I found myself playing in 2 great bands this year with Eli Cash and Dirk Diggler, and played a bunch of shows with each band. The cool thing being that both bands pretty much did different songs for the most part, and I had different roles in them. In Dirk Diggler, I'm the bass player and one of 3 lead singers where I sing for a third or half of the show depending on what we play. In Eli Cash, I'm able to pretty much say that "I only play bass" and maybe sing one or 2 songs at gigs, if that. I find both to be a lot of fun, especially because of the different roles I have in each band. I also did some really cool "fill in" gigs as well. I think the ones I had the most fun at were the 2 shows I played drums for Limerock, just for that simple fact that I got to be a drummer…plus I didn't embarrass myself doing it! Filling in with Stalking Mildred was also a fun gig, and a nice challenge to learn 30 plus songs in a week and play with no rehearsal beforehand! The fill in gig with Ronnie from Stalking was fun too, as well as the gig in Key Largo with Steve and Scott. I think that there may be more to come of those last two things this year possibly…
As far as my original music, I was able to get some really cool stuff created, but I didn't get as much done as I would have liked. I should have 10 new songs to post here in the next week or 2, and other than that, I mainly worked on the large scale piece for my "day job," and doing stuff for the project with Mike and Rich. That project has been more of a challenge than I expected, and I've actually been kind of stuck on that one lyrically for the last couple months. I'm going to be sitting down with that lyric book here soon and seeing if I can figure out a way out of the corner I painted myself into on that project. We're also going to work on some stuff that isn't part of the "story" that the other songs are part of as well. If I can get that figured out as to where I want to go, I'll be feeling pretty good about myself as a lyricist, which I feel is one of my weaknesses as a songwriter sometimes. I'm gonna get it right eventually, one of these days!
Here's to a great 2013, and an even better 2014!