Happy New Year!

Oi. No more shots of Dewers on an empty stomach. Last night the orchestra played a big band set from 11:30 to 12:30 on the promenade including a rousing chorus of that new years song that I don't know how to spell or pronounce. I've never seen the promenade so packed and full of excitement. At the end of our set a lot of people were coming up and taking pictures with us and some ex military captain guy bought the whole band drinks because we had played a song he requested. It all was pretty special. Pretty special, indeed. 

The family is gone now, but it was nice having them on board for the week. I got to eat a lot of good food thanks to my family's guest privilages, but now its back to eating at the staff mess for every meal.

Overall, I'm pretty glad the holiday season is over now. We had to do a lot of really stupid, unorganized christmas music concerts and we often had very little warning of when they were coming up. So now its back to our old schedule of basically one easy concert a night and maybe a rehearsal here or there.

I've been talking to the guys in the pop classics cover band Pryme Tyme about playing bass with them and they seem very open to it because until now they've been playing along with a midi bass track. I'm going to start with maybe one 8 song set and slowly build up until I know their whole repertoire. They have a total of like 6 hours of material so that may take some time. In any case it will be really nice to get some bass playing done. Trumpet is too hard.