our drummer got a night job, pretty much effectively ending his tenure in the mighty bonefish. we hemmed and hawed for about two seconds and then bought a drum kit for our rhythym player and started booking gigs as a three piece. you know, i've always resisted the idea of playing in a trio, but after three weeks of intense rehearsal and an incredibly smooth debut gig i wonder why we didn't do this five years ago. of course, five years ago we weren't the musicians we are now. Jimmy, the "new" drummer, has particularly amazed me. never played drums before, ever, and after three weeks practice he played four fourtyfive minute sets and naver missed a beat. maybe not a big deal to some virtuoso types, but i know i sure as hell couldn't have done it.
and the whole three piece dynamic is a freakin' blast. our sound is so clean and punchy, i get to turn my reverberocket up loud enough to hit the sweet spot, yet everybody can hear eachother so much better, and we're actually listening to eachother again (after 4-5 yrs w/ the same (4/5 pc.) lineup playing the same songs we had a tendency to play on autopilot) . of course, being able to hear everything makes the clams that much more obvious, so less room for error, but that's kinda a good thing. i know i've spent more time practicing in the last month than i have in the last two years.
and another bonus is that dealing w/ two other guys is simpler by an order of magnitude than dealing w/ three or four others. and these two are the guys i started this band with, so we go back about ten or twelve years. even though i kinda miss "weaving" (as keef calls it) with another guitar player i think this is gonna work!
p.s. anybody get the quote in the thread title?