Four Person Splunge - A Step Forward

The line-up for this session was Jason, Nick, Steph, and myself. Sal and Jared were both unavailable for the session, but the stripped down sound had distinct advantages. Down to one guitar, we were able to really hear everything Nick was doing on guitar, as well as the group vocals. This was a lot like the last session in that we only worked on about half of the songs and went after some things in detail.

"Dani California" stood out as a highlight. It worked well enough last time with me singing lead, but got even better with Steph singing lead and freeing me to take off on bass more than usual in Flea-like style. My own bandmates seemed surprised, since I usually have to be relatively conservative on bass to handle the amount of singing I do with this group.

"Poor Poor Pitiful Me" finally sounded the way it's supposed to, since we changed over to the Linda Ronstadt version, had Steph sing lead, and moved it up a step to better suit her range. I don't know why the original Warren Zevon version has historically been such a rhythmic problem for this group, but it was.

"Black Horse & A Cherry Tree" remains a work in progress, since Nick hadn't picked up the guitar part yet (Sal's been doing it) and I had to play guitar for that one. That was actually fine with me, since the occasional excuse to play guitar as part of a group is useful experience. I'm still not nearly as fluid doing that as playing solo. I think this song is going to be fantastic once we get the vocal parts down and have at least one of the guitar players move over to playing additional percussion for it.

A number of songs are slowly tightening up to where they need to be; it's just a matter of really focusing on the details. We're going to add designated time for jamming next session, which should tighten us up collectively as well if we make that a regular practice. We had a long discussion (about two hours) over dinner afterward, and made plans to go out to see some of the local cover bands together to get an idea of what others are already doing. I'm really looking forward to it.