Rehearsal – getting back into the groove

We had a full rehearsal on Sunday. It’s the first rehearsal we’ve had in a few weeks as the complete Jack Brag band. All of us have had commitments over individual weekends that didn’t allow us to get together. We had done practices in smaller groups but not as the complete band. I’d like to say that we just jumped right in and played perfectly, but we were a little slow to start off - the first few songs lacked zing. Then things started to click and we were back up to speed.


We’re finishing polishing the last few songs of the Jack Brag album to play live and really working on completing “Those Days,” which we’ll have finished to complete the record in less than 2 weeks. Jim & I played our newly worked out solos in the middle section and we got a good response from the rest of the crew. Things are really coming together and we’re all getting excited to do our first live gig.

Last song on the album

While Jim was over yesterday, we started to work on the last song of the Jack Brag album called "Those Days." The rough outline has been set, but we've been working on finalizing it. This song is going to have the fastest turn around of them all. It's only been a few weeks since it was written and with this rehearsal we tinkered with the middle instrumental section for cello and keyboards (or at least a skeleton). After Jim left, I worked on finishing up the melody for the middle and I hope the band likes it when I play it for them on Sunday's rehearsal. Wish me luck!

The crazy part is that we will be finished recording and we're going into production in only 2 weeks!?! It's been a long journey but it's nice that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel for our debut album. I'm completely jazzed that we're going to get out there to the public to hear all of our hard work - Tony has been the real trouper recording all of us individually, he's really worked incredibly hard to get this all done. Kudos!

Vocal Rehearsal

So, I promised to go back and do some Jack Brag history but there's stuff going on in real time, so I'll discuss what happened today. Even though Jim is doing all the excellent vocals on the recording, I've been convinced to do backup vocals in our live performances. I haven't done any public singing since High School but I'm giving it a shot. I've been singing in rehearsals already but Jim came over to work on vocals with me - it's not always easy but it's been fun. It's just playing and singing at the same time that isn't always as smooth as possible - think rubbing your tummy & patting your head. How many singing cellists do you know anyway? Not many, I suppose.

It has been going real well and we all lucked out that in the song "She Waits" the long held notes in the chorus are one note lower than the highest I can sing... whew. Jim & I seem to have good harmony together so we're pretty happy with the sounds; "Back To That Day" really kicks when we're harmonizing on the final note that goes on & on forever - big breath. I just have to get the coordination of playing/singing down. I'm sure there'll be more on that later...

Jack Brag is on its way

For me, it all started with a message on MySpace. Tony wanted to start a new band - something that had a different sound, something a bit off the beaten track yet familiar, something that felt fresh. Tony had been playing bass guitar with various bands, his last being successful in the tri-state area and he had done some pretty impressive gigs. He thought that a cello added to fairly standard band instrument, but with players with non-traditional backgrounds, would give a different and unique sound.

I met Tony after some e-mail exchanges and we started talking about his thoughts to form a band. I have a classical background with cello and piano so this was really out of the box for me. I'd played backup for an R&B singer a few months before, but have never even really thought about playing rock cello - was there really such a thing? After our discussion, I felt it would be interesting, so he went back and started to pull together some of his songs and write many new ones. He laid down some tracks, playing the structure on guitar, bass (his main instrument) and a drumtrack on his mixer. He played them for me and I really liked what I heard.

Tony had been in contact with Jim, a singer/pianist who's background includes tons of musical theater and band experience. Tony was definitely going for a different vibe and feel than a traditional band. He wanted people that could infuse different ideas than had been done before.

We started to work on our parts, Jim working on the music and lyrics that Tony wrote and I started working on my part to contribute to the songs. All of us wanted a unique sound that would be fun. We began recording our separate parts adding to the texture of the recordings. The album was formally starting and we had the skeleton in place.

Now that things were going we needed to round out the band with live players on guitar and drums. Rich came next. I knew he played guitar but didn't push him to join the band. Tony caught wind of Rich's playing. Nothing can stop Tony when he's got his mind set on something and he convinced Rich to play, much to the delight of us all, as he added a bent of rock ranging from the neo-psychedelic pop to the crazy electronica bands of Europe. Last came Bill on drums, with his background in playing in a punk band. We had been trying for an eclectic mix of people and now we got to see how it all meshed together.

Jack Brag works. I'm not always sure how we pull it together from all of our varied backgrounds but we're created a sound that is all our own. We're still working on the album with a release in just a few months. I decided that I really should document the process of us becoming a band.

So, I'll probably being going backwards a bit to start from the beginning.... or maybe not. We'll just have to see how the blog pans out of our experiences...