Exposure is a good thing

Boy, when things start improving, they really improve! When I last left you, Johnny was on the mend and we'd had a lovely lakeside gig to get things moving in the right direction again. In the week since then, things have only gotten better!

On Tuesday, July 24, we were notified by Reverbnation (see my Reverbnation review if you're not sure who/what that is) that The Staylyns would be one the site's 10 featured bands on their home page for the following week - EXCITING!! In case you're not sure what the big deal is, RN has nearly 2.5 million artists, and they get 25 million visitors per month, so to be selected among all of those artists for that kind of exposure is just phenomenal. We're so very grateful! Here's a photo of us in the primo spot on their home page:

Back on track

It appears our luck is finally back on the upswing. Johnny's ankle is improving; he has replaced his old, dead phone with a long-desired iPhone; and we had two really great shows this past weekend.

The first of the two shows was a Friday afternoon electric bike rock n' roll tour. I think there may be a song in that name. It sounds kind of Beatles-esque, circa 1967. But I digress. The gyst of the gig is that Joe and Johnny took a group of five guys on a tour of the city, sightseeing the city's iconic rock 'n roll sights (like the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue and Victory Grill), atop Pedego electric bikes from our most favoritist electric bike shop, Rocket Electrics.

After cruisin' the sights and, no doubt, charmin' the bejeezus out of their charges, the boys then entertained them with a short rooftop concert with a skyline view:

It started with rain

It's been a helluva week. Weather calamity. Injury. Even (dare I say it?)...death. Yeah, you read that right. Somethin' died. So, don't even think your week has been bad. Just read about ours, tell us what troopers we are for soldiering on, then go buy our CD or something.

It started on Saturday. We were scheduled to play at Little Woodrow's in Bee Cave. On our way out to the venue, we saw a few clouds here and there. They seemed to be dropping some rain in the distance, but the weather reports said it would all fade out by around 8:30pm. We were set to play at 9:00, so that should have been manageable.

We got completely set up. All that was left was a sound check. And then I looked up, and saw this:

Okay, that's not actually what I saw - I didn't have time to snap a picture of the storm that was descending on us at that moment. So that photo is just a really cool photo of a supercell. But the storm that swept over us had the same basic elements: rain, wind, clouds. And when I say I didn't have time to take a photo, I'm not kidding. I saw the cloud approaching, pointed it out to Johnny, and we immediately started putting out tarps next to all of our gear.

Back in the saddle

We played our monthly gig at Junior's Icehouse last night, and it was SO fun! It wasn't just that we had a good crowd (we did), or that the show itself went well (it did), or even that it was National Fried Chicken Day (it was - I had some fried chicken quesadillas to celebrate); it was also just that fact that we were back on stage after a week and a half.

It wasn't a planned break - it's just how our gig schedule worked out, but it was a nice break, and it was even nicer to get back to it last night. It's amazing how when you start playing every week, sometimes several times, taking just a week and a half off can feel like an eternity. Getting back to work last night at Junior's felt great!

It's good to take breaks, since life has a way of piling up on you when you're in constant motion. Sometimes you need to stop, get off the hamster wheel and take care of "stuff." I doubled-up on my break by also taking some vacation time from my day job, and I got a lot of "stuff" done. It felt great!

And a week and a half or so is a good period of time for a gig break, because it's enough time to let you stop and breathe, but not so much time that you get rusty.

It probably sounds crazy that you get rusty after just a few weeks of not playing, but it happens fast. You suddenly can't remember how a song starts, or you get to the second verse of a song, and you start singing the first verse again. You know these songs, and it actually surprises you when everything doesn't just come by rote.

But you get warmed up and get going and everything is fine, as long as you shake off that initial feeling of "What just happened?" when the brain fart catches you off-guard. You can't let it get to you or your whole show will be blown.

I've heard that golf is the same way - that you have to do it all the time to stay sharp. I don't play golf, so I can't vouch for that, but that's the word on the street. The homies say it all the time: "Golf, man. You gotta stay on top of that shit." So, I guess I'm saying that playing music is not like riding bike, which apparently you never forget, and it is like playing golf...which honestly sounds nothing like playing music, so I don't know what you guys are talking about with this golf thing.