I Want to Go Home

I want to go home. I’m in the office, 44 miles away. Tonight I want to cook dinner for my beautiful bride and then move some furniture around to make room for a new couch. I got seven hours of sleep last night so I am not terribly tired right now (and it feels weird) so I know I will have the energy to pull it all off. I just wish I were at home so I could just punch out of work and do it all without having the long drive home wedged into the middle of everything. Blah.

Here’s another cat photo that I took this morning before I left for work just because Robin the cat is adorable and she was very willing to pose for the camera today.


Unrelated question… the band Facebook chat left off with hoping we could all get together at some point after the first weekend in January. The first weekend in January is now over. How long should I wait before I start the discussion up again? How soon is too soon? Should I wait three days as if it were a kind of first date thing? Do the same stupid rules apply? I don’t want to sound too eager even though I am SUPER eager to get the band moving again. I want to play. I want to gig. I want, want, want.

Bands

I want my band back. We were so close to having it back, what the hell happened? We were actually talking about trying to book a show around Halloween. Instead, we never played together again. Why? How?

What if I can’t get my band back? What happens then? If the band is over, do I want to start a new band? Do I want to join an existing band? The thought of either option is just overwhelming to me. Why? I don’t understand it.

I just want to play, you know? It is all the other stuff that has to happen to allow one to just play that I can’t wrap my tired, old man brain around right now. I could blame it on the holidays, but I was spinning my brain around this long before the holiday season started.

I just want to play.

Morning Music

I feel better about my place in the universe now.

I got up, did my exercise for the day, ate breakfast, and played the guitar. I learned two songs for tonight’s band practice. One of them requires a capo! What the hell, bro? I own a capo but I haven’t a clue where it is. I tuned the guitar up a full step to F# and learned the song that way. I’ll have to get a capo this weekend and re-learn the song for next time. There was a third song on our to do list but I seem to recall our singer saying to drop it. I hope so because there is a keyboard part that will tie my hands in an a knot if I have to play it.

After working on the new songs for the band, I recorded rhythm guitar parts for one song and lead parts for another! We had band progress and 50/90 challenge progress. Epic!

And even with all that music, I was not late for work! WOOHOO!

343/365
Two amps. 343/365
DSC_2736
One Les Paul

Thinking Ahead to Tomorrow

I absolutely, 100% have to play guitar before work tomorrow. Not because I need to make progress on the 50 songs in 90 days challenge thing, but because I have a band practice tomorrow after work and I have 2-3 new songs to learn for it.

That’s a nice change of pace, eh?

342/365
342/365
DSC_2732
DSC_2733

It’s been a long time since we had a practice. I really need it. Hopefully the rest of the band needs it too and it doesn’t get postponed the way the last four or five or whatever were. Fingers crossed, music lovers.

Is the Search Over?

I think my band’s search for a new singer might be over. I am hoping we’ll know for sure this coming Sunday.

Who might our new singer be?

Our new singer might be our old singer.

He told us he moved back to the (Merrimack) Valley from Maine and he has the itch to play in a band again. Is that itch to come back to the band permanently or is it to just jam around for fun?

I just asked our group chat if anyone was up for some Rock and Roll at an absurd volume on Sunday evening. So far I have one positive response. If we get two more… then Sunday will be the day we find out what’s what.

It would be really cool if we could put the singer search away and just get back to playing regularly again. I haven’t played a gig since February 1, 2020. I really, really want to play a gig again. I want to play my new Les Paul through my new Vox amp in a public place in front of a crowd of happy (re: drunk) people. I want to know what it feels like to be up on stage for four hours without being 200+ pounds overweight. Will I have the strength and the stamina? Who knows. Let’s find out.

Cautious optimism, folks. Cautious optimism.

Packed Up

I’m packed up and ready for tonight’s band practice. One step closer to being ready to audition singers…. Or more like to try to find singers to audition. something like that.

A.I. Band Names Follow Up

Here is a quick follow up to yesterday’s post about asking an A.I. to suggest some new names for my band.

Last night I went back to Google Gemini and asked a similar question. I didn’t reference where we are from, but instead mentioned something about how we were all getting up there in age. It again responded with a list of names that were mostly inane and lame.

There was one stand out though. I shared it with the rest of the band. I shared it with my wife too, and now she is really rooting for us to use it.

The Viagra Falls.

At last, A.I. does something useful. At last.

A.I. Band Names

I asked Google Gemini to suggest some new names for the band. Click on the link above to see what utter crap it came up with. Mass Transit isn’t bad… but it’s not very good either.

Wait Until Next Week

The plan was to start The Great New Singer Process today with a band practice with just the three of us so we could start rehearsing some of the songs we’re going to ask auditioning singers to try out with.

Nope. We have a one week delay. Mike the Bass Player has something going on at home that he needs to take care of, so we will meet at his house seven days from now and kick off the journey then.

This is bad news because we were all looking forward to it, but for me personally it is also good news because holy crap do I need to practice.

Seven days from now. My calendar is marked. Bring it on.