tvsteve

Not having slept, I departed from my house at 4:30 am. Hitting the gas station I figured out that I could get an extra two gallons into my tank by topping it off all the way instead of letting the pump shut off automagically. The extra range this gave me plus lots of caffeine got me to West Bend, WI without stopping... Well except for a rest stop caused by the caffeine. I arrived at 10:30, had a couple more cups of coffee, and met Mark Stacy, my boss for the next week.

Turns out the synth drums in the tracks I've been listening to that I thought I'd be replacing... I'm not actually replacing them. The synth drums are in the backing track and I have to cooperate with them. Some of these parts are pretty busy already so there's nothing I can actually add to them without it sounding over the top. In a rather ironic role reversal, I'm ending up looping the same measure of 2&4-four-on-the-floor-16th-note-hats for the entire song while the drum machine is playing all the creative parts.

Mark has the various sections of the song (verse/chorus/bridge etc) color coded in Cubase on his Macbook. I just need to look over at the screen and see where the playback line is compared to the colored boxes to see where the song is going next. That plus having a click to supply my tempo for me and synth drums doing all the hard parts for me... It's like playing connect the dots with music, I'm going to be soooo spoiled after this week is over.

Finally had to crash and take a nap around 3pm. Stumbled back into the practice room at 5 and rehearsed some more. Around 6 Mark seems happy with my parts and we adjourn rehearsals, to be resumed when the full band is available to rehearse together tomorrow. Oh yeah, only the backup vocalist has actually been rehearsing with us.

2am now... I've slept about 2 hours in the last 36... This is going to be the most awesome sleep ever.

So over the next week or so I will be touring with LA Synthpop band Faith Assembly, playing shows in Madison WI, Milwaukee WI, Minneapolis MN and Chicago IL. I figured I would document this using the miracle of the interwebs and give you all the inside scoop on the exciting life of the rock and roll band.

In a little less than 12 hours I will meet for the first time the musicians I will be playing with and spend the rest of the day rehearsing the music for the shows we will start playing the next night. Three nights later we will be opening for Information Society at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis, InSoc's first hometown show in a decade and a half. And Minnesotans love welcoming their hometown performers.

Pressure? Nah.