Nearly a year since I last blogged? Yeah, well, I haven't had that much to talk about. Sadly Crosseyed Cat was a hard band to get gigs for, and ultimately, keep together. At the end of the Academic year, Anders and Chris left town, and after a while Bob went home to the States, so Mike and I were kind of back at square one - two dedicated bluesmen without a band.
My musical career really is "The Blues Brothers" meets "Spinal Tap".
So what have I been doing in the meantime? Well, I wrote a TV series about the brain. Don't hold your breath for it though, it mutated into a kind of reality show that many of the crew are less than impressed by. I'm still waiting for a DVD, but I'm not hopeful. That's Television. I also field produced a documentary about shark attack survivors for Discovery Channel. That was fun, coordinating things on a 2-week shoot up in the Bay of Islands. Fake blood, actors, rubber shark... A much better show, with a great producer called Thomas Quinn, who's own blog I heartily recommend to you: http://godzooks.blogspot.com/
Musically, I've been down to the Empire for a few jams, fairly hard work. King Leo has kind of saturated the traditional blues scene here in Dunedin, and he's so damn good that it would be silly to try and play the same sort of thing. He even recruited Anders into his band!
So I've been trying to stretch myself by branching out on guitar and slightly different material. I guess the tunes I picked to jam down at the Empire Pub were a little too complicated for some bass players, because on two occasions, I've had guys walk off stage in anger in mid tune. Sorry guys, sometimes blues (and its baby, rock'n'roll) has more than 3 chords. Talk about dummy spitters. Fair bounced off the nursery wall.
Anyhow, exciting news: Mike and I have been woodshedding with new musicians, and we played our first gig in the new band last night, a 40th birthday party for about 50 or so people. It's a hell of a story. As soon as I get some pictures to post, I'll tell it.
