JW - 7/15/2012 and 7/20/2012

It took us a while to get back up and running again after our first show.  Andy insisted that we take a week off afterward (which is a band tradition I hadn't been aware of), then we ran into scheduling problems the following week and couldn't get together.  We might have been okay taking one week off, but that second week really cost us our momentum.  You could feel that we'd lost something by the time we played together again.  We didn't sound bad; we'd just lost some precision and some energy.

Then we ran into scheduling problems and didn't have Bill for the 7/20 session.  That always costs us some cohesiveness because Keith and I have to sing lead on songs we usually don't, and musicianship suffers as a result.  We ran through a few of the existing list and started a couple of new ones (I'm a Man and The Boys are Back in Town).  It was okay, but that zip was still missing.

I like the opportunity to step up and sing lead from time to time; it's just very difficult to do it if I don't know the song well enough on both bass and vocally to split my concentration, especially if I don't have the words to the song available to me.  I think I'm going to have to put some practice time into playing and singing some of the JW songs, if only so I'll be able to help keep us together if we have to practice without Bill and to give myself a little practice singing lead again.  It'll also keep me practicing songs that I feel I know fairly well by this point.

Dale is bothered by the lack of momentum as well, since he's looking for work for us more seriously.  It's not a good time for us to be taking a step back.  Some of us would like to get some of the shelved songs back into play and add some new ones; Dale is more inclined to focus on keeping the existing set list as sharp as possible.  Having thought about it, I think the way to go is to do both.  We can focus hard on the existing list while also working on just one or two songs we'd sidelined or new ones.

I've gotten the Rickenbacker back out since the show, since it sounds good with the new amplifier.  Unfortunately, one of the songs it sounds best on is "Hash Pipe", which is the main one where I use the "baby bass".  As much as I like the visual value of that one, it's hard to justify carrying a third bass and going to the trouble of switching that many times a night, not only because of the physical switch but also because it takes a couple of seconds to change the amp settings as well.  It doesn't sound like much, but those few seconds make a difference on stage.  It makes more sense just to carry the five string Ibanez and the Rick if I'm going to use two because I could play almost everything on the Rick if I had to, while the "baby bass" would sound bad on some songs if I had to use it as a backup.  Still, it's lightweight and small, so I might just bring it and watch for opportunities to use it.

Ego and the Pillar

At the first JW performance, I found myself receiving a reminder of where I stand in the group.  Most musicians don't pay much attention to bass players, and even fewer audience members do, but try listening to a band without one.  It's an old argument I won't rehash here.  I haven't historically stayed long in bands that just wanted a bass player to fill a certain sonic space and not do much else.  The way I see it, any bassist could fill that role in one of those bands, and I'm not interested in playing with musicians who aren't capable of understanding what the bass player really brings to the table.  I've usually contributed additionally in some way as well, whether it was vocally, in terms of additional equipment, or in terms of band leadership.

JW has most of that territory well covered, which is a Good Thing as a general rule, and they do recognize the value of the bassist.  Andy has spent most of his time in bands as one, and everybody has made it known from time to time that they're glad to have me in the group.  Even though I don't sing any lead with this band, I saw myself as one of the vocal contributors as well as an instrumentalist who contributes as much as anyone else.  It might not seem like much to sing backing parts, but there's a huge difference between a band with one good lead singer and a couple of decent back-ups and a band that simply has one good lead singer.  I've also traditionally been one of the more visual performers in any band I've been with.

So the layout of the stage happened to include a pillar at an inconvenient spot.  Not the first time I've run into that.  Long story short, I found myself placed mostly behind the pillar, virtually invisible to half the audience.  Yes, it just happened to be where I usually am in the standard set-up, but if it had happened to be the lead singer or lead guitarist in that position, I'm sure we would have shifted the set-up somehow.

I was amused at my own mildly-annoyed gut reaction to this.  My ego was bruised, even though I didn't put up much of an argument, because there was no better way to position ourselves on that stage.  My wireless rig allowed me to make myself more visible if I really wanted to be.  It was more about seeing clearly how the others in the band see me, which is as a secondary, supporting performer.  True enough, that's what I am, but being stuck behind a pillar didn't make me feel any better about that.  I'll have to deal with it, because we hope to play there in the future.

So once again, I consider my role in this band, and decide that this is where I want to be.  We sound good collectively, and if my role appears small to the public, so be it.  It matters a good deal less now that it would have when I was twenty, or even thirty.  And yet the fact that it bothered me at all tells me that I still have some ego to deal with, and that that is part of what I'm doing playing in public again.

The visual presentation is another aspect of this band that we'll have to work out over time.  Everybody likes to move around on stage, which is fantastic!  We just need to find a way to make all of those moving parts into one coherent whole.