Music – Page 7 – The Destinators

Three weeks in

We’re now through the third of our scheduled stops and our third week on the road.

From Lewiston, ME we headed over to West Gardiner for a drive-by jam session with my friend Wilbur (aka “Cowboy”) from Blues Guitar Unleashed. This was the inaugural music stop on the trip and the first field test of the suitcase drum kit. We’re calling it an unmitigated success. Wilbur and Naomi are also RV’ers, so we had a lot of (non-musical) notes to compare, as well. We all had a great time, and Sue and I very much enjoyed getting to know Naomi and Wilbur in a closer and quieter setting than the big jam sessions where we’ve met before.

We didn’t get any photos (still working on developing effective travel-blogging routines and habits!), but Wilbur got a couple of us:

The Load Out

Maybe the hardest part of packing up and hitting the road is what we’ll leave behind. One of these is this band. Doug and I have been the rhythm section in an ensemble we call the Ira Friedman Project, a group of amateur musicians ‘with a collective obsession for music making’ (piano-man Rob’s words) who have been playing music together twice a week for 6 months. Sure, it’s allowed us to improve our musicianship and expand our repertoire, but it’s also been outrageous great fun and has led to a magical bond among new friends.

As we head out looking for jams around the country, we’ll be missing playing with Rob, John, David, Charlotte, Sally – and of course ensemble organizer, band director and musical coach Ira Friedman.

Guys, we promise to keep playing and learning and jamming while we’re ‘on the road again,’ and the West Hill Sessions can resume in November. Thanks so much!

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RV drum kit

People have asked…

Yup, we probably could fit a full size drum kit into the RV. But then we’d have to bring a tent to sleep in, and that’s not gonna happen.

I found this concept on the internet, accumulated the odd, used and spare parts over the past year, and built my RV drum kit. Test drove it last night. It’s perfect!

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A good sign?

When people ask where we’re going on our upcoming adventure, we honestly say ‘we don’t know.’ What we do know is that where ever we go, we’ll be looking for opportunities to play music with others. Not quite sure how we’ll find the others – we figure we’ll figure it out…

So we stored the RV for the winter in a hangar at the little local glider airport. When we stopped by to retrieve it, we were chatting with Paul, the pilot who owns the hangar. He naturally asked where we were going and got excited at our usual response. ‘Hey, I play bass!’ Two hours later, we were jamming at the house…

Here we are day minus 30 plus or minus of the adventure and we’ve already had our first RV-related jam session! Guess it won’t be that hard… A sign of things to come?