One of my favorite things that Obi says to any particular band member at church: “You sound great…when you play the right notes.” It always makes me laugh when he says that.
Well, on Sunday we didn’t have the right notes. Or, our bassist didn’t. I don’t blame him – we were all a little off on Sunday. We were in a different theater, got set up late because of being in a different theater, had a REALLY short soundcheck (only practiced 2 of 5 songs) and just weren’t quite gelling.
Obi was tired from his 2 a.m. departure from Boston, I was tired just because of the busy weekend, and between the two of us it was tough to get through the church service. On one song the bassist was totally playing the wrong notes – it was just awful. At some point I just wanted to get his attention and tell him to stop playing, which is what I do when I know my keyboard is programmed to the wrong key. Since he was playing the wrong notes, the band sounded back, but even moreso – my vocal harmonies sounded awful because they use the bass line as a counter-harmony.
Then on another song we forgot how we planned on ending the song (we were doing a new ending) and just kept going and going until we finally got it together up front and were able to end the song.
I think Obi and I are definitely in need of a break (I know I am, at any rate). I also know that our drummer, Woody, is also in need of a break. He works on Sundays and comes directly from his construction site in NYC to our church service and then goes back to work when we’re done. That’s gotta be rough on anybody. I’ve already informed Christopher that he needs to get a second band together to allow the current participants to have some weeks off. I told him I’m willing to sit in for a few more weeks until he gets the other keyboard player up to snuff on the 20 songs we’ve learned thus far.