New Horizon: How my 'other side' got a chance to come out and play

So, Last night was the annual 'National Night Out' event hosted in North Las Vegas (NLV) by the North Las Vegas Police Department, it's a cool event that, through my work with the Mobile stage and audio work with the City of North Las Vegas Special Events Department I was introduced to two years ago. Last year Nasty Habits ended up playing a set with about 12 hours notice, the event coordinator called us the day before to see if we'd fill in a spot that had been left open by a band backing out... I had given her my card (for the music/band stuff) the year before while I was running the City's sound system for the evening... The event in NLV is held in a sports park and takes up the entire track area and then some, and draws a pretty good crowd each year (this year being really well attended if you ask me).....

My band, Nasty Habits was scheduled to play, like we did last year, and I was looking forward to it. In the middle of the day Yesterday I got a message that my drummer was not going to be able to make it, and subsequently my guitar player opted out as well.... Now, though I was looking forward to jamming with my mates and was disappointed that at the last minute we had to back out, I came up with a contingency plan...... I had my lovely wife take my bass gear home and grab my acoustic guitar ( I was, after all running sound for the event....) and I told the event coordinator that I would be able to cover the time that we were going to occupy as a band by playing a solo acoustic act... I've not done this in a professional setting before, just at parties, and on my couch at home, in front of my wife, and our cat....

I knew the keyboard player from the band that was scheduled to play before us and knew that they had a full band, so I asked if they would switch time-slots with me, and told them ( and the sound guy who was filling in while I was playing) that they could save a bunch of time if they went ahead and set up while I was playing, as I only needed a small patch of the stage... so there I was, my Garrison acoustic (G-50E) and a mic, I sat on a little folding chair and made my way through 30 minutes of stuff, started off with 'Sittin' on the dock of the bay' and then did some Delbert McClinton, Lynyrd Skynyrd, John Mayer, Marvin Gaye, Eagles and some more Delbert. It went really well and the crowd was really attentive, I actually had a full crowd that really seemed to enjoy my music! Yay me! I figured a nice 30 minute acoustic set would not be the best end-of-the-event type of thing, so I had the other group with the full band finish the night, and it worked out very well!

So now I think my time on the couch might be occupied with adding more songs and getting them down-pat so I can start looking for a few evening gigs here and there as an acoustic solo act, it's a cool different kind of release and may help spark my inspiration to write/create, which seems to have been on hiatus for the last several years!

Check it out, my name is even on the web page for it!!