I'm standing in a middle of a rehearsal room filled with guitar amps, 4x12 cabs, two drum kits, flight cases, guitars and all sorts of random stuff. I'm holding on to my guitar, fingers are aching and I'm starting to feel a bit of a strain in my voice. There is a smell of winter, mixed with burning dust from a small blow heater that keeps the room warm. The sound system has developed a serious hiss, and my ears are ringing from the noise of a rock band squashed in a small room. We have been here since 9.30am and now it is getting closer to 3pm. There has been no mercy in this rehearsal. We have played all 14 songs through and many of them several times, dissecting them, reworking parts, ironing out mistakes. I look a round, Sebastian is staring in to space with an empty look in his eyes, sitting behind the drum kit. Tomek is sitting on his bass amp and holding his shoulder that has started to complain from the weight of the bass. I think it's time for a well deserved coffee break. Lazy bastards, you might think, but let me ensure you, there had been nothing lazy about this morning! It is a little bit of hope that makes you push yourself harder, and friend of Tomeks back in Poland showed some interest in organizing concerts for us later on in the year. So the race is on, we need a demo and pretty soon! So the extra hours, blood sweat and tears is what is called for. Album is one thing, but the live performance is what most musicians very much live for. And the knowledge of possibly bringing our music out of the rehearsal room in to front of a live audience just makes my fingers tingle with excitement. Even though this will be long time from now, and we will most certainly do our best to try to organize a concert in Dublin long before that. At the same time, I have been doing this long enough to know that most of the concerts that people try to organize, never happen due to the absolutely over whelming work load that goes in to organizing a successful concert. But Tomeks friend has the infrastructure and contacts in place, so I have a good feeling about this :-) And it is a solid piece of hope, and never underestimates the power of hope.
As always we have big plans, and we are putting them in to action. Only time is bit limited with our other work, so bare with us. We are working hard on some full band tracks and some video as soon as possible to share with you guys. And as soon as we have them up you will find them here on this blog, on the website
www.jpkallio.com and on all the social media sites. To make sure you won't miss anything, I once again urge you to sign up to our Emailing list. It is run through fanbridge.com. They provide a great service, reliable and safe. You will only get Emails from me, written by me, no junk and that’s a promise. So if you have not yet signed up, you can do so here.
Also I have been busy songwriting again. Poor guys in the band, as soon as we are getting on top of the songs we have at the moment, in walks J.P. with a new song... And back in the square one ;-). I do have constant need to keep the music fresh. I have few fellow song writers that only sit down once a while (sometimes not even once a year...) and decide to write a song. For me this is completely bizarre. Every time I pick up the guitar, potentially I can come up with an idea, guitar lick or chord progression that leads to a song. My mind always works on some sort of an idea. And for every song that I bring to the band practice, several others never get finished. It’s the strong ones from the crop that stand out and evolve in to finished songs.
And here's another thing. Being a full time musician you need to get pretty smart with your finances (Sometimes I wonder how I managed this far...). And things like updating your equipment can be very expensive. I have become pretty resourceful in terms of fixing guitars. So the obvious way for me is to look in to good quality second hand equipment, especially when it comes to guitars. And I have found here in Ireland websites like
www.gumtree.ie and
www.adverts.ie are a great source. During the week I exchanged some equipment, no cash involved, just a direct swap. So now I have a lovely new Telecaster (can't have too many telecasters) that I can't put down. It just sings! Also in the deal I got an Blackstar HT-5, a nice small, but surprisingly loud amp. In fact it is so loud I haven't been able to try it out properly yet. But the next rehearsals should sort that out;-). I'll let you know, how I get on, or maybe even a sound bite.
So that’s all for now. Have a great week and pop back for more next week.
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