This Friday (in two days), Kyle and I are going to perform on the beach in Parksville, BC. Well, that is a tiny exaggeration. We’re playing from 4 til 8 at the Beach Club Resort, and it’s outdoors, just a step or two from the boardwalk on the downtown Parksville beach.

I really have a very rough time trying to play trumpet for FOUR hours. Trumpet players aren’t supposed to do that. Anything that Kyle does to give me a break helps enormously!

We’re kinda hoping that we can start to use Ableton Live 8 for this job. Kyle’s got this very cool outboard controller for the program, the Akai APC 40, that makes it possible to change things on the fly while we are performing. The way I/we have previously done it is to use my computer-generated backing stuff, which sounds great, but is identical each time. The Ableton Live 8 way is the direction we’re shooting for: more fun & more creative.

It’s all so exciting and/but it’s all so new. We need more time to get ready! My grandest hope for this Friday would be to do 3 songs in this new way. Two of them are made of audio loops: In the Groove and Big Funky Mess… The other one is our brand new version of Tequila.

Should be very interesting and hopefully very fun.

Recently, I’ve been pushing the panic button over and over about trying to get prepared for both Friday in Parksville and our “official” debut gig at the Acme Food Co. on July 24rd and 25th. When we were having coffee this morning, Kyle said that the idea of being in a panic zone is totally counterproductive to getting things done. That was quite helpful for me to hear! I totally agree with him. We will get done what we can get done and we won’t get done what we don’t get done. It will be fine.

Have I ever mentioned how wise Kyle can (sometimes) be?