handwritten-yo-blog

[handwritten-yo-blog]

day 1. “never stick too close to your dreams”

I feel amazing. top of the world.

 I've got that "new start" feeling you get when you go on the first date with a girl that you'll likely think of for the rest of your life. 

I am sweaty, I am smiley, I am stoked. 

All I've ever wanted since breaking up my high school band in 2009 when we all moved away, was to get sweaty and excited and sound good playing loud. I've stuggled. I had a project in uni that was a lot of fun but only played a handful of gigs (though we did record a release I am very proud of). After that I spent years holding back my dreams while playing accordion in a bluegrass band. A few years ago I started getting the desire to get loud again and about a month in to me putting serious thoughts to writing punk songs, they kicked me out. Great timing really. 

I worked a summer for my father at the Star Track courier company, driving around cranking bands like Foley and Camp Cope on the stereo and writing songs in my phone down the highway as i delivered 4wd light bars to rural farms. I moved down to melbourne with big dreams of finding great musicians to start a band with, and two years later now and that dream was never realised. 

I met a double bass player who played for a friends band and had him record on a couple of my EPs, and I continued gigging with my fiddle player hannah. After taking my friends band "this is a robbery" on tour, I began jamming with his rythym section, two brothers from Taroona in Hobart. It sounded good, so I moved down to hobart. It wasn't my dream of being a band in melb, but it was only a one a bit hour flight from being that dream. 

We tried to jam every week but only jammed about once a month. It was okay, but it wasn't great. The rehearsals were often marred by hangovers or the bass players dog running off in to the bush and the search for it taking up all our rehearsal space time. We learnt a small handful of songs and played a few shows that were always energetic and amazing, but never tight and impressive.  I constantly made plans in my note book along the lines of "we'll rehearse all through january and I'll book studio time for march" that would then be overwritten with "we'll rehearse all through july and record in august" and after two years of that and the drummer joining a band that more suited his style, I gave up propositioning them for rehearsals.  that brings us to now. I got back from Hobart a week ago and brought my hobart friend Ella up with me to cruise around Melbourne going on dates and seeing a perth friend of ours who was here. On the last day of Ella's week up here I took her to do my favourite thing- aimlessly walk through suburbs noticing things about the space and once your legs give up, jump on public transport back home. We walked from footscray to williamstown and were having a blast, in the highest of spirits after putting up a fake "toilet" sign on a wooden door we found near the peir that was definitely not a toilet. the perfect prank. 

We were sat down at a swanky joint on the coast, having just ordered expensive pizza and cocktails having thought we were getting a good deal seeing the happy hour sign that was left out even though it was not a weekday (and hence not a happy hour). I checked my phone and was excited to see that some people I half-know had tagged drummers that they half-knew on the FB post I had made earlier in the day that read "Melb drummers, get at me". Really it was half meant in jest, as every one knows that its impossible to find a drummer in melbourne who isnt already in eleven other better bands. I'd made this post many times before and always found diddly squat luck. I didn't expect to this time and the first comment I got was "this is a tough one hey, best of luck". I and the two other people who liked that comment knew it to be true and couldnt agree more. 

Little did I know I would find some success. SIx years ago I was in Lismore, studying music at lismore southern cross university and dating a girl who I was utterly infatuated with. We'd go to every little community event, market, gig or talk we could and found ourselves at the unibar gig of a brisbane band called The Clues. We were the only people there who stood near the stage, enjoyed it and had a boogie. After a brief chat with the memebers we said seeya. I went to a another gig of theirs a few weeks later in Byron bay and drunkenly talked further with them. Lovely guys. Cool band. they broke up not too long afterwards, but I drunkenly added on FB the guitarist who I found particularly pleasant to talk to. 

Not having spoken to the guitarist since really, he commented on my post, tagging his Brisbane mate who moved to melb a few years ago. I just so happened to have met this mate of his at a Purplene reunion show a couple years back when I first arrived in Melbourne and went to the show alone. He and I drunkenly sang words towards each others faces and bonded over how wonderful it was that Purplene broke their 20 year hiatus to return for a one-off show at the old bar. We added each other on facebook, briefly noted that we shared a mutual friend in the clues guitarist and left it at that.  The drummer tagged, Ty, hit me up to send him some demos and I did. it was an ever such succinct chat. 

-hey dude, chuck me your tunes. 

then

-they sound good dude, wanna come round tomorrow night to try them. 

then 

-sweet as, heres my address, see you at six thirty. 

I read these messages while eating the tastiest vegetarian (half side cheese) pizza and downing a marzapan flavoured cocktail called the GodFather. I was pretty excited about this and remained excited for the next 24hrs. The day passed both quick and slow and I drove myself in the rain with my useless old wiper blades from footscray to Brunswick east. I arrived half an hour early and was busting to piss. I wandered around in the rain looking for an alleyway to use, got quite wet, found a spot and was glad to have had a way to pass the half hour that wasn't just sitting in the car excitedly nervous. 

I knocked on the door, met Ty's lovely partner Jazzy and the small old blind dog. The rehearsal room was warm and I was offered a list of drinks "would you like a beer? a wine? a tea? a coffee? we've got juice, you could have a cordial" and I said I'd love a beer. I was then given a list of all the different beers they had and told I could ask for whatever I wanted. I wasn't sure what to say and I said I was happy with anything. Jazzy came out holding an armful of different beers against her and I was delighted to see a stubbie of Tooheys Old. I delightfully picked that one and both Jazzy and Ty agreed that it was a very good choice. 

We got straight to rehearsing and it was the most instantanous and impressive song learning I had ever been a part of. Really wonderful accents and fills in all the right places. I had a really good time and we worked through all of two new songs that I have written. I'm commented on how easy and profficient the songs were coming along and Ty replied "yeah, I'm old hat at doing this". I sweated through my shirt, bopping on my toes as i lost my voice and gave Ty the eyes whenever the tricky to remember little-fill was about to come up.  We worked through the outro of the last song and then went out the back for Ty to have a smoke. We talked about Steven the Magpie that he raised from baby and now lives in the park next door and comes over each morning at ty's whistle. We talked about possums and how the cats and dogs he owned were too old to have any luck hunting them. He showed me the massive old rear-projection TV in the back garage that he found on curbside, and then we scheduled another rehearsal for next week and I set off home, listening to the recordings we had made on my phone. 

I told Ty that I was keen to record these songs as soon as we got them tight and he is keen as well. About a month ago at a Hard Aches show, Ben David said he was interested in hearing my new songs and would be interested in helping me get them recorded. Awfully kind of him and I hope to take him up on that offer in the future. He's quite a busy person though and I am very impatient with my need to get these new songs out, so I will be looking into all posibilities of studios to get these songs recorded. I'm excited to begin rehearsing with my double-bass player Matt and have the full band release I've always dreamt about. Just gotta keep at the songwriting slog hoping good ones happen, and continue rehearsing with Hannah, Matt and Ty. 

I'm going to try to keep a journal here of the progress. I may also make it a zine. "Handwritten" is a possible name for the band, due to my affinity for handwritten journal keeping, letter writing and list making. I wanted this here post to be hand written and scanned, but i have other things to do tonight and was worried I wouldn't get this all out in time before if escaped my memory like everything does so quickly these days. 

This will be an interesting trip, as i think the musicians journey is often kept secret to create hype and suspense and make it look effortless. Its not effortless and it takes up so much of me trying to make this happen. Join me to see whether we find any success this time or I fail gloriously in public view of this blogs readers.