Katies Jam Sessions, 5/1/2011

Hi there.

Jam nights that bands can turn up to and play seem to be a bit thin on the ground these days; there's acoustic open nights in a great many places but there doesn't seem to be many people who are all that willing to put on bands in an enviroment like this, certainly not since the Broadway called it a day back in 07, I think it was. So fair play to LC for putting this on. It's a bit quiet at the moment, but well worth the effort I made to go down, I think. It's always worthwhile playing with some different musicians.

For my part, I went up on the stage with Dante on the drums and started playing some old Crashpoint songs with him jamming the drums to them. This might seem like a strange thing to do given that I have no intention of taking Crashpoint any further at this point, but there was a reason for it: I wanted to play some original material, and the songs I've written since the band ended have been primarily for my acoustic gigs. Faced with that for the first time since then, I decided to play some of the old rockier songs. We played You Gotta and Out of Line, to a warm reception considering there were only three people in the room at that particular time, though Dante was worn out after the second song.

After that, I started idly jamming an arpeggiated chord sequence. When asked if I had any words to it, I had to say no as I'd literally just made it up. Dante sat down and freestyled some lyrics to it in the sections of the songs I had written and it was almost as though we'd been playing it for ages and had planned out the whole thing; it was amazing! Definitely one to hang on to in the future.

I participated in a couple of covers after that; Through Glass by Stone Sour went quite well and I tried Outside by Staind; it's been a while since a great many people have heard that song and it shows because I was the only one who appeared to know it, but we got through it somehow so that was OK.

I'll make it a mission in the future to go back there if I'm hard up for a gig that week, but I need to think carefully about why I'm doing it-  the whole point of me doing gigs is to get my name out, and as the shows that I have booked for this year are all acoustic shows, I definitely need to be promoting them first and foremost. Sadly, my skills as an electric guitarist and bass player may need to take a back seat. But hey, they're there if I need them...