The gig Friday night at the Bean Runner Cafe went great. Nice to have a venue where they know and like you. The group sounded relaxed and comfortable. We played ten of seventeen songs we had prepared, mainly because we stretched out the solo sections on a few tunes. We had a few more standards than usual, including Stolen Moments, Bye-Ya, Jordu, Ornithology and Four on Six. After who knows how many years, I played a solo on All the Things You Are that I was really satisfied with, relaxed and flowing, spontaneous and in the moment. We also did a good number or our originals, and I was happy with my perfromance on Lift Off, my tribute to John Coltrane, which is very difficult to play. I guess all my practicing has been paying off.
In the home studio realm, my two current songs, The Story Lies and Who Speaks on Your Behalf are coming along. I got the bass part for the first song done a week or two ago, and the second one is there except for one riff. The Stories Lies is a groove number and I gave it a fun, funky bass line. Once I started practicing, I really wanted to nail the whole track in one take, to capture all the dynamics over the course of the song and really focus on the phrasing. I got pretty close. I ended up with a very usable take, and did only minor editing. In one section I was rushing a little so I pulled everything back a fraction of beat. You can’t push a click track like you can a human drummer.
Meanwhile I have most of Who Speaks on Your Behalf tracked, but there’s a riff at the beginning and again in the middle of the tune, a twisty run of 16th notes that just kicks my ass at that tempo. At first I couldn’t play it all; now the challenge is to do it cleanly. I don’t know how other bass players do this kind of thing, but I laid out the fingering to take advantage of open strings, and used a few hammer-ons and pull offs rather than striking every note with the right hand.
I’m still trying to get the new rock band off the ground. I put out an ad for a guitarist who sings and writes, and this dude Joe answered. He sent me some demoes of his songs. Good stuff, I like his lyrics and the way he creates drama in his songs, and he can certainly sing and play, although he doesn’t really know jazz harmony. We got together for a rehearsal a couple weeks ago with Ken on bass and Steve on drums. We did a couple of my songs and a couple of Joe’s, and some plain ol’ jamming. The vibe was pretty good. Ken and Steve definitely grok my songs, although Joe was hearing them for the first time and didn’t really get the chords, and we were all learning Joe’s songs new.
Tonight Joe came over to my house and we got alot deeper into learning each other’s songs and talking about our influences and what we want out of a band. It seems like a good fit. He learned my song Ghost in the Machine pretty readily once I broke it down and explained the chords. We were supposed to get together with the full band later this week and I was feeling pretty psyched about it.
But then our bass player Ken had to bow out out temporarily. He’s the director of crisis communications for a major international bank and so his day job has been crazy the last few weeks because of the caronavirus epidemic, and it looks like things may well get worse before it gets better. Ah well.