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Heritage Owners Club
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About this blog

a tale of life in a band

Entries in this blog

Dealing with trouble

Running a band, as I have said previously, can be a totally different experience to playing in one. Once I am up and playing, I enjoy the experience, especially when we are getting a good response from the audience. We seem to get that regularly, playing our local venues and pleasing the audience. finding new gigs is always a pain in the neck but it has to be done. A few of our venues are closing down, due to not being able to make it pay or dwindling club membership, and some just keep on booki

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Going to the pub...

Our first gig was played, and we were not 100% happy with it, gremlins in the works the week before for me. As I said, I really went for it, but as I have reflected on it over the past week, I know I was way below the standard I should have been at on the night. I had too much stuff going on in my head - unemployment, a lousy job interview the day before, and other stuff. In truth, I did not feel personally ready to play live. But as I said before, we were well received by a welcoming audience.

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The first gig

After only being together for about four weeks, we were playing our first gig. We all looked forward to it, having rehearsed as much as we could. We had arranged to meet at the venue at 5pm because that would be the only time we could set up and get a sound check (more of the sound check later).   On the way to the venue, I decided to stop into a guitar dealer in Leeds and pick up a couple of guitar stands for the gig as I don't have any, and I bought a new mic clip to take my mic as the one o

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Getting out and doing it live

Having put so much work in to the band, we are now playing live and played our first gig with the present line up, which we feel will be permanent. We all get along together and feel we have a common goal with none of us just tagging along.   Our gig was at a nice pub on the outskirts of Huddersfield, called The Wagon and Horses, which is run by a young couple who seem to be doing a good job of it. With it being what we call in England a "Bank Holiday Weekend" it could have gone either way as

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Band politics and other nonsense

Music is fun, Right? Or at least it's supposed to be. I've always thought that if you play in a band you do it to enjoy playing and when you get paid for it then you are worth the money you earn. The best thing about being in a band other than playing music you really like, is being out with your mates, or as you Americans say, your buddies. To me, getting along well with all the other guys and enjoying their company is the number one priority.   On the whole the relationship within the band i

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finally, we can all breath a sigh of relief

A new chapter is about to begin with my band, Route 62. We are finally rid of our other guitarist and his wife, Mrs Satan. It didn't go without trouble though, but we expected it. However, the deadly duo of the Satan's sank to new lows.   We were playing a gig fifty miles from my home and it was the last one we were playing with the present line up, and it is important to state that he left because he chose to do so.   I knew that it was imperative that one of the three of us collected the f

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In with both feet.

Today was our final practice before our first gig. Thankfully the gig is a friendly environment for us, which is good. We got next weeks gig when we had only been together two weeks and only had eight songs in the bag. So, we have done our best to get as many songs as we can together. The gig will be good for us because we can treat it as a shakedown gig and see what reaction we will get. Our bass players brother got us the gig and actually invited us, we didn't go looking for it. The audience w

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it never rains....

Trying to get a band up and running is full of twists and turns that you just don't expect to find.   having completed a set list of over thirty numbers we are now ready to polish them to performance level and we have gigs booked. Then, this week, we all get an e mail from Terry our drummer saying he is quitting. He told me that he is not going to join any other band, but he wants to do other things. He and his brother have bought a narrow boat and want to go off on it at weekends with their

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it's going well....

After a few weeks of not making an entry into my blog I am back to keeping those kind enough to read it up to speed on where we are at and the life and times of a would be semi pro player here in Northern England.   Life in the band has been interesting, my Fender Hot Rod deluxe had valve issues and was horrendously noisy. It turned out it was a pre amp valve. This particular amp has three of those so I decided that as one of them was on the way out and causing so much trouble, I might as wel

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The year ends....

As 2018 comes to a close, the band I play in, Route 62 has had two changes of personal and we are re establishing our selves on our playing circuit and we're happier than we've ever been. Our old guitar player's wife cost us all just short of £2000 but we are now 18 months rid of them both and we no longer hear anything from them. Robin has been playing guitar with us just over a year and has fittted in well, he uses three guitars on stage, a Les Paul RI, a Strat and a Tele. Our Drummer, Graham,

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In the which I leave the band

It seems like forever since I have made an entry in my blog about the story of my playing in a band, maybe all the lockdown had a lot to do with that.  After Lockdown, we started trying to gig again but the market for bands had really slowed down and many of the social clubs we were playing were no longer booking bands. Bars and pubs were booking less also, as they were building their trade up after Lockdown. We were playing several gigs, but something was just not sitting right with m

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mark555 in The final chapter

Are you experienced?

OK, the gig was played, the autopsy was performed and we have hunted high and low for would be singers. We have put ads on internet sites, in music shops, and asked around. We are auditioning for a singer!   One guy called us up, and wanted to come for an audition, but when we said that we would expect a singer to bring a pa with him to the band, he said he was going to buy his own mic and stand, Well, I suggested to him that when the rest of us have spent a lot of money on guitars, amps and d

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And the winner is......

Today our auditions came to a close for a further guitar player to compliment the line up. Earlier this week we organised today's sessions with three different guys coming at intervals of one hour and fifteen minutes so each one could have fifty minutes with us. Well, that was the intention. Earlier on this week I had an e mail from one guy who said he had gone down with a really nasty cold and was getting worse, he would let me know on Friday if he was able to come. I don't know if he was reall

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It's only rock and roll but I like it...

Just an up date on the band and how things are progressing. One thing I did during the week was to buy myself a new mic lead. Thankfully that was all that was needed and not anther microphone. I like decent equipment and just right now I don't have a lot of spare cash for band equipment. We bought a 600 watt Peavy pa amp a few weeks back, that proved a good investment. It's old but good and kicks out the power nicely. A bit like a big V8 engine, gets you there nicely without putting your foot do

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Sometimes it's hard work.

It's been a busy day. Usually on a Saturday morning I treat myself to a lie in bed and get up when I want to and not when the alarm go's off. However, this morning I had to be at church to take my turn with some other guys to clean the building. It's quite a large church building with two wings away from the Chapel area and also the hall, when those two area's are opened it will seat 800 people very easily. So it was a very busy morning and with the early start I was tired before I went to band

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a different practice

Normally we practice as a full four piece, but today was a little different in that Terry, our drummer called me today full of flu and not only that, his home was bugled on Thursday night while he and his wife slept in their beds. In truth, he just needed some time to unwind and rest. So, undaunted, Dave, Shaun and I decided to practice and just kick some songs about that Dave did in his last band and just concentrate on guitar and bass parts.   It was actually time well spent, and we didn't h

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Wading through mud...

So, the band is gigging and audiences are going away having had a great night. Of course there are better guitar players in bands out there, but this band plays a selection of songs that works for the audience. More of Saturday's gig later in this entry.   I don't talk about the family much in my blog, but this last week has been great, my son, George, turned thirty on Friday, he and his wife came up from Kent, it's a four and a half hour drive for them, and Kimberley is five months pregnant s

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It's going well again....

It seems like a long time since I last wrote in my blog, yet lots has happened. For those of you who read my blog, you will recall that we were auditioning a new guitar player. Well, Robin is now well and truly embedded in the band and is taking on his share of the load. He's a Les Paul player at heart and his go to guitar is an RI that cost an arm and a leg, but I have managed to switch him on to Telecasters, which he uses on Honky Tonk Women. He's become a real member of the band and has a hug

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Life after being in a band

It's some months now since I left the band, Route 62. I was at the end of my rope with it all, the whinging of our other guitar player, no end of things and I'd just reached that point where I had had enough. I thought about it, and the positives of leaving outweighed everything else. I knew that once I said I was done, there was no turning back and I still left. So, four and a half months on, where am I up to, and with the benefit of hindsight, did I do the right thing? Well, I can an

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mark555 in Mark's blog

sharpening up

Since my last entry on my blog, the band, Route 62, has had two practices. Last week we added the final two songs to our set list for our forthcoming gig, and now we have the luxury of just polishing them up and bringing them to an acceptable level for public performance. As this is going to be our first gig, I am sure that we will be ok, but not as sharp as we are going to get through playing a few more live situations. The one pain in the neck though is almost having to re learn the earlier so

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Dealing with the unreliable....

Here we go again. As you will know, if you have been reading my blog, that we worked really hard to find a singer to front our band, Route 62.   One of the essential criteria for the singer would be his willingness to buy a vocal pa. After all, I would not join a band and expect them to buy me two or three guitars and a nice valve amp, but when it comes to singers, they seem to expect the band to provide their equipment. After all, we are not asking any one to buy a mega rig, just something t

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three looking to make four..

After the fantastic success of last week when Shaun and I found Terry the drummer, we were eager to start looking for the next band member, so we started scouring the usual web sites where hopefully we could find a few likely candidates for joining us. We were looking for a vocalist and guitar player, or if needs be, one guy who could do both.   During the week I had contacted one or two more people who seemed to fit the bill and we invited a guy to come for audition. I asked many questions of

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Telecasting

Another gig under our belt, we played a venue called Netherton Conservative Club. With a small audience of about eighty, we played two sets of forty five minutes and one hour. The venue has the smallest stage I have ever played on - we had our mics fully extended and set on the dance floor. The club was well out of town and located in a nice setting, but humping the gear in and out was a pain in the neck because the door was a long way from the car park. We did not get a return booking there and

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Moving forward

It's a Saturday night off gigging, which to be honest, I am glad about because I have been very tired and could do with a rest. No church tomorrow either so I will get up a little later than I usually do and enjoy the rest. Today I have enjoyed a day on the north west coast of England, where our daughter lives, we went to look after her as she is having a rough time with her pregnancy, the new baby is due in August. Today me and Mrs 555 did the seventy mile trip and had a wonderful day with our

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Going shopping

It's now one year and seven months since I left my band, route 62.  I have found that it was the right thing to do and I haven't regretted it once. One thing I am glad about is that when I left, I kept the real reasons to myself and didn't tell the other guys - after all, we'd had some good times together aswell as the frustrations that led me to leave. When I did leave, Robin in particular was very angry with me, but there were times when he had caused some major upsets and he was aware of that

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mark555 in Going shopping

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