When you working with professional musicians its not hard to put together a band. I have always said that the main ingrediant for a band is dependability . Its more important than skill. The crew has to be accountable . Once you got that ,i think you are 50% done . The other half is getting along , meshing the personality . Its not easy sometimes to work with different personalities .It takes fun to get along in the band, the next thing it takes is an agenda or a gameplan so that the band can can get some early success. I always start out with a foundation of shared songs that we all can do .Once we run down the list and do the ones we can , then we go back. The next rehearsal we add the ones that we skipped. I'm always aiming at 100 songs as a foundation and then move into original material. I know that seems like a lot but it just makes the group confident to have that many songs to pick from .
I noticed that Mr Pork Chop is a detailed drummer , He has even made reference to me about the number of measures in a particular groove . I have never had a drummer ask me that before. I think its clever to look that close at the grooves so that we can analize our work down to the measure when we need to. I do use charts ,especially when we move into original tunes.
Mr Mac Barnes is a funky styled player, He likes to add syncopation and funk to the patterns that make the songs feel hipper. When doing Old Skool and Blues music it can get predictiable and boring to present the songs just straight ahead so having a little funk to add the style just makes things more interesting. It won't take long before the new crew is ready to roll . Stay tuned there is ChickenBone Reunion coming to your town soon.