Have bass, will travel

So today I officially resigned as the bassist of the band I was in.

I liked the music we played.  It was all original and had some fun bits to it, and lots of energy.  The problem was it wasn't going anywhere, and wasn't going to go anywhere.

When I started playing bass again almost a year ago, I did it because I missed playing music.  I didn't get into it to live some fantasy of record deals and world tours, but rather to have a good jam and some good times.  When I joined this band last summer things looked promising.  The goal was to get me up to speed with some of the material they had already, write some new stuff, throw in a couple of covers, and play out now and then.  Sounded reasonable, and by the end of our 3rd session together we had written 1 song and I had learned 2 of their existing songs.  Seemed like it was on a good pace.

But then the guitarist kept missing practices.  Being that we were a 3 piece, this hurt.  The drummer is extremely talented and can play pretty good rhythm guitar along with being shit-hot on the drums, so on the occassions when it was just me and him we'd turn on the drum machine and work out some material.  But still, without a guitarist its hard to progress.  So the guitarist kept missing, we'd get together as a band on average about once every 3 weeks, sometimes longer.  It started getting old.

Then I started writing some stuff on my own and came up with a couple songs, one of which I'm still excited about because I think it has a lot of potential.  But again, we'd gotten to work through it one session because thats all the guitarist was around for.  And even then he didn't come up with much, just a promise of having something together "next time".  Problem was, next time was never showing up.

So I began to get kind of bummed about the whole thing.  The original goal was to be ready to play out by January.  That obviously wasn't going to happen, but not only was it not happening then it didn't seem like it was going to happen ever.  I went from practicing almost every day for up to 2 hours a day, to the last couple weeks where I played on average every other day, and nowhere near as long or as enthusiastically.  I would strap on the bass, plug in, and start thinking about how pointless it was practicing the songs of ours I did know.  Then I'd get all bummed and call it a day.

I didn't get back into playing so I could feel miserable every time I picked up my instrument.  I had already had some discussions with our drummer about how things really needed to start picking up, and he agreed.  He told me he felt like shit every time he had to call me and let me know it was going to be just me and him cause the guitarist couldn't make it...again.  So when I called him today and broke the news to him, he wasn't really surprised.  He wasn't really happy about it either, but neither was I. 

So we left on good terms, no reason for anything otherwise.  He asked me if the guitarist got his shit together and I hadn't found anything yet, if I'd consider giving it another go.  I told him I wouldn't rule it out, and I won't rule it out.  But I would need to see a massive change in attitude from the guy.

So for now I am an island unto myself, I suppose.  My other drummer friend, the guy I first jammed with when I started playing again last year, has decided to come out of retirement.  He's been working on getting his chops back and wants to audition for at least one guitarist in the next month or so.  I told him as long as he wanted to do this, I would commit to playing for him.  So I tentatively have that in the works.  Meantime I'll keep working on covers I guess, try some new stuff and try tto learn some new approaches to playing.  We'll see what happens after that.