Doug

Love it!

Neil Young "Bernard Shakey" is 78 years old and he still fits in his rock and roll shoes.

My buddy got a PRS SE Hollowbody II with the Piezo pickup as well as the humbuckers. I played it through one of the new Fender Vibro champ reissues for hours until he took it from me and said don't you have somewhere you have to be?. I absolutely fell in love with that guitar, and now here I am smitten once again.

Thanks. It was a blast for sure. A pretty loose affair.

One more ...

Here are a few more... I apologize for the sketchy quality.

This time we were lucky enough to have Aaron playing with us - he drove up, basically from Huntington WV. He arrived just in time to help us set up on the KIA stage. We had hoped to play a couple songs at the soundcheck to dial in the sound and get reacquainted, but no dice. The powers that be rushed down the stairs when we started to play and said we had to stop playing because they were able to hear us while they were talking on the phone. Oh well, so much for that - we just decided that we'd just have a quick beer to calm the nerves and hit the stage when it was time to start. We were pretty loose and casual for sure, but at least we enjoyed actually getting together and playing for the first time, really in about ten years. Our arrangements changed on the fly and we tried not to get in each other's way... and the room is difficult acoustically. Here's a video of Devil Ray one of Dan's originals from quite a while back. I just played harp, giving Aaron free rein to improvise on guitar.

We got together on Friday and Saturday nights to practice for our upcoming gig. Aaron, our long lost lead guitarist extraordinaire lives in West Virginia. so he wanted to hear what we now sound like. He came up with the idea of getting on Skype and communicating with us while we go through the set list. Seemed like an odd idea, but we gave it a try. I repositioned my iMac to a spot that could get the whole band in frame and we dialed him up. We announced which song we were going to play, then charged into it with Aaron watching through the magic screen. After we finished we'd talk about where his solo or part might fit into the arrangement we had been working up. We have been trying to add room for his guitar and vocals all along, but this was a great way to make sure we are all on the same page. Every now and then when we were in the middle of a song we'd check the monitor to see if Aaron was smiling or caught a slight change in the arrangement to what he might have been used to... what? no Aaron? Then we'd see a little bit of his headstock bouncing around and his head peeking into frame with a big smile. That was so strange to see, and great to experience. What a great time that was. I'm hoping our gig goes well, and i'm much more confident that it will thanks to technology I would have never considered. We talked about how great it would be to have him in our headphones playing along with our live mix, but latency issues would certainly prevent that (for now).

Pretty hard to find the energy after a long week of work and everything else. Dan just returned from Milwaukee after visiting his daughter and grandkid when I called to remind him. Joe lives in Chicago and snuck out of work a couple minutes early so he could hit the road and sit in traffic. Then drive all the way to Kalamazoo after a long day/week on his new job. John has been working all week and keeping things up at home where they have a horse farm and 40 acres to maintain. You get the point, we were all pretty spent. Somehow, though we always manage to summon up enough energy to run through a couple of sets of songs. We made a commitment to this upcoming gig and we have to make sure we are ready. A couple songs in and we are smiling and not lacking for energy anymore. At some point we all realize that we're running out of steam and call it a day. Its only after we finish that we realize just how exhausted we really are. Adrenalin works like that.

Practice? You are talking about practice? No way around it. You need to do it, both individually and as a group in order to improve. Our band gets together about once a week and tries to tweak our arrangements, learn new covers, write or define compositions we are working on and generally just play together. There's really no substitute for gathering and working on our craft. What is often more difficult for me is working on my playing individually. I have a busy life - or at least I use that excuse - when Its hard to find the time to play alone. My personal practicing often strays from the disciplined structure that would likely help me most. I tend to just noodle around and head back to the same familiar territory. Maybe it is because I have a regular job and play music mainly for the enjoyment and sheer joy that I experience when gathered with my bandmates, making music together. When its right we all know it and we all experience that "Deep Rich Happy" together... Ooh, this is starting to sound weird. It takes a lot of time and energy to dial in our sound and levels and get it just right. Working out arrangements and fitting the different parts together so they all work and allow for individual space is tricky. I have found that I just don't really have a knack for it - let alone the patience. I just want to plug in and play, not having to worry about the technical details that are vital to creating quality sound and tone. The playing is what I enjoy and when our former lead guitarist and musical mentor travels the long trip up from West Virginia to join us we'll practice once then hit the stage for a gig. We haven't played together in probably seven or eight years, but he has the chops to be able to jump right back into it and not miss a beat. He's more of an instinctive, improvisational player than we are used to playing with and he'll take us places we don't normally go. More of a jazz player, he tends to really listen and play off what each of us are doing rather than adhere to a predetermined structure. We'll have to be ready to go there with him and that will take practice, both personally and as a "team". Can't wait.

Gotta keep on keeping on. I know how it is, sometimes it feels like another job... except this job ends up costing money instead of making it. The relationships forged with other band members can be like no other. Thanks for sharing, something exciting will come around again eventually.