I'm in a songwriter's club with three other guys, John Sam and Dennis. Every month or two we pick a theme or artist and each of us learns a related cover and writes a song. It's been good for keeping me in practice; without it I would let myself go for too long without writing anything new. Or, fall into my more typical rut of writing little pieces of songs (the easy part) but not completing them (the hard part).
Last time we met we decided it would be fun to play a gig together, so that's what we're gonna do on Feb 23rd at Avo's.
John is going to open with a solo "Nadalands" set. Dennis and Sam will follow with their band Vee Device. And then Ken Monks and I (and maybe a guest or two) will close it out.
I'm really looking forward to this. The other guys are great songwriters, and our styles are varied enough to keep things interesting. Plus everyone who shows up will know roughly what they're in for. I get nervous about playing "event" type gigs where most of the people in attendance are not there to hear bad jokes and philosophical navel gazing from a dude with bad pitch.
On the recording front, my Mama Lenny bandmate Crip came over and recorded some killer drum tracks to four of my songs. I'm working on filling in the rest of the music now (Ken's already laid down guitar), and I'll be sharing the results here when they're "ready enough". Three of them are songs I have youtube videos for already: I'll Eat All the Pie, Come on Down, and I Just Wanna Know Her Name.
Ken suggested we aim to release a record in September. That's 7 months away, which sounds so far out right now! I said yeah, that's plenty of time, let's plan for that. I just gotta not neglect these recordings for the next few months.
-Ben (2-1-18)