actual band at least once in a while, well, that's my group therapy and I need it for mental health. That's why I've been driving to Tucson (and beyond) and spending $50 on gas to make $50 for playing a gig and loving every minute of it, except maybe the night I had to leave the stage to run outside and throw up. After a band breaks up, my usual reaction is to be depressed for a minimum of 3 days, and I'm still kind of sad that the band I was in 35 years ago broke up. It often comes with the announcement that "This is the last fucking time I invest years in a band. Never again." Sometimes I follow through and give up playing, for a while. This time, I let myself be bummed out for, oh, maybe an hour. Then I looked at Craigslist, found a band looking for a classic rock oriented keyboardist. Less than 48 hours after talking to Carl, I was auditioning with a new group. Gave myself plenty of time to get there, which seemed extremely reasonable compared with a run almost all the way to the border. It was a good thing, too, because one of the main roads was closed -- it runs across a river bed which, for some odd reason, is a problem when there is water in the river. After a quick detour I was just about there. I got to the main intersection where I needed to turn left and there was an accident, no left turns allowed. So arrive with only one severe deficiency -- my keyboard stand is still in Amado. I had to put my keyboard on a table and then someone put a suitcase underneath to raise it up a few more inches, which felt okay. It still has a dead G key, but I kept that to myself and I don't think anyone even noticed. |
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Meet the New BandAs we assembled, quick introductions were made. I'll hold off on last names for a while, until we see how this gels (and to make sure I've got them right), but here's the new team: We've got Bill on rhythm guitar. who is the one who hunted everyone down to get us together. Lead guitarist was a guy possibly named J.D., but he only told me once and there was feedback going on at the time. And he left early so I didn't get to actually connect with him. We're not sure if we passed his audition. He definitely had the chops, though. On bass is Paul, who is not a real-estate novelist, but an engineer at Honeywell who does rocket science, or at least rocket communications systems, maybe for the Space Shuttle. Our drummer's name is Bill and, despite being such an easy name, I still had to ask him twice. But our personalities clicked right away. It seems like I've known him for years. Since we have a George and a Paul, I'll probably start referring to Bill as "Ringo". Rounding out the cast is Amy, our lead vocalist, aka the chick singer. Eddie had given us a list of sounds to be prepped on. I had brushed up on them all, which didn't matter much because they were doing half of them in a different key and I had to transpose on the fly, which tends to make my brain hurt, especiailly if I have to do a lead. Then there were a few songs that they were playing correctly, but I had a Hurricane Alley version, which had been simplified (before I got there) to get rid of a lot of those annoying 7th chords and things like that. The plan is simple -- a classic rock cover band to play corporate gigs, have fun and make a few bucks. Everyone has real jobs, though, so no one is expecting to become rock stars and go on tour. Low stress. This is all fine with me. I have plenty to do to keep the recording guy in me happy, too. I think our biggest obstacle the first night was that Bill and Eddie seem to be the only ones that ever played together before. So we're all throwing out songs and it was a huge disorganized mess. And yet, at the core, it was easy to see that everyone was competent and the things that we did manage to get through didn't sound bad for a first time, provided someone knew the words.. Everyone's personality seemed to be of the same general disposition, we all hit it off rather well, I thought. Amy took charge of beginning organization by picking up a pen and a piece of paper and writing down all the songs that we seemed to think were worth trying, with another half-dozen singled out to concentrate on for next week. This leads to another comparison to Hurricane Alley -- Carl was the only one besides muself that used the Internet. Everyone in this band at least has an e-mail address and all day Sunday, there was a flurry of information being exchanged, at least between myself, Amy and Bill. Next week, I'll get some photos and maybe we'll even have a name. For the moment, everything looks promising, but there's a lot of work ahead and we'll just have to see how that turns out. |
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