I'm practically on tour now

If it's a tour, it's an unconventional one. It encompasses two metropolitan areas with only one venue in the second one (and it's far from the hub), several different bands I'll be playing with, and most of the dates are limited to weekends.

But it still kind of feels like a tour because between yesterday nd th end of next month, I will have played 12 shows. That's, like, an average of one gig every two or three days for a month. I don't think I've ever gotten so much use out of myself before.

Well, if yesterday was opening night, it wasn't a marvelous opening night. Barely anybody was in the audience, and I could seldom hear the guitar. Some of the on-the-fly song arrangements (particularly endings) could have used some tweaking.

Not the biggest surprise in the world given that this band is a revolving door of musicians who never rehearse together but consider themselves professionals capable of performing classic rock standards onstage.

Last night was probably my fourth or fifth show with that band, and I have never once played with exactly the same lineup. Go see that band, and you never know what you're gonna get.

But I found it funny that on almost every song, a common routine emerged: After two verses, they're looking to me to solo. Thank goodness I was feeling confident about my own performance. And after the first set, I adjusted to adapt to some constructive criticism: I needed to turn myself down during verses and the guitar solos. So I did that, but I was still unable to hear the guitar solos. The ax was drowned out by the bass amp next to me, and I think the guitar level should have been turned up more anyway.

Tonight's another show, but a different group. One that doesn't hide behind the pretense of not needing to practice collectively. Yeah, we actually rehearse! And when we did two days ago, it sounded pretty good. Fine enough to go out and do better than last night's band did.

The one thing that we can't directly control, though, is how many people show up to hear us play. I did tell people about the tour, but nobody has told me they will or won't make it to any particular show.