For the most part it's been a quiet week here so far. Short week at the "day job" and ended up not playing at Little Hoolies on Thanksgiving, which wasn't too bad. Always good to spend time with the fam here and there. A little bummed about not playing but again did something just as good as a gig, if not more so…
Was planning on spending Black Friday by not going shopping (not worth dealing with all the idiots for me) and getting the Xmas decorations up around the house and then practicing songs for the show that I'm doing with my friend Ronnie next week, as well as learning the new Eli Cash setlist. Yes, it's true we're putting together a whole new show that we're going to debut at our Little Hoolies show on December 28. That was my plan at least… Got a phone call from Steve, the Eli Cash drummer. He has a trio band that is a house band at a place down in Key Largo, and their normal bass player couldn't make it and asked me if I wanted to trek down and play with him and his guitar player Scott. I had jammed with Scott at Hoolies before, so it sounded like it would be a good time, so I said sure. Got off the phone and started getting my gear together for the sudden road trip. About 15 minutes after the phone call, I had an interesting thought…He didn't tell me what songs we were going to be playing! Made the trip down there, took a little over an hour to get there. It was a place called "Snooks," and it was a really cool little club about half way through Key Largo on the Gulf Of Mexico side. Of course, I didn't bring a camera as I could have gotten some really cool pictures of the place. We had a stage set up basically on the water front. Got my stuff set up and we started talking about what we were going to do. We ended up playing some fairly mellow stuff, but the really cool part was we did in each set a kind of free form jam and THAT was awesome. Scott and I would basically start a riff, and then we'd just play and see where things went. I played on one of my 6 string basses so that I could do chords and solo if needed, and these jams turned out really good. We played from about 5:30 to 10, we actually were supposed to stop at 9:30, but the audience and us were having so much fun that the place let us keep going. The only downside of the gig was that I found that one of the pedals in my pedalboard has connectors that are going bad apparently, so I have to see about getting that fixed. I was dealing with some buzzes and noise during the gig. Hopefully it can be an easy fix. Man, between the 5 string having a tuning peg get messed up and this, seems like I'm having a small run of bad luck. The pedal didn't take away the fact that I had an awesome time jamming with Scott and Steve. They asked me if I could do that gig more often, as it's a weekly thing for them. Unfortunately, it's not a gig that I could do every week just because of when I get off work at the "day job." There's no way that I could make it down there and get set up in time for a 5:30 start time. I told them I could maybe do it with them some days, but not on a weekly basis. They were cool with that, so I may play with them down there again in the near future. My main plan for the rest of the weekend and the following week is getting the songs that I'm supposed to play with Ronnie under my fingers and get them ready for next Saturday. I'm going to spend a few hours today going through the setlist that he sent me and figure out what songs I have to learn and what songs I already know. A lot of the songs are ones that I did with him when I sat in with Stalking Mildred over the summer, so I'm thinking that I'll be able to get them ready to go relatively quickly. I also have to get working on the Eli Cash songs as well. From looking at the new list, it looks like we're only keeping like 6-7 songs from the "old" show that we've been doing, and adding like 40 new ones! I'll likely be at Little Hoolies this week to jam, and I will have some NEW Dirk Diggler show dates coming up hopefully in the next few days. We were given a few dates, and we're all checking our schedules to see what ones we can all make so that we can do our full show. I'm also going to try to get some writing and m
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Well, the last couple weeks didn't quite go as planned… Two weeks in a row, Eli Cash had gigs get cancelled on us. Our show that we were supposed to do at Black Point got cancelled at the last minute due to bad weather. I was on the Turnpike getting ready to turn off the exit to get there when our singer Eric called me. What a bummer! I went back home for a little while and then ended up going to Little Hoolies to catch Stalking Mildred and help celebrate my Dirk Diggler buddy Heppi's birthday. Stalking are a great band and I had a good time watching them play. Heppi and I ended up onstage later in the night and we jammed a few songs with the Mildred guys, and that was awesome. For those who don't know, their guitarist Greg is also in Dirk Diggler, so it was 3/5 of DD for a few songs. This last weekend, the cancellations continued as Shakey's down in Homestead suddenly closed down. Never heard exactly what happened, but I have to feel bad for the owners, it was the race weekend (NASCAR Championships are down in Homstead) and that was probably the worst time to close down. Haven't heard if it's a temporary or permanent situation, hopefully they will be able to reopen. The next gig for Eli Cash now is a return to Little Hoolies on December 28. My next few days will be busy now as I can confirm that we are totally revamping our setlist and we'll be debuting a almost totally new show on that night! I have about 40 new songs to learn… should be a fun time… I FINALLY went to see The Regs last weekend (since the Eli Cash gig was cancelled) and they were awesome! I've known most of those guys for a while now (their drummer is also a DD guy!) and somehow I've never been able to go see them until this last weekend. They were really good, their guitar player Scotty is amazing. I ended up getting onstage with them to jam a song at the end of the night, and that was a lot of fun…THANKS GUYS! If you haven't seen them, do it, you won't be disappointed! The last 2 Thursdays at Little Hoolies have been Dirk Diggler open mics, where we were acting as the "host band" for open mic, but both of them have been only 4/5 of us. The first one I missed due to a scheduling conflict with the "day job," and the second one last Thursday Heppi was sick. My friend Rich filled in for me, and Tony from the band Eclipse filled in for Heppi this last week. Both nights went well, and we'll have another couple "host band" gigs there in December. As far as DD headlining shows, we're still waiting to hear about definite dates. Been slow around here as far as working in my little studio, so there's not a whole lot else to report. I was asked about doing another project, and I'm looking into getting some time to do it, hopefully in the next few weeks. I'm also going to be playing a private gig with Ronnie from Stalking Mildred in December, and that should be fun. Had a talk yesterday with Dave from Southern Drawl/Swamp Drive about doing something again as well. In "composition world," it's that time of year again where I start working on songs for the bands at the "day job" too. I have a few ideas in my head, and I have to start putting the dots on the lines and spaces soon! I think that covers things for the last couple weeks, I'm sure I'll have some more updates for here and elsewhere on the site in the next few weeks… It's been a good day around the house day I have to say. I was able to get vocals recorded on 4 new songs from the solo project I've been working on for a while. I'm pretty happy with 3 of them, and one of them came out REALLY good. I'm going to try to finish up that one and get it posted asap. The project is coming along pretty nicely, even though it's been going slow. I still have a bunch of songs that I have to do lyrics for, and I'm going to start getting ideas together for it this weekend since I have a long weekend. The next thing up for me is an Eli Cash show tonight down at Black Point Ocean Grill, and I can't wait! That place has just about become Eli Cash's second home, and the shows there have pretty much all be great shows. I'll be leaving here in a few hours, and we'll be hitting the stage around 9. Hope to see a lot of you there! Dirk Diggler is playing Little Hoolies as the "open mic host band" for the next 2 weeks, and I'm hoping that I'll have some new dates for that band soon. Been too long since we did a full show… Not a whole lot of other news going on at this point. I'm starting to get some ideas of what pieces I'm going to compose for the "day job" this year, and they may be pretty cool if I can get them to work the way I'm thinking. I will also be getting back into some composing this weekend as well. I have a piece that I started last fall that I need to go and see about finishing. Thanks to all Vets, past and present for all you do and have done… Okay, October's done, everyone's finishing up their Halloween treats, and the gigs are starting up again! Played with Dirk Diggler (4/5 of us at least) on Halloween night at Little Hoolies, and that was a really good time. I hadn't played in a couple weeks, and it was great to get back onstage and let it rip! As you can see by the pic by my friend Luis, I brought out the axe bass to play on for the first set we did, to tie in with the Halloween vibe. We played good, and as usual there was a lot of great talent that came out and played as well. If you haven't had a chance to come to Little Hoolies' open mic, you really should come out. It looks like I'll be "off" this week from there, but I'll be back the next week I think. With the "day job" in the middle of recruiting season, I have to split my time a little bit between that and playing. Not only did DD get back to live work, Eli Cash returned to live action on Saturday night with a show at the Mutineer. I was a little nervous about playing that show, as we were coming off a month long layoff, so I wasn't sure what we were going to sound like. I have to say we got back into a groove pretty quickly, I would say by the end of our first set the rust was mostly gone. It was a smaller audience, but they were really into it. There was a group of people who stayed for the entire show, and I had a good time talking with them, especially one person who was asking me how and why I got into playing. He's trying to start up and was asking me for advice. Got to feel a little like Yoda or something! Again, really cool people and I hope they become regulars at the shows. Next up for Eli Cash is a return to Black Point Ocean Grill this Saturday. I really like playing there, and the show should be a great one. The only bad thing that happened at the show last night was that a tuning peg came off my 5 string bass, and we couldn't find it after the show. That bass will be heading into the shop hopefully this week. I'm not too worried at the moment, as I only use the 5 on a few Eli Cash songs, and if a DD gig comes up before I have the repairs done I have my other one from the 'nito days that I can bust out. Haven't done a whole lot of writing in the last week or so, but I did find another piece of music that kind of fits where I'm trying to go with the Conspiracy Inc. project, so that was cool. Waiting to hear from Mike from Inkoginto about an idea that Rich and I have about our project moving forward that could be really cool. Other than that, it's been kind of quiet around here since the last update. I want to |
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March 2024
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