Life of a Musician - Part 3 - Busy Weekend

Here's the question I'm asking myself--- what of this is "work?"


Friday midday I have my standing rehearsal with the guitarist with whom I frequently play weddings. This week it's higher stakes than usual - we have a prospective client coming to "audition" us, so we have to be prepared to play any tune on our repertoire list. (Also, "noon rehearsal" will actually start at 11:30, not 1:30 like it frequently does.) After she leaves, we'll rehearse specifically for our Saturday wedding and for a couple tunes we plan to record soon.

Friday at 6pm I'll load band gear into Emo's (inside stage) and sound-check with the Invincible Czars. It's quite unusual for a band like us to get a "real" sound check (involving both the band and the sound engineer showing up early and not being in a rush to get a good mix in the 20 minutes between bands). We figured it's worth it even though we don't play until midnight or after. Headlining Emo's! When I moved to town 6 years ago my goal was to play there, but now we will have headlined 2 of their stages, on weekend nights no less!

Saturday at noon I'll be showing up at Mitchell Digital Studios for a recording session with The Old Holdouts. We're pretty sure which songs we're recording and what we want out of it (4-5 quality tracks for a demo so we can get more gigs). I prefer to write out my solos before a recording session, or at least get a good idea of what I'll be playing so I don't have to live with improvised mistakes for posterity. Who knows how long this will last... but I'll be leaving before 5pm so that I can...

Play a wedding at Laguna Gloria. I've already blogged about that. I love easy in-town money gigs. 'Nuff said.

Saturday at 8pm I'll get to be an audience member at the Golden Hornet Project Percussion Ensemble show at Salvage Vanguard Theatre. I try to see as many of Graham Reynolds' and Peter Stopschinski's performances as possible. Plus, Invincible Czars' guitarist Josh Robins has a composition in the show. I may have to leave before the after-party, because...

Saturday at 10pm I'll be sitting in with Bourland and his awesome "Hillbilly Hick-hop" band at the Troubadour on 6th Street. I've played with Bourland a couple times before, and I know that I have awful big shoes to fill - his standard fiddler is Sick, formerly of Asylum Street Spankers and currently with Sick's Pack and several other bands. I couldn't make the practice this time around, so hopefully I'll get a chance to rock out with his CD sometime between now and the show.

Sunday - rest for the weary? If Mostly Dead is having a practice I should be there. I've spent several hours on Sibelius making intelligible charts for myself since the last time I attended a practice, and I have lots of questions that I couldn't quite answer with just the MIDI files and the unedited charts I was given.

How do people with kids do it? At least my S.O. likes going to shows, so she'll get to spend more time with me this weekend than some.