Hello all. This is not my first post in this forum. I went straight to the setup and repair questions but it occurred to me that I haven't really introduced myself. Bear with me, this is going to take a while.
When I was 15, my best friend who was a guitarist convinced me to take my lawn mowing money from the summer and go buy a bass. I didn't know if I had any musical talent or not but it seemed like a fun thing to try. So I got a bass I took two lessons. Then he and I found a drummer and started a band. That was when I found out I could sing. And not just sing rock songs either. I found out that I had a freakishly large voice. 2 years later I was an opera major at Boston conservatory. I ran out of money before I ran out of school, had spent the next decade working retail jobs and gigging.
I got married and decided I needed to do something more stable to raise a family, so I went to community college and studied to be an X-Ray tech. Once I was established in my career, we decided it was time to start a family. Due to a combination of factors that didn't happen so we eventually decided to adopt a child. The agency found a little girl for us because my wife wanted a girl, but she had a brother. A very special needs brother. We thought about it and decided we didn't want to see them split up so we took both of them.
Around that same time the band that I was in found a substitute for me because there was a gig I couldn't make and they decided they liked the substitute better than they liked me so I got the boot. With things being so demanding at home, I didn't look for another gig. Nor did I accept their invitation to have me come back after the guy they threw me over for gave them the boot.
Except for the next 20 years I didn't really play at all. I stayed home raising my family and scratched my musical itch by record collecting. I have a nice collection of about 4,000 albums.
In 2018 my wife got a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's disease. The next few years were very challenging. Back in January it became obvious that I could no longer keep her safe at home so the agency that was working with us encouraged me to check her into the emergency room until they could find a placement in a locked memory care unit.
Survivors guilt is real. For the next two months I grew very depressed. I had never been depressed before this was a new experience for me. I had days where I couldn't even get out of bed. I was literally unable to put one foot in front of the other and I would think to myself how stupid it was there's nothing wrong with my legs, but I just couldn't do it. Then one morning in May I woke up and said to God "well, you kept me around for some reason, I guess I better figure out what it is". That night I started looking for a gig. Being a mediocre bassist who can sing high harmonies very well, I've never lacked for work when I wanted it and that continued to be the case. I answered several ads several groups answered me. I screened most of them out before I even met them. I wasn't looking for kids or delusional 50-year-old superstars or people who just want to party and string that off of a band experience. When I found a group of adults that seemed serious like I was I set up an audition.
Earlier today I played a gig for the first time in 20 years. I will post a picture of my rig that I took before we started. It was a lot of fun and I think I sang and played okay too.
When I was 15, my best friend who was a guitarist convinced me to take my lawn mowing money from the summer and go buy a bass. I didn't know if I had any musical talent or not but it seemed like a fun thing to try. So I got a bass I took two lessons. Then he and I found a drummer and started a band. That was when I found out I could sing. And not just sing rock songs either. I found out that I had a freakishly large voice. 2 years later I was an opera major at Boston conservatory. I ran out of money before I ran out of school, had spent the next decade working retail jobs and gigging.
I got married and decided I needed to do something more stable to raise a family, so I went to community college and studied to be an X-Ray tech. Once I was established in my career, we decided it was time to start a family. Due to a combination of factors that didn't happen so we eventually decided to adopt a child. The agency found a little girl for us because my wife wanted a girl, but she had a brother. A very special needs brother. We thought about it and decided we didn't want to see them split up so we took both of them.
Around that same time the band that I was in found a substitute for me because there was a gig I couldn't make and they decided they liked the substitute better than they liked me so I got the boot. With things being so demanding at home, I didn't look for another gig. Nor did I accept their invitation to have me come back after the guy they threw me over for gave them the boot.
Except for the next 20 years I didn't really play at all. I stayed home raising my family and scratched my musical itch by record collecting. I have a nice collection of about 4,000 albums.
In 2018 my wife got a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's disease. The next few years were very challenging. Back in January it became obvious that I could no longer keep her safe at home so the agency that was working with us encouraged me to check her into the emergency room until they could find a placement in a locked memory care unit.
Survivors guilt is real. For the next two months I grew very depressed. I had never been depressed before this was a new experience for me. I had days where I couldn't even get out of bed. I was literally unable to put one foot in front of the other and I would think to myself how stupid it was there's nothing wrong with my legs, but I just couldn't do it. Then one morning in May I woke up and said to God "well, you kept me around for some reason, I guess I better figure out what it is". That night I started looking for a gig. Being a mediocre bassist who can sing high harmonies very well, I've never lacked for work when I wanted it and that continued to be the case. I answered several ads several groups answered me. I screened most of them out before I even met them. I wasn't looking for kids or delusional 50-year-old superstars or people who just want to party and string that off of a band experience. When I found a group of adults that seemed serious like I was I set up an audition.
Earlier today I played a gig for the first time in 20 years. I will post a picture of my rig that I took before we started. It was a lot of fun and I think I sang and played okay too.
