Back in Rehearsals

Rehearsals for The Stantons have started again!  With an almost full compliment of band members in attendance, it was great being back in the warehouse blasting out tunes.

The warehouse.  This is where the band calls home.  It's a pretty bleak and dangerous place, there's one electrical socket that serves several 4 ways daisy chained from it, the lighting is sparse and bits of the roof is missing but nevertheless, we call it home.

We started to go through a few songs.  First up was "Splinter".  The rust was blown away surprisingly quickly given that we hadn't actually played as a band for most of 2012.  Next up was "Moon in the River" and while Neil and I were trying to compensate for Cari's absence by trying to replicate her backing singing, we inadvertently came up with a new way to finish the song.  It still needs worked on and we'll need to hear how it sounds when Cari's back and singing her part but if it works it'll be a lovely way to end the song, particularly live.

The cold was biting hard though and fingers were getting pretty sore so we cranked up the heater, and
decided to warm ourselves up by belting out "Black Train".  This was the first time that Umi had sung this song outwith the recording sessions and it really suits her voice.

The recorded version of this song starts with some pretty awesome accordion breath and guitar feedback which is something that'll sadly be missing live so we tried working out an alternate beginning.

Mark started with some cymbal noise before I then joined in with the main riff.  It's not a million miles away from how we used to play it live but I think it now sounds more defined.  Neil also altered his piano part to try and fill in the blanks that are missing from the record since we won't have the distorted lap steel sound at gigs and all in all, I think it was sounding rather good.

We moved onto "Sweetest Decline" and all was going well right up until the acapella break where we all suffered from a collective brain fart.  Cari starts this break so since she was missing from the night, Mark tried to stand in for her.  Due to a slight pause between the instruments stopping and the singing starting, we all lost track of what key we were supposed to start on.  Sonic pain ensued once the instruments came back in although it took us all a moment to figure out the cause behind the horrendous sound.  At first we all looked at our instruments as if those were somehow at fault before realisation set in.



After that we decided to give "The Shamokin Uprising" a go.  I honestly can't remember the last time we played this song but it may be as far back as 2011!  Not surprisingly, it took a few goes to remember how it all went but it wasn't too long before it all came flooding back.  It was a shame we didn't get around to recording it during the last batch of recordings but it's going to be first in line when we get back to"the studio" (Andrew's rehearsal space) again.

Since we all had fun with Shamokin, we pushed the boat out a bit further and had a stab at trying to remember "Some Festival Love Song".  I had to dig out a very old demo recording that I had on my phone to jog everyone's memory but we gave it a shot.  It's a million years from being ready but there's some really nice sections that I'm looking forward to us getting ready.  In particular Umi and Cari's backing vocals which will be pure pop heaven.  It's a very jaunty, summer time tune and not the usual tale of murder and/or betrayal that we usually come up with!

And that was that!  The first rehearsal of 2013 done and dusted.  Last year was really fragmented and although we managed to record a batch of songs, it's felt like an eternity since we were all in the same room playing as a band so it was a great feeling being back and having fun again.  I can't wait until next week when we do it all again.

Finally, to end this post, there's some news about some gigs we have coming up later in the year.  We've been confirmed to play at The Traverse Sessions on June 3rd.  It's free entry and we'll be doing a 45 minute set.  We've also confirmed a date and venue for our "special" gig.  At the moment, I can't confirm what or why this will be special but details of that will be mentioned once things are a bit more confirmed so for now all I can say is that we'll be putting on a show at The Electric Circus on June 22nd and it will be, er, "special"!

Until next time!