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East Tennessee Talkbass

#3,161
I had an opportunity to study music overseas last year - the program would have started in September, and I was registered and paid up in February. We had started planning for it in November 2019, advertised our house as available for rent starting in June (after having some remodel work done to make it more rentable), stored furniture, started looking at apartments in London... half of the fun was going to be obtaining a 1 year visa to tool around Europe in between classes, and we had all kinds of plans. Another third of the fun was getting to play music with interesting, international creative types. The rest of the "fun" was obtaining a Masters degree, which has nothing to do with the way I earn money but I kind of want the sheepskin. :bookworm:

Then COVID. Got my money back and managed to get a one year postponement on my admission to the program. We work from home, and fortunately hadn't made any permanent changes with our client agreements/relationships, so the only tangible fallout from changing plans was that we had sold our freezer and I had to scramble to find a replacement. :D And spend the time to get our stuff back out of storage.

But the program I was looking at is still planning on doing classes via video, and holing up in an apartment in London the size of a postage stamp so I can take classes online, with limited, potentially risky travel besides, doesn't sound like my idea of a good time. So we're not going this fall, either. Kind of depressed about it, but keeping busy with work and a LOT of my own woodshedding and now I'm considering looking at options in the US for the schooling. We'll travel when it's safe. Unless my partner lands in an advanced degree program that she wants to do for 2022, we might just travel for the sake of travel when things settle. MANY countries seem to be really expanding their "digital nomad" visas. Everything we do is digital or via phone.

So there's my COVID story. Picked up a nice 5 string tuned E-C (then another) and I'm studying a bunch of Janek Gwizdala's stuff these days.
 
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#3,163
Jeff Roller said:
We got an exercise bike, gonna try to shed some pandemic pounds and get out there playing more this year.
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I hear you. A rowing machine was a Christmas present to ourselves. Corner of the office:
IMG_20210221_103735853.jpg
 
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#3,164
Jeff Elkins said:
How's everyone doing? Staying warm in East TN?

Received reports from my Nashville family all week about all the snow and ice; it's hit 19 here in Johnson City a couple of nights, but as you know nothing's been sticking up here and the roads have been fine. Not that there's much more than grocery pickup going on with my vehicles! What are y'all up to?
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More notes from Nashville: Temps down in the teens most every night last week and we were housebound for seven days. (I did sneak out once between the two snow storms to go to Kroger which is only a half mile away). It's rare that Nashville gets it worse than east TN, but that was the case. Fortunately, I had just visited my family in Knoxville right before it all hit.
 
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#3,169
Still playing my Dyna Bass at church every Sunday. No gigs for the band since last October and we played that one as a trio. We are auditioning a keyboard player next Sunday instead of adding another guitar. I'm up to a dozen or so basses. Most recent gear action was adding an extension cab to my Mesa Walkabout. It had a 4ohm speaker and the Tech21 bass extension cabinet I bought had an 8ohm 100w speaker. I ordered two 400w 8ohm Mesa Subway speakers and put one in the Walkabout and the other in the Tech21 cabinet. Very happy with the results.:bassist:
 
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#3,171
I just noticed today that East Tennessee Talkbass turned ten years old this year! Jan. 25, 2011. Happy belated birthday, ETTB!

On that Tuesday evening in 2011, I was looking at the "Tennessee Bassist Club" thread, and they were talking up a GTG in Nashville. I thought, "I know there are a lot of us in Knoxville and east Tennessee and we might not want to drive all the way to Nashville to hang out."

I appreciate all you guys, those who I've met and those who I haven't yet. ETTB has been a lot of fun over the years, and it's helped a lot of us here to stay in touch with each other and come out and support each other at gigs. Some small amount of gear has changed hands, and some of us have done work on basses for each other. We did four GTGs, which were fun, and hopefully we'll get more up starting late this year or in 2022! - MVee
 
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#3,172
I have two developments to report in on. First is losing my chair in the church praise team earlier this month. The church is going through hard times financially and made the decision to go to piano-only. So no more guitar, bass and drums. Sad, but we knew it was coming. I was so thankful for being able to get out and play for them every Wednesday, all the way through the pandemic to this point.

Second, I'm actually playing an in-person musical next month! Grace Academy in Karns is doing Sound of Music on May 4-5, and we're in rehearsals now.

I'm sad about losing the church gig, but excited to be playing a theatre show. My last show was the same time last year, also at Grace just before the pandemic started. Not sure when any other theatre will get going again in the Knoxville area this year, hopefully this fall.
 
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#3,179
Pretty chill place. Not as much dancing as I expected, but some. There was really bad fog up on the plateau, I think that kept a lot of folks home, but the 50-60 that were there stayed for every minute of it.

Patriotic place, before the music begins, everyone removes hats, hands placed on hearts, faces the American Flag and sings the national anthem.

Food looked really good, but I had eaten before I got there. Lots of big bad looking hombres in there, but all friendly and one dude bought everyone in the bar shots. We took requests and they tipped very heavily, so I can recommend the place. I think they would have enjoyed more country, but funnily enough, couldn't get enough AC/DC, so go figure.
 
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