Promises Promises

I know I said I’d probably write a post about what happened last week at rehearsals and before the gig, but right now it’s just not coming. I’ve either said as much as I’m going to say about it for now (see the previous post) or I’m processing it subconsciously and thus dealing with it. In fact, I spent so much time talking about it with Lori and thinking about it last week that I’m a little surprised I wrote the post I later pulled at all. I think if I do write about the subject, it will be in the context of another “incident” that triggers it again, or maybe something will happen that should have triggered it but all this processing will allow me to handle it or handle it better.

Next week, rehearsals start up again for Collective Hallucination. The next gig with them is August 12. The timing of that one is a bit of a bummer. Ian Moore is reuniting with his old band for a few shows, and that conflicts with one of the Houston dates he is doing. The other is Thursday the 11th, but I doubt we’ll make that. That’s the nature of being in this business.

I’ll be jamming again with Jeff soon, and Lori may join us. That should be fun. I got together with him a couple of weeks ago. We were both pretty rusty. I’m still somewhat dependent on an external source of rhythm, and because I haven’t touched most of that material since the band broke up, I haven’t tried to develop it in that way. Having Lori there will help if she can join us. I won’t call it a Blue Funk reunion. I’d rather leave it without a name, at least for now. Jams are fun, and that’s what I’m in this for.

Fri, 2011 07 15 at 4:46 PM |Permalink for this entry

This Ain’t No Stinkin’ Gig Report

Saturday night, I played a gig at Bohemeo’s with Collective Hallucination. I had a blast. That’s the punch line to a pretty long story that I will hopefully keep short for now.

On Tuesday, I had an incident at rehearsal that put me in a bad state of mind. Wednesday I worked on the problem, but didn’t enjoy it. Thursday I hung out with a friend who is a former piano teacher of mine, and some things we discussed and some things that happened like when I went to play for him made me start to become more aware of a bigger problem. That night and the next day, conversations with Lori made me realize what the bigger problem was and the extent of it. Frankly, I was overwhelmed by it.

Saturday I was still going back and forth about how I felt. I knew I could pull off the gig, at least for the most part, but my heart wasn’t in it. I pulled out Meditation #1 from Kenny Werner’s Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within and that changed everything. Afterwards, I felt totally fine, and except for some slight concern over the one part from Tuesday, it felt like any other gig. I did have some technical issues with my gear that surprised me, as I had used the same setup at the private party two weeks ago. I will have to investigate that.

Our gig ended early enough that we had time to go home, unload, and then head over to Dan Electro’s Guitar Bar to see our friends The Distracted as well as other friends who were there for the show.

What was looking like it was going to be a “meh” night turned out to be a great one.

I know you’re wondering what “the problem” is. I wrote a blog post about it, but pulled it because it was no longer reflective of how I felt. That’s the funny thing about blogging. If I write too much in the heat of the moment, then I’m stuck with posts that are a bit of a blip and not as much me. I plan to write a post about “the problem” once I get a handle on what I want to say about it.

Sun, 2011 07 10 at 10:25 AM |Permalink for this entry

Saturday Gig and Then…

Nothing for sure.

Saturday I have a gig with Collective Hallucination at Bohemeo’s. If you count the similar private party we did two weeks ago, we’ve been rehearsing most of this material for four weeks, two nights a week. I say most because there were some changes to the set list this week. Nothing major, though one song did have a part that was just tricky enough for me that I stumbled on it at rehearsal. That’s never fun. It should be a fun show though. It’s too bad a lot of my friends in bands have gigs Saturday night as well, so we’re not going to see each other play.

After that, there’s nothing definite lined up. I’m okay with that, for reasons I might get into in another post. I can be happy right now with working on some other stuff that I’ve been doing.

Fri, 2011 07 08 at 3:15 PM |Permalink for this entry

Loving the Limits

Over the years, I’ve heard some people say that they love limits. Until today, I never realized that I do as well. For me, the reason is simple. Give me a choice of anything, and my overactive mind goes, ”                .” But give me some direction and then the choice becomes easy.

What’s really interesting is how this showed up in my songwriting. When Blue Funk was around and I wanted to write blues tunes, that’s what I did. When I heard people make light of songs with few chords, I wrote a couple that only had one. Then there was a time when an email was passed around about “things you’ll never hear in a blues tune.” I managed to squeeze quite a few of those into a single tune.

I really dig the challenge of being creative and unique within the restrictions.

Tue, 2011 07 05 at 1:18 PM |Permalink for this entry