Hi, live music?

So on Tuesday I'll be getting together with my four piece for rehearsal. I'm very excited for this since I can't remember the last time we were all in a room together. I don't know why we're getting together since we don't have a performance coming up and we're not planning on doing master tracks yet but fuck it, playing music is fun I guess.

Me, Dar Bear, and Kenny made a recording of one of our songs "Arkitechton" last time we got together and it was ok. I decided to not be original at all and do an acoustic version of the song using a nylon string guitar and jazz style drumming utilizing brushes. Something kinda cool about this song is that I didn't use any compression. That's right folks, none of that awesome "pop" that we've all come to love in our modern recording and instead just boring dynamics. Now you might say Warren, aren't you really just being a dick now? and my response would be yes, so I apologize. Really I do love that modern edge to recordings as much as next guy but there's something special about hearing the volume changes and even the mistakes that compression can hide become as obvious as, well, a loud mistake. I guess I can't say that the track is just completely bare. A touch of reverb to fill out the instruments, some EQing to help out my collection of renegade microphones sound like they're part of society, and a limiter. Something else you might ask could be Warren, what the fuck is a limiter? well, I don't really know. From what I can gather it's half of a compressor where it doesn't let a track clip but doesn't squish the volume. Fuck if I know. Either way, I'm proud of this track even this it's filled with flaws.

So about the title of this post.

I spent most of my Saturday this past week calling up bars in Raleigh looking for maybe an open slot for band on a bill or just a date not yet filled. Instead I was found that many bars do not have live music anymore or possibly even worse, they are just hiring DJs. Now I've performed with backing tracks before and have used sound samples in songs in the studio and live, but I have always used them to enhance a performance, not as a substitute. So there's that shit. Not all places are like this of course. I did talk to some people who were cool and looking for groups, but they were looking for more indie rock or jazz. Right now it looks like Slim's is gonna be the place for us to play in Raleigh until the band is big enough to play at the actual music venues. On wards to other cities.

Regardless of shitty recordings and difficultly booking a single show, I'm still feeling pretty good. I'm still thinking abut my music and how to write for this band instead of how to sell t-shirts. I guess that is an important part of the business but I'm not there yet and I'm glad my focus is still getting my music prefect.

Now where did I put that soap box...oh here it is.

So something needs to be done here. When I call up a bar on a Saturday night and say, "Hi, do you guys do live music?" and some asshat on the other end of the line says, "We don't do live music." something is fucked up. Really, I haven't my part for the Raleigh but my shits gonna have to change too. I hope that this isn't a trend going around the country and I'm sure that there are more places that supporting live music than not so it's just getting out there and supporting those places and others will follow.

Well I guess that's it for tonight. If you read the whole thing, thank you very much. I wish I had something nice to give you but I don't.

Here ya go

Stammerings