This weekend I did two restaurant gigs, just playing bass with someone else… when I say ‘just playing bass’, of course I took a looper with my (my Akai Headrush for ease of transport and set-up) and ended up playing quite a few melodies, but it wasn’t a me-gig, even though we did arrangements of a couple of my tunes.
The gig were with a guitarist called Luca Sirianni – a fine player and very nice guy to work with, playing a mixture of standards, pop stuff his tunes and a couple of mine. A couple of things about it were noteworthy. Firstly, he found me through MySpace – who’d have thought that any musician would ACTUALLY make some money through myspace – there we were, thinking it was all about collecting a million friends who have no idea who you are, and inadvertently it provides some geniune work! The second is that I get asked to do precious few of these kind of gigs, despite the fact that I a) rather enjoy them and b) am rather good at them – I love playing in a duo setting like the gig on friday (sunday’s was a trio with a percussionist which was just as fun), and I’m kinda handy to have in that I can play tunes, chords and solo pretty well through most things – takes some of the heat off the guitar player.
So hopefully it’ll turn into a few more gigs. I don’t want to end up doing them 4 nights a week – I know too many people doing that and hating it – but it’s nice to get out and play with some new people, busking some cool tunes, and making a lil’ cash.