So I met up with my bassist Ryan Hembrey at the Hideout this afternoon for our first "rehearsal", which was really more just so I could give him a CD and learn ‘im the new songs we’ll be using on the me & Manishevitz tour in December.  All that BULLSHIT Rian Murphy’s been puttin’ me through (ha ha) finally paid off: I got through every damn song with hardly a mistake at all.  Got to show off my new(-ish) guitar too, what an improvement in sound!!  And I got to sing through the PA finally, oh what a relief that was.  So everything was really a lot tighter on my end than it normally would be after such a long hiatus. It was all super easy for Ryan of course; he’s such a quick study and he’s very good at watching my hands and/or playing things by ear (even though he’s secretly deaf). 

So yeah, oh boy.  We’re meeting again next week with Via (the guitarist); by that time I should have a tentative list of songs we can use for the tour, both old and new ones.  I’m thinkin’ we should get at least 20 prepared; that’ll give us leeway to cut songs if some don’t work out, and we’ll be able to make adjustments on the fly if the set lengths turn out to be longer or shorter than the hour or hour-and-ten-minutes they normally are.  If we need more, I’ll teach ‘em more or I’ll do ‘em myself!  I got plenty, and I hope I’ll have even more (and better) new tunes by the time we leave.  :-)

I’m so psyched!!