Another interesting evening

We played last night up at Cabo Loco.

But first, to Gigmasters. I'm a little optimistic about Gigmasters, which charges a hundred bucks to list the band and present us in the form of a fairly useful web page to Texas and the world. I'm pretty impressed with the utility of it all. Tune list, sound files, photos, and a little narrative about the band. The prospective client does a search under genre criteria and location. We apprear to be, by virtue of joining Gigmasters, the #1 swing band in Austin, or at least the #1 swing band from Austin listed under Gigmasters. I agree. We're the #4 funk band in San Antonio, the #2 soul band in Dallas . . . . you get the idea.

What I know is this: getting gigs is just like fishing. You throw out the net, you wet your line, you make your fly dance across the water. It's also as frustrating as fishing, when you come up skunked after a long day of doing everything right. And it's as exciting as fishing when you have one on the line and slowly, skillfully draw it in.

It looks like we're getting listed on searches some 80 times in the course of a day. Of those 80, about a third clicks further into our page from the search. From there we'll need to get some of the stuff together to make us look presentable, like some pro staged photos and candids, a short video clip, and more sound files. So far we haven't heard from any prospective clients (due largely to the absense of a photo, I suspect, and a couple more factors). Everything we add will raise the ratio of lookers to deals made, though. Not bad for a hundred bucks. I'll be really surprised if we don't land at least 6 gigs in the ensuing year with Gigmasters.

Now about last night:

It looks like the model of The Book Is the Star is holding. Half the horn section was sightreading, without breaking a sweat. Rick White played trumpet and Jon Blondell was the trombone player. Rick did a great job. The legendary Jon Blondell, who worked with Willie Nelson and Delbert McClinton, who played the 'bone solo on a million selling record called The Wrong Way. (I actually wrote a chart of this tune, expecting that sooner or later Jon would be playing a gig with us. Haven't passed it out yet though.)

That's the horns.

Jimmy's back and it sure makes a difference. We did Sinatra, including Cheek to Cheek. We cooked through the funk and soul.

Janice grows more comfortable with the band. She sang her ass off on the tunes she did before plus Walk on By and (is there any band with the cojones to attempt that tune in town? OK there's Hot Wax, but show me a NON-Motown band.) Midnight Train to Georgia. She also took up cowbell last night and made a big difference. Yeah Janice!

Monte Mann was subbing on bass and did a splendid job, again proving positive result of the Central Assumption. Monte is also a great guitar player and singer, and first on my list if Javi gets hung up for a gig or two, He stepped up to the mic for Lady Madonna--great!

Returning veterans were Javi and Leroy. So we had 3 subs. If nothing else we are getting the deepest bench this side of the New York Yankees.

Every gig gets a little better. We don't have very far to go to where we can compete with any band in town in every department save sheer volume. (That's another thing I noticed last night. We play soft very well! Jimmy was singing the Temptations' chart of Rainy Night in Georgia, and when we got to the part where the vocal comes in we got soft! THERE'S an area where we can distance ourselves from the competition.)

So there you have it.

We are going to do some excerpt recording for a demo CD that will be nothing but snippets. Most people have short attention spans about music, judging it in a couple seconds by the groove or some vague remembrance of the sixties, or seventies, or whenever and how the sound reconnects their feelings with that era. So we're going to take a scattershot approach and record about 20 excepts, none of them exceeding 20 seconds. I wrote a script to tie the excerpts all together. Jimmy's doing the voice over.

Onward and upward with the arts.