Time to go to Austin and do Summer NAMM. Obviously we couldn’t rehearse, but Brian did the next best thing: He always has a Roland R09 recorder handy, and is into recording our playing. In one instance, this captured a riff that turned into a song. He’s quite the pro, always prepared. No wonder Public Enemy has him as a bandleader.
Anyway, he recorded our “repertoire,” such as it was, and I transferred it to an MP3 player. It was very helpful to be able to listen to the tunes and etch the arrangements into my brain, and I highly recommend this method of working.
Anyway, at NAMM I couldn’t resist telling all my friends about EV2, but even without hearing the music, they “got” the concept. Most people knew about the Digital Les Paul but hadn’t really figured out why it was useful, but after my explanation of using it to generate bass, rhythm, and lead sounds, you could see the light bulbs go on as they realized the potential. That was pretty cool. A lot of people asked if we would have any gigs lined up for Winter NAMM, and I said I was working on it...