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.