09/13/04 07:34 - ID#30400

Spot Coffee - August 9, 2004

Left to Right: Billy, Jay, Dan

Billy

This is a picture taken by our good friend Lee. It was at Spot Coffee for their open mic night about 5 weeks ago. It was our first time playing out in front of people we didn't know. Dan and I had to strong arm Jay into playing that night. We each only had one drink at Crocodile Bar right before we played, ie. not enough to calm anyone of our nerves. We even played a little hacky sac in the parking lot before we went on, something to burn off the excess energy. We finally went on after what seemed like forever. The guitars we played didn't have pick ups in them and we couldn't hear what each other was playing. Two of the three songs we played had solos that I improvised on the spot. The 3rd one I don't even use a pick. My hands wouldn't stop shaking. We made it through all 3 songs and the crowd seemed to enjoy us even though we left out the vocals. The manager of Spot offered to have us come back anytime for cash but we would have to fill 2 hours. I told him that we would get back to him. Later that week, Jay and I bought electric acoustics so we could plug into amps.

Two weeks later we returned to open mic at Spot. This time armed with a bottle of 100proof Southern Comfort and guitars with pick ups. Dan was entertaining a prospective girl and her friends. Jay and I kept running to my car to entertain that bottle of SoCo. We went on much earlier and some of our friends made it out to support us. We did 2 instrumentals and performed "Sunshine" with vocals. It was too funny. I start the song with fingerpicking and then Jay comes in strumming his guitar. The bass comes in when he feels it and then Jay is supposed to sing. It came right to that spot and he looked at me and said he couldn't do it. I told him that he had to, and believe it or not, he fucking did! He was a little quiet at first but found his voice and sang a great version of the song.

Dan, fill in the gaps.

Permalink: Spot_Coffee_August_9_2004.html
Words: 388
Location: Buffalo, NY

09/13/04 07:20 - ID#30399

Dan

It's was a sunny sunday afternoon, and I was pretty tired, gone out the night before, and hadn't gotten any sleep, then I had to work a double at work, and ended up the day at our friend lee's house for a BBQ. I got totally wasted and after the BBQ Bill and Jay had asked me if I wanted to come over and play some music, or as we musicians call it, jam. Now I'm a guitarist by trade, but when we rolled over to Bill and Jay's of course they had the guitars, but bill did have a bass guitar sitting lonely in the corner. Now I've never really played a bass, the notes are the same as a guitar, it has two less strings, I figured I could handle it. So they started playing some of their originals that I had never really heard before. Sounded good to me so I laid a bass riff to it, and there you had it.

I came back the next day on their practice day, which was monday practice. Laid some more riffs down into their songs, and I was officially annexed into the band. Now jay's my room mate and bill's my landlord. It has all the makings of a UPN sitcom, or bad MTV reality show. We'll catch you up on things soon.

Permalink: Dan.html
Words: 228
Location: Buffalo, NY

09/12/04 07:04 - ID#30398

Billy

What's up Elmwood?!

I'm Billy, one of the two guitarists for the newly formed band: North Park Project . I'll give you the run down cuz I am more computer literate than the other guitarist. The band started when Jay, my friend and tenant, started nagging me on a daily basis to jam with him. I used to play guitar for a local hardcore band called Fulcrum. Anyway, I've always enjoyed the acoustic guitar and gave in to him. Never did I realize that we would form a band. We started slowly and I spent more time drinking than playing. I was having trouble keeping up with him at first. He's definitely more talented at the guitar than I. We found that drinking expensive beer was just the ingredient we needed to start writing some decent guitar licks. In a couple of months, we had 6 or 7 unfinished songs. We started playing with other people, mostly friends. We finally got Dan to play the bass and that night North Park Project became a trio. What does that mean? We had buy 50% more beer and cigarettes. I'll let the other guys fill in some of the missing pieces.

Permalink: Billy.html
Words: 197
Location: Buffalo, NY

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