In which there are gigs!

Last night’s gig was fun. Here are the reviews:

“… fabulous original music that touches the heart and exhilarates the spirit.”

“… incredible harmonies sung by as many as seven of nine extraordinarily talented band members.”

“… a great folk-rock style that gets your feet tapping and your heart dancing.”

“… Mindy Meacham and Michelle Mook definitely are among the area’s hottest female vocalists.”

“… what a loving and joyful experience!”

“… bagpipes and electric guitar? This music is hot!”

After last night’s show I went to the bar, then I went to Torino’s and had pizza with FunkEd.

I’m doing another gig tonight. I’m gonna need a coffee!

If you live in my town, you should come see us tonight. It’s at Morning Star Studio at eight, and the door charge is only $7. The money goes to the Jefferson County Resource Center and to Airline Ambassadors. Good causes, folks! Come on out!

In which I contemplate singing some jazz. Jazz, people! (Did you know I once majored in vocal jazz performance?)

After band practice last night (which wasn’t practice but more like a two-hour conversation), I drove WTC home. After he finished bitching about his job — which he clearly needed to do, the poor monster — we talked about maybe doing some jazz standards together as a side project. Maybe at an open mic or something. He asked me to send him a list of tunes I’d like to do, and maybe we’d find a keyboardist or drummer or something and work up a little cocktail set.

You know, just for fun and to stay sharp.

So today I started surfing for a real book. Did you know they’re legal now?! (Although the legal versions are missing some of the charts found in the original, and some of the other charts are in different keys.)

I found a few real book editions in torrent format that I want to try. There’s also an ultimate fake book torrent that I’m in the process of downloading right now. Mainly to see what they look like; I’m sure I’ll end up buying a legal real book if I end up doing much jazz.

I haven’t sung a jazz standard in at least a decade! It’ll be so fun to work on my jazz chops again. I’d love to do torch-style standards with bass and piano; that would be a dream.

I found some changes for Here’s That Rainy Day, Nice Work If You Can Get It, and Our Love Is Here To Stay. I think I’ll start with those. I’d love to do Skylark, A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square, and A Night In Tunesia, and and and…

Jazz. Yum.

In which you can download a whole album. Or three! Or ten!

In honor of the imminent arrival of the Corbinator here in the fairest of fields (he’s supposed to be at Truck & Amazon Blonde’s place tonight sometime), I went over to Emo’s and fed The Simpletons to my iPod.

Yum.

You should do it, too. It’s a freakin’ great album. It’s free. And it’s, like, Corby, man.

Sunday’s rehearsal recapped.

I hopped into the shower at one-thirty Sunday afternoon and Bread promptly popped his head in. “Why you bathing?” he asked.

“‘Cause. S’time.”

“Wuffo?”

“Dude, Sunday. Got rehearsal.”

“Oh,” he mumbled, looking downcast. (He’s so bored. He doesn’t do well with too much leisure time.)

After dressing and finding my purse I rolled to town, stopped at Hy-Vee for the ingredients for Caesar salad and a six-pack of hard lemonade, and arrived at PK’s house.

We had another impromptu business meeting – the band as a whole is seriously considering embarking on a business venture as a group so we have to talk about it a lot – so we didn’t start playing for an hour or so. When we did play, we alternated between song-writing jams and running through previously rehearsed tunes.

WTC had written a fantastic, melodic bass line that turned into an extremely hot jam for awhile. Well, until PK reined it in – a little early, IMO – and got us focussed on writing a melody, lyric, and then a bridge.

At dinner break, I had a smoke on the deck with BvB and then made the salad and hung out with WTC while KO and GW ran for the pizzas. We all piled onto the couches in PK’s livingroom and watched 24 and chatted while we ate. I love Sunday dinner with the band, I could hang out with this group of people all the time! I usually hate hanging out with any band I’m in, but I genuinely like these people. They’re all huggy and touchy and funny and articulate, in addition to being great musicians.

It’s almost unnatural, how well we all get along.

We played again after the meal, and broke at nine. I loaned my Prince: Live at the Aladin Las Vegas DVD to the rhythm section and left. I stopped by the bar for a cocktail, and then drove home where my husband nagged me into ravishing him.

I did absolutely no laundry whatsoever the entire day.

In which my hand feels like it’s about to fall off, but I can still type.

So I haven’t played guitar regularly since… well, ever. I guess I played a lot when I was about sixteen, for a year or so, but then I got really into voice and sort of stopped.

Today I played my new guitar for a couple of hours. Not in a row, of course, but a few times, each until my left hand started spasming in interesting ways and my fingertips all turned purple. I just put my guitar down and a vein serving my left hand is pumping like mad trying to feed the muscles in my palm and fingers. It feels really odd.

But I wrote a little song. Well, some nice changes, at least, and a lead and maybe a few lyrics. And a bitchin’ vamp.

Christ, my hand hurts. No more typing!

Last night at rehearsal we didn’t do any music. We watched the video (*groan*) and then stayed up talking (and raiding PK’s rather extensive chocolate stash) until twelve thirty. We’ll make music again at Sunday’s practice.