The City Veins

Because we have some time before our next concert, which should hopefully be before February, our practices have become a little loose. For example, last night we played a 6-8 minute funky version of “Enter Sandman” by Metallica, and a weird Phish-like version of “Do Re Me” from The Sound of Music complete with me screaming “Where’s the Deer?”. And while these pieces will never make it out of Aaron and Spencer’s basement, they are extremely useful exercises. These songs are never planned, so they force us to really listen to each other, and play off of each other. We also learn each other’s tendencies during these absurd jam sessions.

It is good for every band to learn how to listen to each other, play off of each other, and what to expect from each band member. For us, it is very important. There are bands that take the time to script out there songs, and practice them to perfection, before they bring them out into the world. We are not that kind of band. We pretty much practice a song 3-4 times, get a general idea of how it works, and then see how things go live.

If you were at the Velvet Lounge show last Saturday, you may have noticed a song towards the end that, and I am being generous here, completely fell apart. It is a new song, and we are still figuring out how it goes. The ending was the real disaster, and it was because I came in late. That forced Aaron to continue to sing an outro thing while he was waiting for me to come in, but I was waiting for him to stop singing before I came in. This made the song go on too long, and just generally not work. The fact that my guitar went out of tune didn’t help things either.

We tell ourselves that because we leave things open, there is the possibility for great things to happen while we are on stage. It also means that things can, and will, go horribly wrong from time to time. I think this makes things more exciting, well for me at least.

Photo by Flickr user scfllaw