keyboard

Eugene – Keyboard jams, friends, reflections

We show up to the Muse Lounge (which made a sweet flyer for us, by the way)
Desire, the owner, told us to just set up right around him. So naturally I started jamming along a little bit after I set up. He dug it, and encouraged me to keep playing. Soon Hooch joined in. We jammed for a few songs while sparks flew. Everyone dug it.

Finally Ryan joined us, and it was an all-out funk jam with some of the best keys I’ve heard. Chris was a monster, knowing when to accompany and knowing when to go all out. He was creative, playing some crazy space-age sounding solos when the song called for it. It was fun! And our show hadn’t even officially started.

We all had a good time. Afterwards Chris came up to us with a suggestion – we all work on a cruise line together. Sure, why not? If we can earn some dinero to support ourselves when we’re not on tour, and have some extra to get some more promotion and more recordings, let’s do it! So we exchanged numbers. Who knows what the future will bring? Hell I’d bring Chris on tour with us any day. Maybe we will when we can support another body on the road.

Eugene was very sweet for another reason: I got to catch up with two old friends. One from studying abroad in Spain whom I hadn’t seen in three years, and another who lived in the room above mine freshman year at Rice. Both were very exciting; Nicole from Spain because we spent a lot of time together there, and Miller from Rice because she was a Senior when we met so I hadn’t even really talked to her in 5 years! Both seem to be doing great but alas our time together was far too short.

Unfortunately the first half of the show itself was pretty rough. I broke two strings, Hooch’s bass was peaking and going nuts through the monitors, and aside from our friends there was essentially no crowd. As a result the energy was low and we really weren’t feeling it.

After we took a break, we decided to just let loose. If only Chris were still around to join us! Or our friends to hear us! We just had fun on stage; jammed out extra long, gave each other more space to solo, improvised a little more. Barely anyone around to listen? Barely any reason to care. As a result, the second half was awesome.

Interestingly enough, there were probably about ten or fifteen people scattered about the bar – outside, in another room, etc., and they were all very complimentary at the end. We just didn’t know they were listening because they weren’t in front of the stage.

I was reminded of another thing Martin Atkins said in our interview – all we need to focus on is making one more fan. More on that later. This article is already pretty long.