I’m a worship leader, as some of you may know. But this time, I stepped out of my comfort zone. My friend, Josh LaSota, who does primarily Indie Rock music asked me, back in December, to play Bass Guitar for him. I was hesitant at first because even though I’m a musician, I’ve never really had an opportunity to play more of a performance venue before. It had never crossed my mind that I would want to be in a band, but I figured because I had never done it, I might as well try.

Thankfully, Josh had already made all of the songs from his last couple EP’s that we would be doing for the show, so I didn’t have to actually figure out the music parts on my own. The idea behind what I would be doing was simple, learn all of his Bass parts and perform them with the rest of the band. Little did I know, this wouldn’t be as easy as I thought it would be.

Josh’s music is a lot more, “complex”, than the music that I usually tend to play and create. Oh, and I was never that great of a bass player. I could do it, and I could learn it, but it’s definitely not one of my main instruments. So, suffice to the say, I had a lot more on my plate than I originally thought.

Once late January hit, I had slowly begun to meet with Josh to learn the music. Some songs were easy, other songs were very difficult. But I enjoyed the challenge. The date that we decided on for the show was March 25th. Which meant we had 2 months to prepare. As a full time student and part time musician, I realized that 2 months felt more like 2 weeks. With classes and choir tour and a hundred rehearsals and interviews, time sort of, just flew by. And by the week of March 12th I was scrambling to get all of the parts down.

I realized that I knew the songs, but what makes a good band stand out from great bands is the attention to detail and chemistry, 2 things which we were lacking. Something I didn’t mention is that we changed drummers 3 times. And finally ended up with a 4th by the 1st week of the month. So, we definitely had a lot of holes to fill before we could even think of getting in front of a crowd.

2 weeks went by and those were the longest 2 weeks of my life. From rehearsal to school and everything else, things were starting to shape up. We started getting tighter as a band. The stressed started to fade, even though there were a lot of stressful moments, and I was starting to get excited. Posters were going up, word was getting out, and we started sounding good, like, really good.

The week of the show was a long week. Assisting for a Musical on Friday, Auditions and Rock Concert Saturday, Worship and Choir Concert Sunday. My week was jammed pack with classes, meetings and more rehearsals. But at the end of it all, I find myself, right now, with a sudden calm. A calmness that forces me to stop and be thankful that I’ve been blessed to have all of these opportunities.

The show went super well. I want to write something separate on that, but let me end with this. No matter, how tired you may be or how much you may be doing, always be thankful that you’ve been given the opportunity to live. To live another day to play a sport, watch a show, or in my case play in a band.