So I really love playing guitar. It somehow manages to excite me, infuriate me, please me, challenge me, inspire me, and calm me all in the span of whatever stretch of time I’m playing. For the past 15 years, since I’ve been regularly gigging in cover bands, I’ve played a whole lot more bass than guitar, and though I absolutely love that, too, there’s something about returning “home” to guitar, which was my original “serious” instrument, even if it wasn’t the first one I wanted to play (I wanted to double on keyboards and bass – being John Paul Jones before I even knew who that was).

So as I said in the last post, I’ve joined a new band called “Nudge” as a guitarist and doing some singing. It’s been a really interesting and inspiring experience. Kind of like going back and revisiting an earlier part of your life, but with the added knowledge gained from years of additional experience.

The last time I played guitar in bands was from 2005-2006, before my move to Austin. It was a few mixed experiences. The main gigging band I ended up playing with had just come off their most successful lineup when they lost a critical founding member at the end of 2004 – their singer/guitarist. I auditioned for the job and it went very well, including an incredible jam on Stairway To Heaven. But they replaced the singer/guitarist with a person that had been previously fired from the band instead of picking me. I found out later it had less to do with my ability as a singer/guitarist and more to do with my image/perceived “coolness” and worries about whether I’d be available because at the time I was still playing bass in Slaphappy (little did any of us know that that band would be defunct less than a month after they made their choice). So they brought the new old guy in and he did okay, but within months, the rest of the band was falling apart and burned out. The lead guitarist was leaving the “band lifestyle” behind to start a business and a family, and the bassist was completely tired of the grind and wanted to do something more creative and original. So I got the call. After having me fill in for one show on bass with the old guitarist, which was FUN, they found a new bassist and I slotted into the singer/guitarist role vacated by the MONSTER guitarist they had previously had in the band. We agreed to split vocals and lead guitar duties 50/50, and we were on our way, playing much of the same exact music I’m now playing with Nudge. It was quite a challenge learning that many songs, that many lead parts, in such a short time frame, but I did it. And I was beginning to shine as a singer, too. This became a problem because the other guitarist/vocalist fancied himself the de facto lead singer, which was weird because of the agreement that was reached when I joined the band. He kept shifting lead guitar duties off to me and taking vocals away – which was only annoying to me because it wasn’t improving the sound of the band to have him sing the songs. We actually received complaints about his singing on numerous occasions, so if anyone was going to be vocally marginalized, it probably should have been him, not me. This led to some serious drama and his eventual departure from the band. I take responsibility for making it dramatic, too. It was a lesson I needed to learn – how to stick up for myself without just being a dick. But anyway, through all that, I learned how to sound good as a guitarist live. I still believe that if they had chosen me in the first place, the band would have continued and had its most incredible lineup ever, but we don’t know because that “Alternate 2005” never happened.

During this time, the just-quit bassist from the band and I decided we wanted to try and get something together – less pressure than our previous bands, more focused on stuff we wanted to do rather than what we expected to work, and also to work in originals and all sorts of other cool stuff. We recruited a keyboardist with a great ear and my musical soul brother Jon from Slaphappy and started trying to figure out what we’d become. As time wore on, though, it became less and less what the bassist wanted to do, and he ended up leaving. We sputtered along with a different bassist, even playing a show, but it wasn’t the same, and we lost interest by the end of 2005. I did really work up my singing/playing chops – even learning how to play semi-complicated lead fills while singing, so that was positive.

But then I moved away.

And the only work I found in Austin was as a bassist, so the guitar fell into the background. I played a few songs on guitar in Roman Holiday for a little while, but it always felt forced and I never was fully comfortable because doing both in one show feels really weird.

All those years of being focused on the arrangements, and singing, and more than that, the GROOVE have improved my guitar playing so much that I look back at 2005-2006 and think, “Wow. I really didn’t know shit about playing guitar in a band.” And I’m sure in 8 years I’ll look back to now and think the same thing…but the parts are coming together more and more easily than ever, and it’s so far been a fantastic experience. Let’s hope that continues.

Interesting side note: The last time I grew my hair this long was in 2005-2006, too. I cut it when I moved to Austin. So long hair = playing guitar in a band? 🙂

Shows coming up:
June 14th at Steiner Ranch for the SELF benefit
June 20th at Shooters on 620

All info can be found here: http://www.nudgeatx.com and you can like us on facebook if you like (please do…)

Thanks and peace be the journey…
TMS