Weekly update

I've actually had two practices since my last blog. Well, two full-band rehearsals. I practice the guitar every day. I've done at least 30 minutes of guitar a day in 2014, and I'm averaging more like 45-60. Some weekends it's more like 90.

The first full practice was covers only. Two hours of drop D and drop B songs. It went okay considering we don't often play those songs. I actually feel really strong about quite a few of them. It's a shame that we don't sprinkle drop-D songs into our sets and currently just play them in a big bunch. Many of them are newer songs because of how in vogue the tuning has become.

That makes the set feel more new or fresh, but it also lacks that classic-rock feeling. I feel like a good cover band should try to shoehorn some classic rock in all the time. We do play fat-bottomed girls, though at this point it's pretty rough going.

Then on Wednesday we played originals for a couple hours and then covers for an hour.

Static Factory ran through 5 or 6 songs in our own low-tuned catalogue, then we played a newer tune that we are still working on. The newer song, Lazarus (Pits), is pretty sweet. I sang it much more to my liking this week than I have previously. For that reason we recorded a version so I would be able to find and practice my own vocal line. I guess that's the danger of writing from intuition rather than intellect. Sometimes I just feel my way around until I emerge from the dark, sweaty and fulfilled.

Recording turned out to be a debacle. We have -a- version of the song for my purposes, but the four of us didn't quite gel on the whole song. Perhaps next week we will get it right.

I also wanted to run through another song I've been tweaking, called Haven No More, but my goddamn iPhone ate the lyrics I had been working with on the road all day. I often write songs in the car while driving, using talk-to-text to "write" them.

Autocorrect is bad.

Anyway, that sounded good, and I wanted to revise what I'd already written anyway. Then we played a bunch of covers that make me feel rad. Yellow Ledbetter is still my spirit animal. I love playing that song.

Next week we are working on those two new originals and I want to relearn about a dozen songs that we haven't played well or in some time. I hope that goes well.

Peace,

-Merlin out