The Lava Pup “Trio” started up band practice again last week. We need it after taking more than a month off, then agreeing to expand our music by five tunes, and now being three weeks away from playing at the Capitol Bowl. The time has come to renew our camaraderie, feel our way through the new songs, and get back to evolving as a band. Importantly, practicing together has been fun for the three of us and a diversion from our day-to-day routines.
The Pyronauts’ busy January may be done, but they are working on a new CD and playing more gigs. They are a real working band. In addition, Paul gives lessons into the evening four nights each week, is focused on making the inaugural Sierra Surf Music Camp a success, and has responsibilities which go beyond music. He has little time for rest.
Given his schedule, we are lucky for whatever time Paul gives us for practices. Unlike for the three of us, the Lava Pups is not necessarily a diversion from his real life. Instead, it probably can be a burden or an unwelcome demand which takes away what small amount of free time he has.
Despite that, the time that Paul gives us always is “quality time.” Because of his talent, creativity, and experience, he is very efficacious in joining up with the band on the fly. Paul does not need the same amount of practice that we do. He does not rely on brute memorization like I do. A couple of times through a song is enough for him to know the structure and notes. In a single practice, he knows exactly what we are doing and what he will add to improve our performance.
Paul also knows how to spend his time to maximize our opportunity to get the most out of our varying degrees talents. For us to add five songs, we need to have arrangements that work for us and put the Lava Pup imprimatur -- whatever it is -- on them. That may be shorthand for “dumb it down enough so that Bill can play it.”
Paul’s and my focus for an hour on a recent Friday afternoon was working through the five songs. The process was simple. First, we identified the songs that we really did not need to arrange and determined how much effort is required to get them gig ready. That was almost a thumbs-up-thumbs-down proposition. Three of the five songs fell into this category.
After that, we devoted our energy to the remaining songs which required arranging. We worked out intros, transitions, and endings. Paul and I played the songs through -- lead and chords. Once we felt that we had a structure and feeling for the songs down, we made rough recordings to give Don, Glenn, and me something to practice.
“Rough” means solid rhythm from Paul and enough of a lead to cut and paste the song together. Repetition is a nicety of what we play. If a line appears three times in a song, the odds are that one reasonably coherent version of that line -- that is, I did not manage to screw up every phrase every time -- can be pieced together on Garageband. Convert to mp3, and email.
Those mp3s gave us a head start for band practice. That meant that we could get back to having fun and making music.
After all, that is why we do this. We certainly are not giving up our day jobs for the Pups!