Hey everyone,
Thought I follow up in this. I played the show Friday night, and for the most part, I'd say it went pretty well. The band asked me to keep playing with them, so I guess they were happy with me. I took a lot of the advice ya'll shared, and in reflection, here's some of what worked and some things I'd do different next time.
First, listening to a playlist of the tunes as much as possible was probably the most helpful thing. I learned to sing all the songs that I didn't know well so I'd know when changes were coming, and I got a feel for all the basslines so I would at least capture the essence of it with whatever I did. In fact the last few days before the show, I was just listening and using my practice time to play scales and arpeggios an generally just get my fingers moving (remember, I haven't been playing bass much for the last few years).
The tunes with the most important basslines turned out to be some of the easiest to get through (Stuck in the Middle with you, One Trick Pony, etc.) because well, I just learned and played the lines. Once I got them down, I didn't need charts for those tunes at all.
I should have made simple charts for the many country, blues, R&B tunes that the band does that are all variations on 1-4-5 (with a few 2-5-1 or 6-2-5-1 turns). Individually they're simple and I could do fine with standard country, blues, or walking lines over most of them. But boy, learning that many tunes with similar progressions so fast, eventually, I started to get confused about which tunes had a quick move to the 4 or which ones turned around 5-4-1 vs. staying on the five, etc. Anyway, listening super closely to the band when playing helps a lot with that. Often the vocals or soloist predict where the tune is going.
No doubt, the biggest challenge was that the band plays there own arrangements of most of the tunes. I could only learn their unique intro, changes, hit, endings and such during on our few practices, so I annotated the setlist with notes like "begins with three hits on G" or "goes to a 12 bar for the solos" or "layout for the ending riff" and that was super helpful.
Anyway, probably a lot more I could share, but most importantly thanks again for the thoughts and encouragement.
