OK Ladies and Gents...it's been several months since I last checked in, and thought it appropriate on this sleepless night to update my musical whereabouts.
The last time we sat down for a visit, I was in the process of auditioning with several different bands. I suppose that through my training as a hiring manager at my day gig, I was able to weed a lot of these out through a phone screen (especially the ones that asked if I would bring weed to the audition).
There were a couple of things that looked promising. Unfortunately, for both of them I took the time and effort to learn the audition material only to never get called for the actual audition. Really? If you found someone else or things worked out with your existing band member, cool. Just how about a call or email just saying "thanks, but....". What was even funnier was one guy called me several months later asking me where we left off at. Uh...."we" didn't leave anything off.
Ultimately, as many of you know now, I signed on with a very talented guitarist named Michael Ingalls. Mike, along with drummer Jason Olszewski and myself, proceeded to carve out a niche as a true power trio here in the area.
With The Michael Ingalls Band (aka M.I.B.), I had to take a totally different mindset than when I was with Buzzfuel. With Buzzfuel, the directive was clear...we were a cover band that learned the songs as close to the original recordings as possible. And so that's how I operated for that period of time.
With M.I.B., that constraint isn't there. As a trio, most of the cover songs have to be rearranged...especially when you're playing something that originally had four or five guitar tracks on it. So, for me it becomes a case of "how do I cover the bass and rhythm guitar parts during solos?".
Maybe this is where my guitar playing experience pays off on bass. If you analyze my bass playing style...I'm pretty much doing it completely wrong. But, I'm doing it wrong like John Entwistle did it wrong...and go ahead and lump Geddy Lee and Lemmy in there too. All I know is, in the end it seems to work.
As a bass player in a trio, the biggest compliment someone can give me is to come up and ask if we're using backing tracks. The answer would be "no". When a drummer and a bassist can fill up the sound enough to make you think there's a fourth player...that's pretty darned cool.
M.I.B. has developed a reputation as a great live act, and now we're preparing to record this fall. This will be the first time I've been in the studio for a full album project since 2007...good times.
There's been several other developments since I last checked in with you. My band of 13 years, The Rhythm Dawgs, decided to take an extended break earlier this year. We're now in discussions on reactivating the band. It looks like that's going to happen at the end of 2012. We'll be coming back out with a newly designed show and technical production. It's exciting to be shopping for new gear!!!!
I also spent the majority of this year working with another cover band, Triple Play. Unfortunately, after a lot of rehearsals and only a few shows I came to realization that this project was not going to pan out the way I expected it to. I parted ways with that band this week. It was a positive experience in that I got to meet some great people who I would really like to remain friends with. And in all likelyhood, I'll be making music with some of them again.
I really gotta do this more frequently that Boston puts out albums!
Ken
Saturday, September 1, 2012
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