Texas for training...

Greetings all!

I started this blog with the hope I can use it to keep track of our upcoming tour of southwest Asia. There are 7 of us from the ANG Band of the Gulf Coast that comprise a rock band- drums, guitar, bass, horn players doubling as singers, singers doubling on keys and horns, tambourine, etc, and we'll catch up to an audio engineer and tour manager over there.

The Ft Worth area has seen much rain... enough already. I arrived here last Friday to some pretty serious climate shock due to my departure from the dry, cool, high desert air. I guess the Texas heat, humidity, and occasionally dysfunctional AC is simply training for things to come... some of our stops on the upcoming trip will have 100+ degrees and 100% humidity. The mold that coated our rehearsal facility was seriously nasty and served to toughen us up. We rehearsed in there for a couple days but on Thursday, hazmat showed up and shut the room down. I've since started taking Airborne and we've since found a new place to rehearse.

Besides rehearsing, we've done more shots (anthrax... yum), qualled on the M-9, self aid/buddy care training, chem/bio/nuke training, outprocessing, outprocessing, outprocessing, gear issue, etc etc etc...

Today was our final outprocess and we received our orders... It's actually a good feeling.

We are practicing acoustic sets- sounds awesome and is a lot of fun! I'm playing a djembe in this configuration and it cracks me up! I'll probably be the only guy in the world playing a djembe in a warzone with a weapon strapped to my leg, while getting paid! It's the anti-drum circle vibe!

Tomorrow we PT for the record and rehearse the rest of the day-no briefings or outprocessing.

Sunday is a day off.

Monday, rehearsal, Tuesday a gig in Addison.

I think we'll gel as a band once we get some regular playing in- there's a lot of talent and experience in the band, and I think we'll rock. Playing in a rock band is a welcome change for me- I am VERY happy to be doing it and looking forward to the adventure on the trip!
We have some great tunes- plenty more than we need which is a good place to be. We're doing everything from current top 40 to current country to classic rock, R&B, Motown, hip hop, etc etc.

I'll leave Wednesday to return home for a couple days and wait for the exact depart date.

Good news- I've straightened out the golf shot and have actually shot par on a couple holes and even birdied a par 4... let's not talk about the bogeys... double bogeys... triple bogeys... the numerous mulligans... it's a hard game but is much more fun when you can occasionally hit a decent shot. If you are wondering where this golf thing came from, I am wondering too... I've played a handful of times this spring/summer and now I cannot get enough. Great.

That's all from here!

Hopefully I'll be able to continue this blog over there.

Cheers!

J