Mid October

Hello everyone.

Damn Yankees

'Damn Yankees' has 6-7 shows left and felt like it was time for a follow up.

The show has been a blast to play. The people are a lot of fun to work with, and there's have been several great reviews.

One of the things that playing this show has confirmed to me is that I love playing for longer show runs. This is the longest I've done yet at 32 shows. Learning the music, showing up to play the show, and then leaving. I'm hoping that this show leads to more work.

Gear wise-the only thing that has changed since the start of the show is that I bought a bib for my bass. Wil Di Sola of New Standard Basses recommended that I buy a bib for the instrument back when I emailed him about a finish scratch...well, sometime later I started realizing that the shiny spot on my shirt is from that. Also, the idea of protecting the part that comes in contact with me was great. I found one that I liked at David Gage's site. It's black and has a pocket. It cost right about $50 with tax.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
I'm starting to prepare for 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' at the Circle Theatre in Forest Park. I bought a recording [the OBC album reissue] and am listening to it heavily. I've found that the better I know the songs, the easier it is to read the music. The big thing that listening to the recordings does is let me know what feel to give the songs. As a bassist, I play a ton of root/fifth two beat lines, but how they help define the song is how it feels. The notes may be the same but the groove can be entirely different. This show goes into previews November 14th and runs Fridays & Saturdays at 8PM and Sundays at 3PM until February 1st. There are no shows December 26th-28th. We're also going to be appearing in the Thanksgiving Parade.

Gearwise-it'll also be another all DB show. Same stuff as 'Damn Yankees'.

Beyond
The CD of The SmallTown Heroes came out!! I played on 3 tracks. It's a great CD, Dallas, Bethany and Brian are some really nice people. Easy to work with, very professional.

I'm in talks to do a few more shows after 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes'. Nothing is confirmed, but if things go well, I'll be doing shows from Late Feb thru May [and hopefully longer than that]. A goal of mine is to play shows year round while working part time.

The more long term goal is to play shows full time and NOT work part time. Ideally, it'd be here in Chicago, but I would like to go to New York within 5 years to work.

I've got quite a bit of student loan debt, so I can't make the switch to full time music until I have a long running well paying gig [8 shows a week/Union-Equity show or a national tour/Union-Equity].

Well, I need to do some homework.

all the best.