Sunday, August 29, 2010

So I've been neglecting this site for a while...

And it has a lot to do with what's going on in my musical life - just endless uncertainty.

Roman Holiday is on life support - we're trying to get some gigs and not meeting with great success. We did have a really fun "last gig" at the wedding we played on August 14th, and we committed to continuing, which is great, but so far we haven't been able to lock anything down.

I auditioned with another band that is losing their bassist - my friends in UNB (who I may or may not have mentioned before on here). The rehearsal didn't go all that well, not terrible, and it got better as we got more comfortable with one another, but it made me think about what I really want to do with music, and I respectfully pulled myself out of the running because I've come to the realization that I don't really know what the hell I want to do with music. And there was no way I was going to lead them on when they need to find someone just right for their band who would be completely focused and dedicated to it.

Now, to outline my indecision:

I've been talking about doing an acoustic show for a while, and I'm now going to start putting it together. My lovely wife enabled me to get a Digitech JamMan Stereo looper pedal, and I'm going to establish a set list, record some patterns into the looper and play around with it to see if I can get good at using it, and start finding venues where I can play. I know I'll do a fun show that people will enjoy. I'm going to have to start listening to and learning more modern pop music so that the random request off Top 40 radio can be played, but the staples of my set will be everything from the 60s to today - many great songs, many great sing-along songs. I'm even going to do the full version of "American Pie" and maybe even "Hotel California" (complete with guitar solo) and possibly "Stairway To Heaven". We shall see...but I'm excited.

Another thing that I've been wanting to do is to play original music and put together a great band for that purpose. That is very possibly coming as well. There's a great multi-instrumentalist/songwriter guy that I want to work with and I think we're going to do a sort of "Sloan" thing where we recruit other guys who write and form a sort of songwriting/performing collective where we all play each others songs. That's still up in the air, but we had a nice chat about it the other day, and I think there's a good possibility that we'll get something together and have something memorable to show for it.

I also have a potential 80s band in the works - that one will be musically very strong when it's ready, and will focus on 80s pop music with lots of delicious synthyness.

I'm excited about all this stuff - and even if only one of the things comes to fruition, it'd be good because there'd be something new.

And I hope that we're able to keep things going with RH...it's so much fun.

I'm going to start posting youtube videos soon of my goofy takes on stuff. There's one up there now from a while back.


See you around the bend!
TMS