Rock the shop in Lindon

Saturday morning I met my new band, Block Party, for the first time. It's headed up by my longtime friend Mark Keele on bass/vocals, Mark "Sensei" Allman on drums (a fellow Cache-Valley-ite), and Chris Henderson on guitar/vocals. That's right, three Marks and ...Chris. We gathered at Lindon Precision, a machine shop down by Geneva Road, to audition for the Lindon City people in hopes that we'd get a gig at the summer Lindon Days city celebration. Keep in mind that the four of us have never played (together) before. Aside from my meager experience, there's probably sixty years of combined playing experience in this band. So I wasn't worried. It's like riding a Tsunami on a Boogie Board, and blowing your kazoo so everyone thinks you're contributing.

So we warmed up for forty minutes or so, and then three stern-faced Lindon City people showed up to hear our stuff. We started with "Gimme Some Lovin'" (wild organ licks!), "Roadhouse Blues" (kickin' harp!) and "Hard To Handle" (The Black Crowes). Then they asked for some CCR and Beatles, so in true Mark Keele fashion, we improvised with flying colors. These other guys have probably played any song you can think of at some time or another, so like I said--ride the Tsunami. I got to play some fun blues harp on "Roadhouse", which is a bit we'll probably stick with in coming performances. Somehow Mark K. had our benefactors laughing, probably by changing lyrics on the fly, which he is famous for.

Bottom line, they said we're the best they've heard, and we got the job! That means we'll be playing on Saturday, August 9th at the Lindon Days celebration right before the fireworks show. Should be a fun deal. We'll even get a professional press kit and photos out of the deal.

The future of Block Party will be to work up a few sets of good old "Classic Rock" tunes in blocks of two or three per artist (hence the name). We'll do the smoky club scene around SLC (Mark calls them "paid practices") until we have our chops, then get some respectable and better-paying work. Maybe we'll get the radio station Arrow 103.5 to endorse us, because of their "block party weekend" theme wherein they play blocks of three songs per artist all weekend.

Interesting side benefit of the audition: the owner of Lindon Precision, Darin Frampton, pulled me aside. He asked me if I would be interested in playing keyboards for the band that backs up his country-singing daughter Brandie Frampton. Brandie is only sixteen, but that girl can warble--check out the website. She has been to Nashville and has recorded a couple of CD's of original music. So I'm going to show up tomorrow for a practice and see if it's something I can pull off. They only need some part-time keyboards for their Utah gigs throughout the year. P.S. I hate country music. P.P.S. I don't READ music. We'll see what happens... :)

Rock on!