Now that I’m finally settling down into my career, I at last have time to play music on the weekends with my friends.
I play guitars and a little bit of keyboards, but the five of us all cover the various bases to form a traditional band with drums, bass, guitar, keys, and saxophone.
The bassist and lead keyboardist are both vocalists, but our bass player is usually the lead while the latter sings backup. Back before the pandemic we would rent the practice room at our local Guitar Center, but these were closed nationwide when lockdown orders went into effect. I kept calling them throughout the pandemic to see if there was an ETA on when they would open again, but I’m still getting conflicting information whenever I call the local store or company headquarters. We had to find a different location in which to practice as a band, and this wasn’t easy. At first we tried to pitch in money to play at a traditional practice studio, but this proved to be way too expensive for our budget. That’s when we agreed to throw in the money needed to rent a small space in a warehouse building. Unfortunately, the lack of air conditioning was a difficult impasse at first. We almost threw in the towel until I thought about putting a small window air conditioner in the single window attached to the unit. This provided us with the little bit of cool air we needed to stay comfortable while playing music together. And the window a/c only increased the electricity bill by a moderately small amount.