MandiMartinMusic.com

The sun was starting to set as the first day of daylight savings time was heading into evening. Nick and Pep (Nick’s very cool roommate) arrived a little early to help me re-set some of my hard-to-reach clocks in the house, change a very hard-to-replace light bulb and get ready for Nick’s very first session rehearsal with Voyce McGinley, III and Paul Marshall. Nick has been hard at work for several weeks, refining his songs before we go into the studio. The time had finally come to test them out with live musicians!!! Yea!!!

I headed out for a few minutes with Pep to Trader Joe’s to pick up a treat for when the rehearsal was all over and Pep, being the electrical genius he is, offered to replace the light dimmer in my family room that had recently stopped dimming! So he dropped me at T.J’s and drove around to the other side of the mall to Home Depot to find the perfect replacement dimmer.

When Pep and I returned from our shopping excursion, Voyce had already arrived with his wife Nancy and was all set up and ready to go. It wasn’t long after that, Paul Marshall arrived and, within minutes, music was in the air! And, before the guys were done working out the first tune, Pep had replaced my dimmer! Talk about multi-tasking!!!

Our biggest concern for the first rehearsal was to make sure the charts were right and to find the best tempos and grooves for each of the six songs we will be recording. And, of course, this was the first time for this configuration of musicians and so this was their bonding time! Needless to say, it went great!

About half-way through the evening, Papa John’s delivered and everyone’s energy was replenished for the last three songs!

I couldn’t be happier with the way the night went. I think everyone felt the same way. We ended it all with some great minature cheese cakes from T.J.’s and the cars and truck were loaded and the first night of daylight savings time had come to an end!