I have chronic issues sleeping due to stress (if I wake up I can’t go back), so Wednesday night April 3 was about the 6th day in a row of really bad sleep and I let my boss know that I wouldn’t be in Thursday AM. I had already planned on taking off Friday April 5 and Monday April 8, but couldn’t hang on til the official time off began.

So Thursday afternoon I worked on a Project Alcazar song, and Genesis “Eleventh Earl of Mar” from a new video (I’m going to pull the existing one and redo it soon). The next day I worked on it some more, was as giddy as a school girl about my progress, then excitedly sent off my recordings.

SHOTS FIRED! MAN DOWN!

Let’s just say that Chris didn’t share my enthusiasm, but mostly for technical recording reasons. So I did some fiddling around and found that my Mackie passive mixer, the one on my pedalboard, is a huge bass TONE SUCK. I ran direct from my Radial ABY to the DAW and it sounded great. Now I have to redo my pedalboard, and find a better way to blend stuff

I was a bit bummed out, and did not work on the Project at all Friday night, much preferring to spend time watching goofy Youtube videos and not playing bass. OK, I watched some Scott’s Bass Lessons videos on Youtube (which are EXCELLENT), but that doesn’t count – check out his website at https://scottsbasslessons.com/).

Saturday morning I worked on the song some more and re-recorded some stuff, but still didn’t really feel like playing that much and only practiced about 2 hours.

Sunday I woke up and redid the majority of the song, and this time Chris loved it. I was set to go to the Plini show at Chicago’s Bottom Lounge as keyboardist Robert Bone’s guest. He and a friend picked me up at 5:15 Sunday night and we went into the rainy city for below par burgers, overpriced beer, and little else… until PLINI!

They encored with Electric Sunrise…!

The INCREDIBLE Simon Grove did 6 bass solos and was astonishing. He leaves me scratching my head… “How’d he do that AND make it look mundane?” He played his Dingwall with the act before his (Mestis) and his LeFay with Plini of course and sounded like a hammer. Selenium Forest was amazing.

I spent the day finalizing the bass tracks for the Project Alcazar song and I think that song is in the can. There is another one (also with Zonder on drums) I am working on, plus the Eleventh Earl of Mar redux, another song from Gary in Nashville, I’d like to work on Zoot Allures and Machine Messiah, and…

Plini last night was great.

Thanks, Robert, for your generosity and company.

More projects lining up now, including gem.n.i.