Tag: Cover Band

We Need a Plan – Follow Up

On Sunday I wrote a post about trying to form a plan for moving forward with my band. I wrote out what I thought we might do to find a new singer and hold auditions and all of that fun stuff. I said I was going to send it to the other two guys in the band and that I would probably do it some time on Monday… then I immediately sent them what I had written. It wasn’t the next day, it was the next minute.

Both Mike the Bass Player and Kevin the Drummer agreed with all of it. The first of our singer-audition-preparation-practice will be a week from Sunday. One week after Easter. Over the intervening week and a half I’ll get the conversation started regarding which songs we should work on. I want at least five and at most 10. Enough to give potential new singers something to work with, but not enough to overwhelm us as we try to shake the rust off. We should try and be diverse in singing styles but I am thinking we should stay away from Bon Scott. Something about Greg the Former Singer allowed him to handle Bon Scott era AC/DC while most normal humans probably couldn’t deal with that high pitched screechiness. Greg didn’t sound like Bon Scott at all, yet somehow he could do it. Let’s not ask any potential new singers to go there. Okay… maybe we brush up one song just in case someone is feeling ambitious.

We also need to figure out the P.A. situation. We had a little one that was barely powerful enough to get a voice loud enough to be heard over the drums. That little dinky P.A. thing was replaced by something Greg bought. We don’t have that anymore because… ya know… it is Greg’s, not ours. Hopefully the little dinky thing still works.

So the ball will start rolling again in 12 days. I’ll likely share every single thought the three of us have as we work toward the next step. You know how it is for oversharing nerds like me.

We Need a Plan

I need to fix what’s left of my band. I don’t know how. I think we need to come up with a plan. Something we can work through that will result in getting everything moving again.

We need a singer. I tried craigslist and got a surprising number of responses, but we weren’t organized enough to act on any of it. Here’s what I am going to suggest to the other two guys…

  • The three of us pick a handful of songs. Maybe 5-10. They will be our singer-audition songs.
  • The three of us start practicing again. Once a week. We rehearse the holy hell out of those 5-10 songs for a month or so, maybe a little longer. We get them to where we can play them in our sleep.
  • We put up another craigslist add. This one will have the responses forwarded to all three of us. If anyone answers the add we immediately schedule an audition. We give them the list of songs and give them a week, two weeks tops, to work on them and then we all get together.
  • Eventually we offer the job to one of two people and then we’re off and running.

I am going to send this list to Mike the Bass Player and Kevin the Drummer, probably tomorrow at some point. Hopefully they’ll be up for it and we can get things moving in the right direction again.

Thread

I feel gross using the facebook/instagram owned twitter alternative app, Threads. Really gross. 

That isn’t quite enough to stop me right now though. I am such a social media hypocrite/whore.

Anyway, someone asked, “what are your guitar goals for 2024” or something along those lines. I responded with a few. I figured I would port the response over to this post and maybe add a thing or two because I ran out of characters on the app. First, does the embed code work? I tried just sharing a link the other day to see if that pulled anything in, but it didn’t. I found that each post includes some embedding HTML code. Betcha a dollar it doesn’t work…

Post by @reallytallredhead
View on Threads

https://www.threads.net/embed.js

Based on the preview function in the editor, it didn’t work. Oh well. Here’s the text I wrote:

I want my cover band to finally get back together after a covid-hiatus and an exiting singer.

I want to write a shit ton of songs, record listenable demoes of all of them, and maybe have one or two that don’t objectively suck.

I want to play a bar gig for the first time since Feb 1, 2020.

After getting my 1978 Les Paul refretted a couple of months ago, I want to do the same with my 1979 ES-335 along with maybe getting a new wiring harness so that all four of my guitars will be in gig shape.

Me: https://www.threads.net/@reallytallredhead/post/C1ch8b9LyTx

Yes, kids… I just quoted myself. I dun did that.

Anyway, there are a couple of things to add.

I want to replace all of my guitar straps with heavy, leather straps like the one I have on my 50th birthday present Les Paul Standard. I have amazon shipping one for my Les Paul Custom and it should arrive tomorrow.

I want to buy either a Gibson Les Paul Junior, a Gibson Firebird, a Gibson Les Paul Standard with P-90 pickups instead of humbuckers, or a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe. The order I wrote them is from most wanted to least most wanted. The chances of me buying any of these is about 0.0000001%… so there’s a chance.

With all of these goals in mind, mostly I would just settle for playing more. That’s what I really want to do.

New Blood?

Did the bass player in my band let us know that he has a line on a replacement for our departed singer?

Why yes, yes he did.

He’s working on setting up a get together for after the holidays. Consider my fingers duly crossed.

End of an Era

When was it, two days ago? The Daily Prompt asked about things you were hoping to do for the first time and I (slightly sarcastically) said I was hoping for the first post-pandemic band practice with all four band members present?

We had something on the books for tomorrow (Thursday) night but I was nervous because our facebook messenger chat had been silent. I sent out a message, are we still on? The drummer and the bass player responded. The three of us have been able to get together to play a few times since lock downs started easing up. It was our singer who was never able to join us.

Well, our singer responded to the chat today and told us that he’s sorry but he feels it’s time to leave the band. I don’t think any of us are surprised, but we’re all a little disappointed. He’s good people and playing music with him, and just hanging around with him was always good fun. I am going to miss it all.

Now we have to start looking for a new singer. I’m not looking forward to the search, but I am looking forward to the end result. Does that make sense?

Thanks for the good times, Greg. It’s been a pleasure.

1,258 days

Last night I sent a message to the band’s Facebook messenger chat. I asked if we were still on for a practice tonight. Everyone said yes.

It’s been almost exactly a year since Mike, Kevin, and I got together without Greg. It has been a whopping 1,258 days since the last time all four of us were together.

I’m really looking forward to this. I should put new strings on my Les Paul, right?

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Oh Please, Let it Happen

There is a discussion underway. One I’ve been hoping would happen for literally years.

The four members of my band have not been in the same room together to play music (or for any other reason) since a few weeks before Covid-19 came to the US.

We are trying to set something up for next week.

Keep your fingers crossed, kids. There might be a band practice in the near future. Oh please, let it happen!

Lizardfish? Please?

That picture was taken on February 1, 2020. It was the last time the band got together.

The other day I told the guys that if I didn’t have a band practice soon I was going to die. The bass player, Mike, said he was free on Sunday. I said I was too. Today, the drummer, Kevin, suggested 5:00 or 6:00. Mike and I both said sure. A few minutes ago the singer, Greg, said he was in too.

I am not getting ahead of myself here. There’s always the chance it could fall through, but… Oh thank the merciful fates, the band could be getting back together again this weekend.

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Tuesday July 5, 2022

The long weekend is over. It was nice, even though July 4th is now meaningless. Mostly Jen and I just hung out, but I also visited mom a few times and bought some clothes that fit (for now) and took a shit load of pictures on both Dad’s camera and my camera. We also went for a random drive to enjoy the nice weather yesterday. It was a pretty good weekend.

And now it’s over. We have a couple of contractors coming today to give estimates on fixing a potentially huge issue in the new bathroom. We’re pretty much guaranteed to lose the shower in there, which makes me sad. It is a walk in shower and I always wanted a walk in shower. Unfortunately there is a leak somewhere and there is evidence that the wall behind the shower stall is rotting so… buhbye walk in shower. Not sure what we’ll do with the space once it’s cleaned up. A linen closet? Maybe?

As for everything else. I did not get a chance to work on any music last night. I’ve been so hung up on the photography stuff lately that I haven’t been thinking music much at all. Time to find a middle ground where I can obsess over both topics. Music needs to be written, guitars need to be played, thrift stores need to be combed for inexpensive old film SLR cameras. Lizardfish needs to reunite. I sent a chat to the band yesterday saying if we don’t practice soon I am going to die. Here’s hoping they can save my life.

Okay. Get to work.

Lunch Break

I have nothing to say right now. It’s felt like a long day, but it really hasn’t been. It’s one of those days.

I just had 2.9 ounces of tuna fish for lunch. Isn’t that special? I’m up to 59 grams of protein for the day. The goal is 60 grams and I still have dinner to go. Sweet. I am feeling like I am on top of things today.

I want to play my guitar. I want the mental boost that I used to get from junk food to come from music, but there is so little time in the day. I want to play but I want to spend time with my family more. The band will help, but I don’t think I can try to get the band happening again until my parents are settled. I hope that will be soon, but who knows.

I’ve been having this thought go through my head about maybe starting a second band. I absolutely want Lizardfish to go on with the same four guys for the rest of time. I absolutely love playing in that band. It’s absurd how much fun it is. I was thinking of a second band that would play only original music, like we did back in the 90’s. I think I would like to do that, but I don’t think I would like to do the work to put it together, and I also don’t think I would like to be the only person contributing songs. So I doubt it will ever happen.

I thought that maybe I might want to start pretending to be a photographer again. I thought about sunrise pictures at the ocean. Could it happen this weekend? Probably not. The 10 day forecast calls for clouds for the next 10 days. There goes that idea. Maybe we could take a stroll through the Methuen Bird Sanctuary one of these weekends and see if we could catch a pic or two of some eagles. I don’t know.

Okay. Lunch break is over. Back to it, red head.