Post by hushnel on Mar 31, 2020 11:57:31 GMT -5
Our Mandolin player had a bad heart attack around 6 months ago. He was totally out of it for close to 3 weeks. Twice a week the guitar player and I took our acoustics to the hospital and played our set lists for him. We continued to do this for the nearly two months he was there. We where even invited to play while Brownie was working out in Rehab.
We continued to practice when he came home, his vocals where great and he was just starting to play the mando again. A couple of days after I took off with a friend to tour New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Texas I got a call that Brownie had died. Nobody saw it coming.The guys called me a day before excited how well he was doing.
I got together with the guitar player, his brother on banjo, Brownie’s wife on guitar mostly to just talk and maybe play a few tunes. The guitar player had been complaining and having some medical issues, I took the ride with him to see a Doctor in Tallahassee. He’s being treated for “Functional Alcoholism”, what ever medication he is on it really screwed up his playing, I’m praying and hoping for the best for him. I’ve never seen him drunk.
Even before all this, once a week just wasn’t enough, I’ve been thinking about getting out a bit more, I’ll still get together with my friends and it’s not that I want to do any full time gigs I just feel I need to get out in front of an audience from time to time.
I can sit around playing the guitar at home, I even spend an hour or so a day with the bass but nothing like the feedback of a live audience to tighten up and occasionally experience that magic that happens from time to time. I don’t know, it just seems as a bassist driving the band, the rhythm, maintaining the tempo in a live setting is so much a part of the instrument. It’s like one of the few instruments that almost needs other instruments to make the bass what it is.
I’ll shake it off, a lot of it is just the mess that’s going on, still I can keep my eyes open for other opportunities.
We continued to practice when he came home, his vocals where great and he was just starting to play the mando again. A couple of days after I took off with a friend to tour New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Texas I got a call that Brownie had died. Nobody saw it coming.The guys called me a day before excited how well he was doing.
I got together with the guitar player, his brother on banjo, Brownie’s wife on guitar mostly to just talk and maybe play a few tunes. The guitar player had been complaining and having some medical issues, I took the ride with him to see a Doctor in Tallahassee. He’s being treated for “Functional Alcoholism”, what ever medication he is on it really screwed up his playing, I’m praying and hoping for the best for him. I’ve never seen him drunk.
Even before all this, once a week just wasn’t enough, I’ve been thinking about getting out a bit more, I’ll still get together with my friends and it’s not that I want to do any full time gigs I just feel I need to get out in front of an audience from time to time.
I can sit around playing the guitar at home, I even spend an hour or so a day with the bass but nothing like the feedback of a live audience to tighten up and occasionally experience that magic that happens from time to time. I don’t know, it just seems as a bassist driving the band, the rhythm, maintaining the tempo in a live setting is so much a part of the instrument. It’s like one of the few instruments that almost needs other instruments to make the bass what it is.
I’ll shake it off, a lot of it is just the mess that’s going on, still I can keep my eyes open for other opportunities.