Last night I rehearsed with Chain Poets, an Atlanta band I’ve known for a while. We’ve talked off and on about doing something together but plans always seem to fall through. I have gotten up on stage a couple of times with them; once on the spur of the moment to do the middle part on “Creep,” the other time a planned cameo to do “Telephone Line” and “No Matter What.”
This time we’re working up a particularly ambitious little number and it was surprising just how well it started to come together in the first rehearsal. I get to use my vocoder pedal again; I’ve only ever used it live once and that was years ago. I also will be attempting my first guitar solo ever. Seriously.
Just like every time we get together we talked about doing an entire night of ELO covers somewhere… I don’t know that it will ever happen but at this rehearsal we ended up running through about five different ELO songs just off the cuff. Just rehearsing the song (on my birthday, no less) was fun, whatever else happens.
That same night after rehearsal I went by Eddie’s Attic to record a song. The owner had a death in the family and the club had decided to shut the music room down for a night and asked a bunch of musicians to come by and record a song live for a compilation CD for him. I couldn’t think of anything of mine that is particularly uplifting, so I went and did “Don’t Dream It’s Over.” I think it went well. it only took a couple of tries (because I forgot the lyrics the first time, but it turned out the soundman wasn’t getting the sound he wanted anyway, so it worked out). I should get a copy of it and will post it if I do.