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Played in Scarborough this evening, a return to ‘The Lookout on the Pier’ cafe restaurant which we do quite regularly. Always a great gig with a truly appreciative audience made up of many regulars. As usual we did the set list from written audience requests, and managed most of them including ‘This Masquerade’, ‘Make you feel my love’ and finishing the second set with a very extended version of ‘Another brick in the wall’. My guitarist partner Gary had a bad cold but still managed to sing all night, albeit more raspy than usual. We’re back there again in three weeks time.

Another good one at the Earl Haig yesterday. About 80 people in, which is good for the sunday slot. Quite a few came because it was us, which is great. Had plenty of dancing in the second set, which isn't bad for blues! Hopefully better pics to come!

Thought I'd change the pickguard on my Dakota Red P, really happy with how it's turned out.

I did a gig yesterday and during it, I was really wondering why I bother. Then my friend came along for the second half with his mum who has Parkinson’s and we had a great chat and she loved the music. Didn’t matter that there were about 8 of them in the audience.

Can't read music? Can't slap? Plays a P? With FLATS???? I hope he's got a day job.

I've not read the whole thread but thought it worth sharing. Probably the best drummer I ever played with had Alzheimers. It was a startup band of experienced musicians (god knows how I ended up there) and some of the best music I ever played. We didn't know about this initially. He absolutely nailed the songs of his youth but struggled with anything he didn't already know and the problem was with arrangements, his muscle memory was fantastic and all his licks were completely intact. That was 10 years ago and he is still playing but sticking to 60s and 70's standards plus a bit of blues. If he is struggleng with memory it doesn't necessarily progress quickly and being a musician is genuinely protective, yet another study reported in this weeks New Scientist It looks like you want to support your bandmate and that is terrific. Just playing will slow the advance of Alzheimers if that is what it is and he was probably really scared of telling you. If I had a tight band doing 43 gigs a year I'd definitely keep it going. It gets harder to find new bands as you get older, I'm in my 70's and still fit but you don't know what is round the corner. New bands can be so political too until everyone settles in. Treasure what you already have.

Hurtsfall have two gigs coming up next week. First we are supporting Murdah Srvc at the Chapel (above the Angel Microbrewery) in Nottingham on Tuesday 13th February. Were on at around 9.00. Then on the Friday 16th February HRH Goth 2 is finally going ahead with a change of venue from Sheffield to O2 Academy Leicester on account of O2 Sheffield still being closed due to RAAC concrete problems. This has resulted in a changed but expanded line-up on both days, which for us has both advantages and disadvantages. The overall line up on the day that we will playing is now a lot stronger, so hopefully that will result in a bigger audience; however, we will be playing further down the bill and much earlier (7.00pm) than we would have been had the event gone ahead last year. The full line-up for Friday 16th February hen we are playing is: Fleisch 11.00pm The Danse Society 9.30pm Exilia 8.10pm Hurtsfall 7.00pm PLAY/DEAD 5.55pm Nox Pulso 5.00pm

Thanks Paul! We’ve done the requests thing for a while now. We put out request forms on the tables (say one per person) and then go through them to see what’s been asked for and if we can do them! If not then we try to maybe do another by the artist requested. We use iPads linked together which have literally thousands of songs my mate Gary has written out. We do a fair bit of material without using them, but it’s often more for lyrics than the music that we need them, especially for anything we’ve never or rarely done before. Of course there are some we don’t attempt, but because Gary is an amazing player of many styles as well as a great singer, we get away with most of them! We try to make sure most people / couples get at least one tune they request, out of a choice of 3 tunes per request form. Last night we probably had a 90% success rate - ones we couldn’t manage were ‘Boys of Summer’, something by Supertramp and ‘God only knows’! Our audience tend to be around our own demographic which makes things a bit easier- most popular stuff requested is anything by Simon and Garfunkel & The Eagles etc, but we try to mix it up as much as possible. Louis Armstrong into Miley Cyrus isn’t unheard of. 🤣

No charge - Tammy Wynett

I hadn’t given up, but I had taken breaks from time to time, more just time between bands. Now, at 60 years of age, playing is my release from work, and it keeps my mind sharp and me active.

1. Why you don't have any gigs? Singer quit our covers band at the end of last year, he gave us notice but we had the most dreadful time unearthing every poseur/wannabe/timewasting so-and-so under the sun from September-now. Only just now found someone with the requisite skills and more importantly attitude to move forward. Getting her up to speed now, next gig is in April. We've had to cancel/sub a couple of gigs at the start of this year because of the lack of singist talent up here. Originals band has a gig in March, but it doesn't gig very often, currently cooking up new songs, hopefully get some recording done this year. 2.Do you rely on an agent ? No, just another pocket to stuff. 3.Who finds coordinates and confirms gigs? Covers band - usually the guitarist. For the originals band, it's usually me. 4. Are you or any band members in this for the money? No, we've all got jobs, this is a side hustle at best. I personally use the money for guilt free spending on gear etc. The originals band - what effin' money? 5.How much do you want to gig? A few times a month, 2-4 times, average 2-3.

Well, it's been about 2 months and I am missing playing with people - but I'm not missing that band so it was the right decision. I'm actually starting to have more writing ideas now that the brain has cleared out a load of baggage. I've dug out my old lyric book and the 3/4 size classical guitar that I usually compose with. Hopefully I'll come up with the odd good riff.

The hallowed Sofa-Shot Day arrived yesterday...

The drummer in the band I left now has a gong. There's a few things I cannot tolerate in a band; Gongs Wind Chimes Band members wearing their own merchandise. (I'll barely wear anything with conspicuous branding) Looks like my exit was well-timed.

Definitely this @SteveXFR Keep your amp head & get a smaller cab (or in future, maybe 2) But definitely keep a bass - perhaps your favourite one. Perhaps take a short break, and then look for a new band / project. I posted earlier on this thread, about how I was away from bass playing for almost 25 years - and now I'm back into bass and in bands. I'm enjoying it more now than I did when I was young. Plus, I'd really miss playing music if I had to give up now. Burns-bass's post above is a reminder of what live music can mean to others. As part of a Folk Club I sometimes play with, we played a couple of times at an old peoples home. The look on their faces, the singing along and some of them dancing with zimmer frames just made me smile. We did those gigs for free, to bring a little entertainment to some old folks, and I'm so glad we did. (reminder to self - must do that again sometime).

You need the darker times to appreciate the good times. Keep the gear, youll find something with less pressure when you realise you still need to gig.

I take them all off before restringing so I can give the fretboard a good clean.

Having the busiest week for a while (5 gigs) including these 3 with The ELO Experience. Started off with a 6 hour trek up to Dundee on Thursday to play at the magnificent Caird Hall. Not the easiest for sound, plenty of natural reverb! Our engineer managed to tame it though and the gig went well with a lively audience of around 800 all in good voice. I love playing in Scotland, always great audiences. The gig was to replace one booked late last year which was cancelled due to storm warnings. We had really high winds this time on both the journey up and back down which made the drive even more arduous, but still,worthwhile. Friday it was a drive back down to Darlington for a gig at The Hippodrome. Another great old theatre with a near capacity audience. Just a 2 hour drive home afterwards, again in high winds. Last night we played at Sheffield City Hall, a favourite venue for the band. Had around 1200 punters in, great crowd up for it right from the off. Had to use a flown PA so our guys had a job on but they got it nailed. Home by midnight, absolutely knackered. Am playing in Scarborough later today with the acoustic duo, so hope it’s an easy one!

Almost 64 i have to say this is the busiest i've ever been in any band. Not gigging every week but its getting close to it. Dave

My old man joined his first band in his sixties, at which point I had been gigging for 15+ years, so I took great pleasure in volunteering my advice for youngsters starting garage bands. They called themselves The Gastrick Band and set membership qualifications at "owns an instrument and eligible for a bus pass". When he started gigging I turned up pissed and heckled a couple times just to even the score. 😅

I've left my band now, been thinking about it for the past year and decided to knock it on the head for now. With three challenging, neurodiverse children, now is not the right time to be in a band and I'm less reliant on the money than I once was. Got one more gig booked to end things properly - a private party at a big house we've played a few times - and then done. Hopefully I'll look at getting back into it in 2026-ish, when the youngest will be 9, but for now it'll be home playing and maybe some composition.

American Piethon - Don Mclean.

Five kids? Good grief, the last thing that guy needs is more spare time at home! Has he worked out what's causing them yet? 😄 I went very heavy with touring between 2018-2020 and while I do love it it's been pretty rough on both the finances and home life. Looking at my notes I did about 20K miles and 120+ dates between May '18 and August '19, not including travel days. I was working as a session player but then came in as a full band member just before 2020 really kicked off (and chucked in the day job for bonus points) at which point I realised I hate nearly everything about being in a band except playing live - without touring it's just a crap admin job that doesn't pay. Luckily I wasn't expecting to make any money for at least 12 months after going pro anyway, so while did I burn through my savings pretty quickly the mortgage still got paid. My partner works in healthcare and they were piling up overtime hours during the lockdowns which really saved us long-term. After things opened up again I went out as tour crew a couple times and loved it just as much, except didn't have to worry about how I looked or being in photos and also I was being significantly better paid. I'm really definitely totally done with the original music career thing and wouldn't get back into the mainstream industry under any circumstances even if I wasn't too old and ugly now, but I've managed to self-finance a bunch of little EP's over the last two years and had more fun (and studio time) than I ever did during the push years. Took a while to get back to the idea of playing music being something you can do for fun, but we're getting there.

Currently only about 10 gigs in the diary for this year but I’ve gone back to university to retrain, so while the extra pocket money would be good I also don’t want to overcommit myself to too many gigs until I’m clear what I can manage. I do a mix of dep gigs, solo gigs and my own band each with their own arrangements for booking gigs. Its never been my full time job so the money is welcome rather than vital. First gig of the year next weekend. Happily do two or three gigs a month but much more than that starts to get too frantic juggling it all. The exception is summer (wedding season) and Christmas (party season) when I take as many gigs as I can!

I guess this form of memory loss is the brain's way of protecting oneself from past trauma.

No update for a while, work has got in the way of this. I managed to find some time yesterday as t'other half and daughter #1 went to see Lucy Worsley in Kendal talk about Agatha Cristie. I have managed to get the motors to work the way I want them to now. I did rather feel it was a battle of wills between me and the motors and they were winning. Which is sad It does look like one of my stepper motots has been abused ine the past, the only person I can think of is <ahem> me, so some more are on order from Ooznest. However I did seem to get them working with some odd and small stepper motors I found in the a box from some astrophotography project that went nowhere. I ordered some 0.9 and 1.8 degree stepper motors. The 1.8 degree version gives me a 100% speed increase for £10 so thats a bargain. I like bigger motors as I have also found a 24V 4A power supply that will replace the bench PSU I currently use. I have now managed to write the code so: 1. The lead screw goes back and forwards correctly to lay the wire down. I did like that to be honest. It makes it look like its working. 2. Rewrote the LCD code to use a different non-blocking library to display information as its winding. The issue before was that when you write a small tiny update to the LCD, the motors basically stop. I hadn't realised writing to an LCD display was so slow that you can time refreshes with you stopwatch on your iPhone. Rewrote all the sodding code and cut out everything that wasn't needed. Not it still stalls but it's very, very, very small. 3. Started writing the code for the 'home' function. This is the code that moves the winder to the left, hits a limit switch, then moves a certain user defined distance to the right. This certain user defined distance will marry the edge of the wire guides to the bobbin and will be different for each bobbin and so it needs to be flexible. I did have a mad idea of using a laser to line this up and then discarded it as I'd be blind as I cocked it up. I wanted to use the Prusa method checking for stall guard and having a physical limit switch. Stall Guard is only available on expensive stepper motor drivers so back to the drawing board and am using a physical limit switch. This is the mounting plate and this is the limit switch Of course good wiring practise is that you wire it up so the switch breaks connectivity on contact, so that if there is a real break in the wiring it "fails safe", but no, all of the sodding pre made wiring is it makes a positive contact on the switch being closed. So if it breaks, you have no idea. Which moron designs the wiring looms here? So I need to make a JATG to DuPont cable and the only thing worse than wiring JTAG is wiring DuPont connectors. Once this is wired in, I'll write the homing code, mentally written as I walked the dog this morning, but lets see. That should be it and then I can start seeing if it works. Things still to worry about: 1. Wiring tension 2. Wires coming off the main holder and twisting and jamming or breaking. 3. Mains wiring. I hate mains as it can kill me. 4. Speed. 5. It just doesn't work. Rob Rob

We were at the very beautiful Voodoo Rooms in Edinburgh last night but this short clip is from Newcastle the night before. First two dates of the tour, a couple of minor gremlins but overall we're pretty thrilled with how it's shaping up 😀 ssstwitter.com_1707066066302.mp4

The thing I love about his playing is that so many of his lines sound simple until you try to play them note for note, and only then do you realise how much is going on.

I'm often thanked for my fretless playing. Specifically, not playing it.

FINALLY got Thea back. Collected her at 10 this morning. Fast asleep on her bed.

Just a quick update. I put the side tape on today. Normally a Danelectro would be painted and the the white side tape applied, and it usually ends up shrinking and pulling away in valleys and edges. As I did on my Longhorn, I've used a wide centre tape with two thinner outer lines to look like a binding, the whole body including tape will now be clear coated which will seal everything in a help prevent any lifting of the edges. I really like the wood effect centre tape and I've gone for a very creamy 'binding' tape. It gives it a kind of hollow body vibe, which it is anyway. Just clear coat and a quick rebuild now.

Belated happy birthday Daryl! You're an inspiration and an encouragement to many of us.

Thanks @SumOne! Tho Bugg3r! I've just hit the button on a P2 + Pedal from Thomann. I've a B1Four & B1XFour ... they are OK, but the P2 is just so small! Oh well, I'll give it a go and with the Thomann return policy am not too worried if it turns out to be unsuitable. Sam x

I have to say @tobiewharton I’m very glad that’s going your way. @eude sent me a pic earlier and I thought “oh good god I’m in trouble” 🤣🤣 Thankfully not 😃

I'll be there Sunday as it's in my hometown ! I used to work about 200 yards from the building. Find me loitering around the Ashdown stand on Sunday. This show has been in Birmingham for I think 10+ years, it was previously at New Bingley Hall (city centre) until it spontaneously combusted in 2022.

They have in common Eminence drivers that don't have long excursion capability. If you go to something like Barefaced that has long excursion drivers you can get the same output from a smaller box using half the driver count. But, and there's always a but, the tone and timbre that shorter excursion drivers contribute to the result isn't going to be there. Whether or not that works for you is 100% subjective. We all do, it's unavoidable, even among those who know better. http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/04/dishonesty-of-sighted-audio-product.html

The Creamery do them now: https://www.creamery-pickups.co.uk/classic-75-starcaster-bass-tele-wide-range-bass-humbucker.html I haven't bought one, though I did consider it for my Telebass. I've had a couple of Precision pickups from Jaime before and they're great.

Speaking as someone who pointlessly gave themselves tendonitis trying to replicate my DB technique on electric bass, I would not try and do that. They're different instruments, and although there are lots of transferable skills treating electric bass as a small DB doesn't really work (nor does treating DB as a big fretless, as lots of people have found going the other way). Do what Happy Jack says.

Flog the cab, keep the head if A) it can be used headless and B) has headphone and aux in sockets, and keep the bass. Luxuriate in the space getting rid of the 4x10 gives you back while you decide what you're doing - get a cab (or two small ones) if you ever decide to return to the stage.

Change my own strings ? Good God man, what is the world coming to ? Dear boy...that's what one's Batman is for. Talking of which, I need a shave...."Jenkins !! Jenkins!!!! Where is that blasted fellow ?"

Whatever it is, a Fender it is not.

Treated myself to this American Vintage ll 1954 Precision. Well, you cant take it with you when you go. 😅