Rockstar

So 2 weeks ago, I played 4 times in 5 days:

• Sunday at the blues jam at Shamrock's.
  
• Monday at the blues jam at Patchen Pub.
  
• Tuesday as part of the house band at the Funkabilly Groove Jam at Champion's Bar & Grill at Galaxy Bowling Center in Richmond. Lindsay Olive and I filled in for Dane Sadler who was on vacation. Got to take my rig out - Lindsay insisted on my taking the Super Reverb since the Funkabilly bass player has a 1200W head and 8x 10" speakers. Got to wear my "getting paid" hat, and of course, a cool t-shirt.
  
• Thursday at the new blues jam at Austin City Saloon. Man, great acoustics, house PA with mixing board at the back, nice large stage with a drum throne.
  

Since then, it looks like Monday nite is done, and Tuesday nite has changed to Thursday in a new venue. So down to 2 jams, Sunday and Thursday. Much more reasonable.

Several recent discussions re putting a band together, but nobody seems to follow through on action items. I may quit jamming for a while. I seem to be trying to take things over, I believe a sign that I think I could do a better job of running things. But when I did run that jam at Henry Clay's Public House 2 summers ago, I had the same small turnouts that other jams see sometimes. So there is no support for the theory that I could do a better job.

I think that I've gotten to be a great jammer. Playing lead, rhythm or bass guitar; singing lead, harmony, or backup; and leading the band. I've done 80 songs at jams, probably still good for most of those lyrics. Plus, I know hundreds of other songs. It was funny in Richmond, they'd get women wanting to play songs no one knew, it was "Chris, you know this song?", and I think all but once the answer was yes. "Fever", "Jolene", "Runaway". That's what comes of being old ...

So I may quit jamming for a while and work on my solo act. I am now ready equipment-wise. I bought a mic, mic stand, conductors music stand. The mic sounds OK from the voice channel of the Fender Accoustasonic amp I bought. I also got a Digitech Vocalist, which will sing 2 or 3 part harmony with you. Your guitar runs through it so that it can detect the chord playing and know how to harmonize. It also has a built-in tuner and reverb and chorus that I like better than the chorus in the amp. So I took my looper out of the pedal box and have as my solo rig just the looper and Vocalist, running into the accoustasonic. The Vocalist is not like other pedals. You have to rehearse with it and figure out how to get it to sing the harmony you want. It also has autotune - get behind me satan!

Meanwhile, my main pedal box is completely out of control. I added a little utility pedal I got from Lindsay - I like its rotary setting. I also got an ElectroHarmonix C9 organ emulation pedal. Pretty odd stuff. That makes 10 pedals in my box. I had to get a 2nd OneSpot 9V power provider - they can only handle around 7 pedals.