My boy Eric reached out the other day, offering up a 2 set cover gig with him and a guitarist. It's a house/private party, evidently hosted by the guitarist, Sid. Pay is $200 and after I saw a setlist, I said, sure, why not?
I'm not doing anything else at the moment and a quick and lucrative project should be fun. Networking opportunity as well.
The setlist is 20 songs. Sid plays in Eb tuning, so everything is down a 1/2 step. It gets a little confusing as he also sings some of the songs in different keys than originally recorded. I was doing music math trying to decipher if a song like U2's "I Will Follow," which is originally recorded in Eb, would then be another 1/2 step down if I tune down to Eb in the first place.
Of course not. Once we are tuned down, then Eb becomes the new relative E, so we are good. But, in the U2 instance, we will play that in E (Eb). Make sense?
There are some songs I don't know at all, like "Late Night Talking" by Harry Styles. Easy enough, but I'm unfamiliar. And then songs like "Copacabana" or "Super Freak," both of which I've heard, but never have played along to.
Sid has sent over clips of him singing with acoustic guitar, so as long as I play to his recordings, I should be good. We won't have time to practice beforehand, so I'll just have to shed and listen extra hard as we play on Sunday. Stay tuned.
