Since getting ready for the big public show at the Station and then getting our stuff recorded and out as demos, we’ve been looking forward to getting into a rehearsal that didn’t have any expectations, where we could just kick back and have fun. When you have a catalog of material that’s well rehearsed, it feels good to just enjoy it. This is the difference between “playing” and “practicing,” I suppose.
And yet, this morning when we got together for three hours we worked on all completely new stuff that we’d never played before.
This qualifies as real work. We picked through a few standards, some classic soul and blues tunes, a couple of obscure covers, and one that just came up in conversation and suddenly became part of an upcoming set list. One, a Bob Dylan cover, evolved through versions ranging from a straight torch song (too boring) to an uptempo bossa nova (fun to play, off-putting to listen to) to a twangy country romp (hilarious, but we respect our audience too much) to a smooth swing that Tony Bennett could sing in front of a big band–or, if you’re lucky, Caryn in front of our ensemble.
At my last count, I think we have nine new songs–pretty good for a Saturday morning. So much for taking it easy, but like everything else we’ve been doing lately, it turned out to be a lot of fun.
Standards & Substandards 