Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Cedar Street

Played there Sunday with the Roman Holiday fellas.

Friends David and Caleb from The Empire came out (along with Dave's cool roomie). They hung around for about one set...it was the 80s pop/80s hair band set. No idea what they thought - still haven't heard the post-mortem from Dave.

Sound was great - big thanks to Gregg. He was very complimentary about my skills as a singer and bassist. I'm such a good faker.

I appreciated the kind words...ego boosts are nice. Sennheiser Wireless was excellent...I've got to start using that more often. Might be time to pick up a wireless headset mic just to be more active and crazy on stage. It might be too "Garth Brooks", though. Headset mics are not very rock. Ah, well.

Thinking about doing something else so I can play guitar...I don't know what it will be...but we shall see. I like bass, but it's time to play guitar...even if it's acoustic.

I will make that mention in every blog from now until it happens...about the acoustic thing. I'm so pathetic. Rock on!

Thursday, January 15, 2009

It's been interesting...

As Ned has built the light show for Roman Holiday, we're really starting to look as professional as we now sound. Don't believe me? Listen here: Roman Holiday's new demo reel.

We shot video and audio at our La Zona Rosa private party back in November (Happy Birthday to John), and the audio came out great, but the video looks kind of lame. I'm going to go through it and find some good clips to use - I'll probably edit the video to match the demo reel as it is and post that to Vimeo or YouTube or something.

Anyway, the band's back at Cedar Street for the first time in over a year this coming Sunday, and though we're not looking forward to the meager payday (we usually make a lot more money), we're hoping they realize how good we actually are and give us the chance to play on better nights and pay us better. It's a fun venue when the weather is nice, and the people who work there are great.

The calendar's looking kind of empty, unfortunately, but we've really been fortunate and we look forward to any surprise bookings we may get (because they seem to happen more often than we expect).

I'm a broken record, but I'm really excited about the prospect of finally getting my acoustic thing together. I have a song list (it's HUGE) and a song book so that I can play requests and stuff. I'll probably print up complete song lists for people to peruse at the show in case they want to throw in some money and make a request. Now I just need to find some good venues to get it going. I'm even going to incorporate a bunch of the Roman Holiday songs acoustic-style for something different, which will make the list even longer! Look out for The Acoustical Schizo, coming to a restaurant or coffee house near you.

I haven't written anything since last May, and that kind of makes me sad. I haven't really been all that inspired, though, so it's not a shock. I've just been enjoying life and keeping busy with my wife, kids, job, and band.

I'm going to make a concerted effort to improve my understanding of theory and relative pitch this year, and really push to make myself an excellent musician (instead of one that sort of skates along on his natural talent).

I hope you all had wonderful holidays and you have a happy and profitable 2009!