So last week our mentor came by even though he said he wouldn't be around. That was a pleasant surprise...though he had an alterior motive - he is going to see Steely Dan in August and it conflicts with one of our sessions. Can't blame him there :-).

The other pleasant surprise we had was our drummer brought in one of the singers from her husband's band. He is AWESOME!!! We played Honky Tonk Women, Whole Lotta Love, and Day Tripper with him. It was incredible how much energy that added. He belted out WLL like you wouldn't believe, channeling his inner Robert Plant!! Unfortunately he won't be able to make our open mic this week, but he will make the one in August. That will be an incredible experience sharing the stage with him.

This week our 3rd guitarist will be back after not being around for 2 weeks. I'm concerned about how we are going to fit in a 3rd guitar to some of these songs, but that's really for our mentor to sort out :-). Hopefully he's been practicing in the meantime...

Our setlist for our first open mic this week will be Honky Tonk Women and Day Tripper. I think we are set for 5 songs for our second open mic. The last song we are working on is China Grove and WLL still needs work, so I think adding a 6th song would be a mistake. We may surprise ourselves though.

I am really psyched about playing China Grove. It is such a fun song to play! I still have to learn the 2nd half of the solo, though I have enough of the key elements of the 2nd half down that I can fake it. That takes some pressure off since the worst case scenario is I pull my faked version out. I spent so much time getting the first half down exact, I'm going to try to do the same with the second half. I should have more than enough time.

I'll report back next weekend hopefully with video of our first performance. Wow the time is flying...