they should have gonged us

i played another open mic last night, again at mahogany ridge. but this time around i played with russell and tommy, a couple of friends i've been practicing with for a few weeks. chuck, our fourth "member" who is an awesome and funky rhythm player, was on call and couldn't make the show. we had been sounding awesome in practice...

but man did we suck last night.

i totally missed my part in the first song, and wound up making it look like russell missed his. he covered okay, and we got through it, but i felt so bad. in our second song, we were just really sloppy, and my rhythm was off a few times, and i missed a few chords, but i think i sang it okay.

we had been sounding so much fuller in practice, but without chuck we just had too much empty sonic space. and i'm simply not a good enough guitarist to fill that in. i was fully intimidated without chuck there, since he's a big reason we sound so good in practice, and i let that affect the rest of my performance.

thankfully, we only played 2 songs, then tommy played guitar for a friend of his who sang "red hill town" by U2. she did a great job.

on the way home, we gave a ride to james, who lives up by us. he was disappointed in his night too, because the girl he wrote a song for didn't come to hear it. it was a somber subaru full of 2 miserable open mic musicians, fishing gear, 2 dogs...

and my wife, who had our two guitars on her lap and had to pee really bad. god bless her!