Arena Rock Cover Band:

Well, let me tell you that my two years in this band has really given me a totally different skill set. We are playing 40 year old songs that I've never listened to all the way through. At times, it can be intimidating, but its been a good skill builder too...
 
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Well,

Let me say that last night was really rough!!! We had a few bumps in the road to be certain.

When we play Steve Miller Band's "Jet Airliner," our other guitarist capo's at the 3rd fret. I just play it without a capo. When we kicked off the song, it was just a cacophony. Our other guitarist had put the capo in the wrong spot. He eventually got it worked out, but it was dramatic.

Next was when the drummer counted off the intro to Joplin's "Me & Bobby McGee," and nobody started the song. My role on that song is leads and fills, so I just jumped into the next song on the list, "Hit Me With Your Best Shot."

"Hotel California" went well enough, but the band kept playing it well past the ending of the solo. So, I had to quickly come up with some improv to get us past the dead zone.

It wasn't bad, but I had never rehearsed for that because we had never done it before, so I felt like my solo improv could have been much better - and more imaginative - had I at least prepared for that scenario...which I certainly will add to my daily repertoire. What I basically did, was start playing the solo pattern from the Eagle's acoustic version of the song, which is a very Spanish style arrangement.

I really did feel like I was able to experiment a lot last night on lead fills and such, even though some of my worked stayed "in the box," I added as much imagination and feel by extending bends and over-bending some bends, then "creeping" them back into pitch.

Honestly, it was just an off night and I had a lot of music friends in attendance...LOL

@Mitch Pearrow SJMP - Henry and his wife showed up along with the drummer and his wife from Outfall Band, so I had plenty of eyes to witness us stepping on the sonic banana peels.

I spent our breaks drifting back and forth to be sure everyone was entertained and that nobody got left out. My wife also visited with our guest musicians during the sets.

The two fake Les Paul's really got a workout last night. Both gave flawless performances.

Lots of lessons learned last night!!!@!!!

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The bridge pickup got a heavy dose of red fairy dust from my red Fender Mefium tortoise shell picks...

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All in all, we had a great time and our regulars and venue staff were very happy with our traffic level, so I'm calling it a good show...
 
Big changes...

We had a member quit just a couple of days ago. I had predicted this change was coming (openly) about 2 months ago following an increasing level of dysfunction and passive-aggressive behavior.

The loss of our stellar #3 guitarist on March 18th was directly attributed to this member and their drama and his exit was a huge blow to our 6 piece group.

Every instance of drama in this band keeps coming back to this one member. Everyone else gets along famously.

He recently started a shouting match with the bassist over what key a song should be played in, insisting we use a capo because "That's how Steve Miller did it." We collectively wasted 40 minutes on that tirade.

He has made snide remarks to other members like, "We'll play it in this key so the bassist can play it," and "Wish I could just plug in and play like you," berating me because I am the only member driving 85 miles one way to rehearsal (everyone else lives less than 30 minutes from the rehearsal space) on Thursday nights after my studio job. There are many other passive-aggressive comments, too numerous to mention, but they have all contributed to this black cloud effect.

On one recent occasion, he refused to help the bass player when he (openly) asked for help working out a problem with monitor function before a performance, saying "We'll, guess you know how I felt all those years being the only one hooking up the PA." This remark didn't even make sense because he had told the other members that he didn't want anyone else setting up the PA.

Now here's the back story...

This member - and actually our founder - became disillusioned with our female lead singer after he jumped her in front of the entire band (in March) completely inappropriately, shouting "F**k You," after she confronted him about disrespecting another band member, and she literally (verbally) backed him up into a corner.

She is not easy intimidated. I believe the founder - at that point - "turned up the heat" to try and push the singer out of the group, in hopes of bringing in someone that he could control. But his efforts to drive her out of the band failed.

Some people are nice folks to hang out with, but can be extremely difficult to work with in a working band, especially one that is being run as a business and not a hobby.

The singer had already approached me (a few weeks ago) about leaving to get away from the increasing hostility, and the other members all agreed we had a good thing going and that the rest of us should move forward together.

Before we could meet and vote on an exit strategy, the founder resigned Saturday via text from outside the country, whilst on vacation, saving us a lot of time and effort.

We had a band meeting last night and began implementation of much needed changes to change course and bring in a replacement guitarist.

I'm feeling like the weight of the world has been lifted off all of us.

A great band just got better...

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Does this not mean that you can get #3 back now? And I've been in exactly this situation before, good guys quitting just before the BLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEP does. We called ours El Presidente! and bowed to him when entering and leaving the room. He loved and hated it at the same time.

Could be!!!

We already have another guy, whom we all know well, lined up for tomorrow night's rehearsal.
 
Ok,

So big changes again. Our singer couldn't make tonight's performance and we began preparing for this last month. We borrowed a female vocalist from another band to fill in.

However, the replacement singer lost her voice on Tuesday and put us at a disadvantage. We rebounded by borrowing another singer from another local band, but we only had one rehearsal with her, so it's going to be interesting to say the least.

The recent departure of our #2 guitarist shifted the load onto me, requiring me to not only play and sing at the same time, but also to cover both rhythm and lead, essentially becoming a one guitar band.

Our bassist pulled in a guy to help out on guitar, but I'm not sure his heart is in it. I guess tonight will be a trial by fire, so to speak.
 
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