Music and My Life...

Another issue that has come up since I stopped posting on my original blog has been my re-insertion into the music scene.

Again, let's go back a few years (thirty-five, to be precise). I am a Freshman in college at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Across the dorm hall from me are two guys named Alan and Lyle. They have a band in their home town, Abingdon, Illinois and they need a guitar player. I play guitar. I've been playing guitar since I was ten years old or so and I played in bands in my hometown. So I figure I'll do the hour-long drive to get to where they practice and, during the summer of between my Freshman and Sophomore year in college, I am in their band (Shiver) with Alan, Lyle, Jay, and Steve and we play a few gigs around Galesburg, Illinois. After that summer, everyone goes back to college and, since many of us are going to different schools, we don't get back together.

That autumn, I join a jazz-rock band called "All You Can Eat" and we play a few gigs during my Sophomore year. At the beginning of my Junior year, I meet up with Alan and Lyle again and we decide to start a new band. While heading up to Bloomington to buy our old PA system from the keyboard player from Shiver, we notice that there is a band playing that night named "All You Can Eat". I go there and am mightily irritated that, when the guys in that band came back for the school year, they didn't see me in the dorm (I having moved to an apartment) and that they didn't ask around for me. But, in the end, it sucks to be them, and Alan, Lyle, and I start interviewing for guitarists and vocalists. Before we find one, my sister Emmy decides to get married and wants us to play at her wedding. We drag the keyboard player back from Bloomington and enlist Lyle's brother as a second guitarist and play Shiver's last gig in Decatur that Spring.

Over the Summer, Lyle, Alan, and myself find a guitarist (Chris) and a singer (Joel) and we form a band (whose name I forget) that plays a few jobs around Champaign. This was a pretty good band. However, Chris had decided that he wanted a female singer and also decided that he didn't want Alan or Lyle, either. He also had the place where we practiced (making him the de facto leader) and immediately fired Joel and Alan (with much consternation from myself and Lyle) and brought in a friend of his to play bass (whose name I forget) and a female Singer, Jenny. In the Autumn of my Senior year, we played jobs as Sunsinger around the Champaign area. However, you must recall that Chris did not want Lyle. This was because he had another friend who had an incredible looking drum kit, but no rhythm whatsoever.

Chris finally kicked Lyle out and brought in this drummer, who as I noted, had no rhythm. As such, the next practices were disasters and I left this band in the early Spring of my Senior year. Sunsinger tried to go on, but had a monumentally bad performance at a charity event that was broadcast on radio. This cooked their goose as far as future hiring went and they disintegrated soon afterward. Because I was already working a full time job and was entering graduate school, I decided that my band life was over for the time being. And the "time being" stretched to about thirty years, during which I would pick up my guitar occasionally, but never seriously.

About two years ago, one of the guys from Shiver (Steve) locates me on LinkedIn and we reconnect via email with other members of the band. We decided to do a reunion on the 4 July weekend of 2008 in Bloomington. While waiting for that to happen, we all practiced and I seriously got back into music - seriously enough that I bought DAW software (Sonar - about which I'll talk in another post) and started recording songs that had been kicking around in my head for the past thirty years (and writing a few new ones, as well). Shiver got back together on that 4 July weekend and practiced for three days. We had planned to play at Alan, Lyle, and Steve's 35'th high school reunion which was to be held in June of this year. We practiced again for two and a half days this February in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The high school reunion gig fell through, but we're scheduled to play this coming April in Kalamazoo. So I'm going back to Bloomington this weekend to attend my 35'th high school reunion and to get in another practice session with the guys. We'll practice one more time in October and then for a couple days in Kalamazoo before the April gig. And that's what's happening with that band.

However, during this time, I still had the songs I'd been writing and recording at home. I decided that putting out a solo CD would be a good thing. I worked on the various instrumental and backing vocal parts in my home studio from May of last year through June of this year. I have gone into the studio to track the lead vocals and will shortly be in the studio to do the final mix and mastering. I expect the CD (titled "The Nuclear Family") to be out sometime in September or October.

In order to promote my music, I've joined a local band that plays about once a month, in which I play bass and do some singing. We also do a couple of my songs. Since one gig a month is not really enough for me, I am also planning to form a band that will do my material. I'll keep you all posted.

That's about it from the music side of things. I'll post more later as I have more information on this aspect of my life.