Varnish star logo and name
facebook iconyoutube icontwitter iconinstagram icon

2013-01-05 With Open Arms

Hey! There's a little more in here this month than was in the newsletter. Someday, I'll sort out the right mix of overlap and original material between the newsletter and the blog. Hopefully, that will be right about the time i'm paying someone to tell me things like that. Ha!

If you follow us on Facebook or Twitter, you have likely already guessed that there's still no bassist. But!

Make no mistake; we're moving forward. We are determined to hunt down our magical bassist solution in 2013. We are determined to keep building new songs (ready just to have the bassist add their bits). We are moving forward and working hard and embracing the possibility of 2013 with open arms.


See? Arms wide! There's room in these arms for our lovely fans as well. Give us some cuddles! We're so grateful for your support and hope to keep making music you love.

As you might imagine, all the things that went on with bassists in 2012 sometimes made it feel like a completely wasted year for me musically. We humans are prone to such silliness, to not seeing what we did accomplish in the face of not accomplishing everything we wanted. So, I'm now going to practise what I preach to others in such situations. I'm going to tell you some of what we did. Among other things, this year:

  • We posted something new for you every Saturday but one once we chose to make that our thing. (And the Saturday we missed was the very last one of the year, for which we had plans that were ruined by illness.)
  • We sent a newsletter the first day of every month once we decided to get back to that.
  • Even with the stepping down of our first bassist, the time spent to find and train a replacement, and the disappearance of the replacement, we managed to play 3 shows. Considering we only actually had a bassist for a few months, we're going to call that okay. (But, don't worry, we'll get back to more shows once we get back to having a bassist!)
  • We've got about half a setlist of new songs just waiting for a bassist to come finish them up, with bits for many more new songs right behind. If making music is our job, we've not been derailed.
  • You probably won't know what a big deal this was unless you were also a band with needs like ours living in this city this year, but we got into a new practice space after the abrupt closure of our previous facility. I did a serious victory dance when we got this sorted.

It won't go down as our most productive year, but we didn't let the hurdles stop us (and there were plenty of them). And as soon as we clear this bassist hurdle, we'll be running full speed. (Plus, there's loads of time put into all sorts of maintenance and trying to stay engaged. Even in a slow year, I spend hours every day on music. I think I feel better about 2012 now. Heh.)

For 2013, we'll keep up with newsletters and weekly posts. We'll find a bassist. We'll get back on stage. We'll get a new setlist worth of songs done. We'll start doing our happy hours with you lovely people again. And there are other things I'd like to sort out doing, but I don't want to make any announcements until things are headed toward completion.

Are there other things you'd like us to work on this year? Are there things you'd like to see or read about in this coming year? Send us an email and let us know, lovelies.

xxx
Amber

Already a Facebook fan but feel like you're missing updates? Read this note about changes you may need to make now that Facebook has made its own changes.


More

+