Random thoughts at 6 pm

I am thrilled with the gig lineup this summer. As well, new ones will almost certainly pop up to fill in the spaces. I would love to see this momentum keep up even, into the fall.

We had two rehearsals this weekend. On friday we played with Mike Moss, a guitar player I know from the faculty of music at UofT, who played with us at the Local and Loud prelim. round, and is playing with us again next sunday at the finals. The rehearsal went really well. Steve pointed it out in rehearsal, and I'll reiterate it here, but what would have slowed us down would be if we had had to re-teach the songs he'd already learned on top of the new stuff. Fortunately, Mike showed us that as well as being a great player, he also approaches music in a really professional way and was on top of all of the old stuff. I'm so happy that he's playing with us. Before this I just knew him peripherally from a class, but having him play with the band has given us a chance to become friends. He really clicks with all of us, actually.

One more Mike anecdote. Jim is always joking when we're out at a restaurant or whatever that he's going to get five phone numbers. How many phone number's have you gotten so far Jim? Due to Jim's commited relationship, I think realistically the tally of phone numbers is probably bleak. MIKE on the otherhand showed his true mac-daddy status by successfully getting picked up on a subway. LUCKY! *lucky should be spoken ala Napoleon Dynamite, if that wasn't readily apparent*

Saturday we played again, and we did gig prep for next weekend, and worked on some new material. At the last Smiling Buddha gig we premiered five or six songs. This time we have a few new things, but the songs we premiered last time have had kinks worked out, so what you'll see next weekend is a more polished representation of the new wave of JSB tunes.

Look forward to playing, and look forward to connecting with fans twice in one weekend next weekend!

-Scotty