Getting the band together

I've had a group of guys I've been playing with the last several years as a 3 piece, with the occassional extra musician. The drummer is a world class professional (Deen Castronovo of the band Journey, I guess I can say that since it's elsewhere on this site and social) and Randy, a local bass player who's no slouch and a great guy. I've really had an awesome time with these guys but the main downside is not getting to play very often (only 1 time in 2022!!!) since Deen spends a lot of time touring, and it's really not the first thing on his mind when he is off the road. 

So, here begins the search to find a few more musicians to have a stable group where I can gig throughout the year. To be honest this isn't my favorite thing to do: it's not hard to find decent musicians but it IS hard to find decent musicians without egos, personal issues, drinking problems, or WAGS that mess things up. Plus they need to have have similar goals and good work ethic. Oh yeah, on top of all that you need to actually get along and like each other. In my experience it's been pretty exhausting. 

I met a drummer a few years ago. We started out by working on some short video clips to post to social - I'd send him a guitar riff that I'd video myself playing and recording, then he'd video himself playing and recording drums and I'd put them together for these video jams. We did several of these (remotely due to COVID) and we got to be friends so when I decided to start releasing singles instead of EPs last year, I asked him if he wanted to play on them. He's played on 4 singles (the most recent hasn't been released yet) and so we're going to try actually getting together in person. Drummer 

Randy is still around so Bass

I've tried several times throughout my rock band days to play with a second guitarist. I've never liked how it sounds live, it's just always so mushy. Yes, I know there are many bands with 2 or even more guitarists and they sound amazing live so I'm not saying it can't be done. It's back to what I mentioned above (no egos, work on playing different guitar parts that compliment each other, you like the other person, etc...). The problem is when I record I like to layer the guitars, add different parts here and there to add some interest so with only one guitar playing live you definitely lose some of that mojo. I've never tried this in a rock band before but I had the idea of adding keyboards to fill in some of what's missing from the recordings and maybe just give the sound a fullness that isn't there. I figure it's at least worth a try and must be better than just having the one guitar. Well, it turns out Randy knows a keyboard player he's played with over the years so it sounds like we're going to give it a try.

Keyboard 

 

So I won't call it a "band" yet but we're going to get together soon and see how it goes. 

Stay tuned!

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