Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Country Grunge

My band, Country Grunge played a show at Mission Pizza last Friday night. We've played there countless times. Some of those shows were good and some were not so good. Friday's show was one of the good ones. The sound was mixed pretty good and the huge crowd was eating pizza and drinking some beers and raising the noise level to a small roar. But all four of us were in good spirits and looking forward to playing music no matter what. This was the first time we've been in front of people since our show in early February!

We are the only non-bluegrass band they let play there. The owner, Phil Willis, keeps upgrading the equipment and adding to the stage. He's actually bolted the mic stands to the stage, all in a line across the front, since apparently, you can't trust musicians. He will have just installed new speakers, or some H-U-G-E sub-woofers in the corner. It's always something. But he's benevolent pizza guy and lover of live music and that keeps us coming back. And he always comes up right after the show and grabs whatever tips we made, and pockets them. Then he comes back and gives us all a twenty dollar bill and a pizza to take home. You can't beat that.

We didn't get any shows booked for this year at all. Somehow we missed the boat. Although he calls us when some other band either can't make it, or has broken up all together.

We have a few songs that we've recorded at various times at Mission, here are a few:

Better Than Ted written by me
Everything Changes written by me and Tim Ryan
Fences written by Norm Stinson
I Believe Written by Norm Stinson

They're a little rough, but it's live.

I'm not sure what's going to happen with the band in the next few months. Norm is leaving Sony after a long tenure and if he can't get work consulting, he'll move to his cabin and rent out his house here. That would change the whole dynamic of the band. Norm is the lead singer! I would like to continue on, but that would make ME! the lead singer. Oh no, that can't happen. So something will change - I will be playing music, I'm just not sure with whom.

No comments:

Post a Comment