Mirado, Five Star, SR

Last night’s gig with Tim Gillespie’s Mirado Quartet was a ton of fun, and went pretty well as far as I can say.  Tim does jazz standards with Ryan and Mike, and they needed a drummer for this show, so I’ve spent a few evenings practicing with them.

I played some jazz drums in high school, which was really just big band music, and I never progressed beyond a swing or shuffle beat and some fills.  A couple months ago, Tim did a couple cool sax tunes for church, and I used a hi-hat and bongos for that.  So when I started with Mirado, I was legitimately concerned I was in over my head.

The guys were very patient and good about counting off tunes and saying “this is a swing number, this is a latin tune,” etc.  I discovered I could kind of play jazz!  And the first set last night killed; I was much more expressive than in practice, and just felt it all over.

The second set…  well, you can’t nail them all.  I told Tim that jazz drumming is much more likely to be in my future now than it was before Mirado.

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I spent the afternoon today doing demos of four new Five Star Crush songs.  We play tonight in Topeka, and tomorrow here in KC (all-ages!).  Three are kind of new territory sonically, and one is right up our alley.  Two came from practice jams, and two I basically wrote (though one of those has a riff stolen from Danny).

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After this weekend, 5*C has a schedule break so I fully expect to move FuriousSound to Matt’s house tomorrow or Monday and begin guitar and vocal work on It’s A Trap.  Feels like it’s been too long.  Still, consider that Don’t Let Them Take Us… ALIVE took four years to write, and was released only last November.  And we expected it to be a one-shot deal.  Instead, Cory and I will have a second album done within a year of the first, and we’re partway into writing a third.