So You Want To Be A Rock Star?

Just a quick blurb of some randomly occurring thoughts. When I first started playing guitar I totally admit I wanted to be a rock star. I was all in man! I locked myself away for 8 hours or more every day learning to play along with records. Pretty much the same old story I hear from the big rock stars I've heard interviews and read interviews about. Then one day all that changed and regular life stepped into the picture. I quit devoting all of my free time to it. I never fully quit though, I just didn't play much for several years and really didn't know anyone around here (where I ended up) that played music. Much less Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, etc etc ... This IS Arkansas after all.

I eventually found a few people here and there and pretty soon had 3 pieces of a band. So we jammed like that for a while. Two guitars and a drummer. We finally found a guy to come play bass with us once but that was about where we were stuck. It was a one time deal. Eventually more regular life (wives and kids) came along and we hung it up. By that time I didn't even want to be a rock star anyway. I think that had a lot to do with looking at it from a different perspective. But anyway, this time I hung it up so to speak for 25 or so years. "It" ... being anything to do that involved music in my life at a serious level. Like making a living at it. Or even just being in a good cover band as a hobby for that matter. I have sat in on some gigs with bands over the years and even played in a short lived bar band when I was like 19 or so. The Corn Band lol. Maybe I'll do a post on that sometime.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago and damn if I didn't do it again. This time I got serious about it. My buddy that I had last jammed with got to coming around visiting me after my motorcycle wreck and we got to talking about the old days and playing guitar. Neither of us had ever quit playing. Next thing you know we're jamming together again. I figured maybe I could do it for physical therapy since I didn't get any of that after my accident. Fast forward a couple of years and now were playing live in front of people. BUT its a lot of work and its always a work in progress if you're doing it right.

If you really want to be a rock star, more power to you! But you better be prepared to work your ass off at it and devote yourself to it like a marriage or something.

Personally, I couldn't do it if I wanted to because of physical limitations. In fact, if you see me playing there's a 99.999% chance I'm on the pain pills pretty hard and heavy. Thankfully they don't make me stagger all around the stage. When you NEED them they don't get you all buzzed like all those "hydro heads" out there take them for. There's a lot of work involved in just having a decent cover band, not to mention the money you have to invest into it. Don't do it FOR the money though. You'll find yourself usually making minimum wage if you're lucky.

Breaking In a new bass player

Hey folks, hope all is well with everyone. We had a nice practice session last night with our newest bass player. Hopefully this one will work out because its getting a little old now. Our last bass player was good and also very good at singing harmony. Its back to the dreaded machine for our singer now I guess because I'm not singing with thing lol. I'm just too old school for those things. This new guy (hate to call him that, but) is pretty cool and he's a helluva good bass player. He doesn't sing, but his sister damn sure does! I'm thinking she was on Nashville Star once but it may have been American Idol. Either way, she's a great singer and wants to come practice with us. Hopefully that will happen next time around. We ran through a pretty decent chunk of our songs, about enough for 2 long sets at least. Its going to take him some getting used to us and us to him, but we should be in good shape pretty soon. He's gig-able now but we'd like to polish things a bit first. We're in no big hurry.

Since my last post here I have went off the deep end just a little. I've decided that since I already knew a little bit about recording (4 track cassette and a drum machine lol) I should get back into that. At least enough to produce a demo for the band. I figured I could buy everything to do it for about the same price as having a good studio do it for us. Only this time around I'm having to step into the very thing that made me hang it up (recording) in the first place. Digital recording. I don't even like the sound of that word, much less typing it, but there it is. I got myself a MacBook Pro and a Focusrite 2i4 digital interface so far. Even with the free mixing software that comes with the interface has me totally lost lol. So far I have learned to hook it up (the interface) and get the software to acknowledge the interface. But that's about where I get stuck. So, its back to the tutorials for me on that. I'll keep you posted ......