With the Bitter End on the horizon, the same old rat, who was in a drain ditch last week, some how managed to pick himself up and is now dreaming about a new Mazarati. If a flatten dead rat can have dreams, so can we, so we did a little work on our up coming Bitter End gig. Joining us for the night were Lee and Scott on drums and Andy sat out for the night so I had lead guitar duties for the evening. Ax of choice was my PRS, making a late call to the game substituting for the Rags the Guitar which was expected to make to the call. I think this was a mistake in the end as I wasn't as thrill with the PRS through the Fender Deluxe as I was expecting.

Room setup I had us facing each other again but this week with Rich in front of the drumming line instead at the back. I hope the video angels were better this week. Unfortunately, I screwed up with the GoPro camera and lost its use half way through the night. On the positive side, at lead we got Scott camera to work with the nice long HDMI cable. This will offer us a lot of versatility into the future.

Musically, I thought we stared strongly out of the gate with the Bertha, Kevin claimed he had trouble hearing himself over me in the room, bu the recording of the Bertha sounds great and I think we kind slipped there after. Though Rennie claims the Dead ruin blues songs and Kevin hates playing 1-4-5 blues songs and the rest of us have as much blues and suffering in us to leave no authenticity to any of it, the Walking Blues turned out better than I remembered. Loose Lucy was a good solid version trying to get us ready for the Bitter End list, same with Beat It based on 7 for the July 7 jam. Ramble on Rose shall also serve as a warmup refresher for the upcoming. This was had a nice pace to it.

Still working on the Weather Report, our meteorology skills still need some work so we played it twice. Lie a few weeks ago, I didn't want to the play and burn out on the Let It Grow, just wanting to get a few additional swings at the forecast, so I tried get us to go into the Brown-Eyed out of the Weather Report. In the end we weren't able to pull that move, though we should have been able. The ensuing Brown-Eyed was fine. I kind of liked the Cumberland at times when it was likable. Dark Hollow and US Blues were two-too quick throw aways to end the first set about ten to ten. A tie game.

After working on the Morning Dew climb with Kevin before the second set we decided to open the second set with the Dew. As we we still working on it a bit while playing it, the Dew was a bit of a throw away but we made great forward progress on it, well worth tossing this aside. Can't make an omelette without cracking a few eggs. Samson was eh, IMHO and the If I Had the World To Give which followed was under-whelming. Sailor Saint also seem to have a misstep in it through-out. The hardly ever-played Days Between had its moments but too many mistakes through out to be considered all that good. To close the Hell In a Bucket was a bit better than I would have expected going into it. So there it is, up and down. One week you're in a drain ditch, just hanging to not get flushed down the storm drain and the next week you somehow miraculously pick yourself up onto the sidewalk looking to enter into the lease for that sports-car you always dreamed about. The path to the Bitter End will be filled with learning experiences and lots of ups and downs. No reason to worry about as it is expected and the Bitter End will be inevitable.

Freak Out!