Yep, you read that title right. Building our house was one of the most stressful years of my life. Don’t get me wrong; they were all First World problems, but they were problems, nonetheless.
I immersed myself in alcohol—anything I could do to distract me from all the shit that was going on in my life. I also was in full-force mode with a company expansion, as I had purchased 51% of a network company and invested 49% into an electrical company to expand my services to my clients. I was living in a rental while overseeing the construction of our home and managing roughly 14 people in all three companies, and still WAITING to get this Deep Shallow Band thing off the ground. We had no place to rehearse, so we all kept chatting about what it was going to look like once we got together and jammed. It was week after week of me calling the guys half-shit-faced, just to dream a little about what we had coming.
In September of 2022, it became realistic that we could move into the house by the first week of October, so we began thinking we could begin rehearsing sometime later that month or in November to prepare for some spring and summer shows and a possible December 2023 studio session. Then, out of nowhere, a couple of my good friends, Scott Donaghy and his brother, Kyle, contacted me about The Deep Shallow Band headlining an Octoberfest concert for charity. Kyle is the founding member, singer, lead guitarist, and overall leader of Matone. Matone is the band that organizes Mayfest, and we have played with them on multiple occasions. If you recall, their drummer and bass player combination is the original one that helped me get back on stage with The Deep Shallow Band as a full unit. Though I appreciated them thinking about us, The band actually only existed conceptually at that point, as we had never rehearsed.
I told Both Kyle and Scott that we were not prepared to headline the show but could maybe pull off playing at some point before the headliner. What I didn’t tell them was we had absolutely ZERO fucking rehearsals among us and Trey had NEVER heard any of the new originals. I called all the guys and presented it to them, making them promise to give me FOUR rehearsals. They agreed, and we were OFF to the races!
At this point, Mike and I had an acoustic gig we were trying to get ready for as well. But I needed to get Trey up to speed as fast as possible, so I began driving to his place in Asheboro, North Carolina, with my acoustic while he played his electric kit, and we started woodshedding (that’s musician lingo for rehearsing live). I did this twice, and then Mike came with me to meet Trey and get a feel for what was in the works. I wish I would’ve taken multiple pics of the smile on Mike’s face while we were jamming with Trey. More on that later.
Next, Rob came up from Huntersville, North Carolina, and jammed with us. We needed to see what the rhythm section would sound like and how it was going to work together. The house was finally built, and we were able to pull off ONE almost-full band rehearsal (with Chip living in D.C.), and then we played the gig. Oh—and I forgot to mention—we ended up headlining anyway, so this was either going to ROCK, or it was going to be a total SHIT SHOW. Can you say “Make-or-break moment”?????????????????????