I had a couple of gigs over the weekend. On Friday night I was deppinging in Guys and Dolls in Stratford for a friend of mine. He didn’t have time to get any music to me so all I could do was listen to the CD and wing it. Not my favorite way to approach a gig but sometimes that’s the way it goes.

On Saturday I played a gig with a group I regularly dep with called the Soul Vibe Train. As with most soul gigs there’s a fair bit of musical map reading when the singers decide to go off on a tangent but it’s usually alright as you can just follow a horn player who knows what’s going on. Unfortunately for me somehow this ended up being me?!

Despite not really having a clue what the hell I was doing i did know that the only way to handle this was with incredible confidence. The other horns would follow me and the audience would have no idea. Of course I had nothing to base this confidence on (again ) but the gig came off perfectly. It was one of those situations where everything was just going so well I was afraid to think about how it was happening in case I broke the spell

Two gigs, no prep, no clue, DONE!!

The gig went well and as it was with a group I’ve been depping with since college it was nice to feel the improvement I’ve made since then. I’d go into those gigs like a hero back then. Give it everything I had and scream out double G’s all night completely screwing my chops for the next couple of days.

It was satisfying to walk away with fresh chops and know that I nailed the gig.