TrevorR

I guess that I’ve been a bit derelict in my duty of keeping y’all up to date with how things are going on the worship team… well, I guess I’m now officially on the worship rotation, playing two evening services a month - the first and last. It’s with two different worship leaders with quite different styles. One leads from the grand piano while the other brings his own Nord keyboard to lead from. They both choose a nice range of choruses, drawing from more contemporary stuff but some oldies and oldies, which is great. The “cult of the new” in worship gets kinda tiring and there are many fantastic songs which were written ages ago. I like the mix. It’s our local(ish) Anglican church and the evening services is more of a modern format with just the band leading worship. Morning is a family-based service, again with a worship band and the traditional, organ-led hymnal stuff is done at a 9AM traditional service. The bands are similar - leader on keys/piano, a couple of singers, bass, drums acoustic guitar and occasional other instruments - in particular a saxophonist. All a really nice bunch. There are a couple of other leaders but I think they mostly play the morning family services. It’s hard for us to get to those as we’re ferrying our teenage boy to and from his theatre classes on a Sunday morning. The set list for the 26th October was as follows: Start 1. I could sing of your love forever (F) 2. Firm Foundation (He Won’t) (C) 3. Hallelujah (Be High and Lifted Up) (Eb) Response Song 4. New Wine (C) Communion Songs 5. Trust in God E 6. Only By Grace C End 7. The Potter's Hand G 8. Living for Your Glory C The following week, 2nd, it was… Start Break Every Chain Bless God Waymaker Response song I Will Offer Up My Life Salt & Light End Give Us Your Courage Worthy Really looking forward to getting to know everyone better (musically and personally) as I play with them more. Nice to have found a new spiritual home where we feel at ease.

Two separate Jams this last week. A bass player chum has started a monthly Country Jam in Staines which is very convenient for me. It was their second one last Thursday and so I brought my bass along. Got to play quite a few songs - 5 I think - as there was only me and Chloe who were there. Another bass player who had arranged to play couldn’t come along so I got a couple of his. Fortunately they have a broad definition of “country” which embraces Americana and stretches as far as 70s Fleetwood Mac so it’s not all tassels and stetsons… Though I’d be lying if I said that there weren’t a few who come along suitably attired. The songs I played included Tulsa Time (a blend of Pistol Anni and JJ Cale in style), a Teddy Thompson tune, a rootsy version of “You’re Still the One” and a Chris Stapleton song. Nice atmosphere so I think that it’s going to be a regular one. Last night was our regular Monday Night Jam in Woking - this time a blues focused night (in the loosest terms, of course). I ended up playing on three songs (She Does It Right - Dr Feelgood, me singing on that one too; Julie London’s jazzy version of Blue Moon and Rory Gallagher’s Bad Penny). I also got asked to sing Fire by Jimi Hendrix (that’s blues, right?) which was a lot of fun. She Does It Right was a lot of fun. I’ve wanted to do some Feelgoods stuff for ages and this seemed like a good opportunity. Bad Penny suffered from typical jam night issues. The singer seemed to be singing a different version of the tune, different meter/tempo, or maybe a different song (a perennial problem with that singer) - which would have been fine but the guitar player stuck rigidly to the chords sheet he had written down rather than listening to the singer and adapting to what he was singing. I needed to go over and say “He’s still doing the verse again!” and help guide him through. It was still fun to play though. Love that song as it was one of my late brother’s faves. And can I just say how much I LOOOOOVE my Sandberg. Such a nice bass to play. ❤️ Our next “theme night” is our Christmas one so I have about a month to hatch my dastardly plan - a Christmas version of… WAR PIGS!!!! God bless The Barenaked Ladies.

…sounds like a particularly saucy euphemism! 🫢😳😲

Sorry all, some last minute stuff has come up which means that I won’t be able to be there tomorrow. Have a fun day, all. So sad to miss it.

Fantastic - that’s going to be epic. Love PSB. Enjoy (like you’re not going to! 🙄🤦‍♂️🤣)

Preach it Brother! 👍 No desire to guy any of my basses either!

Nice! And Jodi Linscott on percussion if I’m not very much mistaken!

I’ve not had my Sandberg tweaked since I got it in January so a set up for it would be great. I’ll bring some new strings for it. @NancyJohnson also happy for it to go in the blind shoot out.

He had several (surprise surprise). A friend of mine now owns John’s Wal JG bass - which he bought at the original Entwistle Guitar Collection auction.

Seen a lot of folks complaining on various forums that Ticketmaster did their dynamic pricing trick with the tickets for the US gigs, so they were booking and the prices of the tickets in their baskets kept going up and up in front of their eyes…

Don’t want to be a prophet of doom, but just a warning that there are extensive engineering works on the local railway lines on the 9th. It will be replacement buses running on the Reading - Waterloo and Guildford-Reading/Ascot lines. So plan extra time if you’re coming that way, or see if you can arrange a lift. ☹️ https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/engineering-works/staines-reading-woking-and-ascot-guildford-20251109/

Vincent - Don McLean

By the way, Worship Together’s website is a good resource. With a free membership account there are loads of chord charts available for a load of worship songs including in ChordPro format…

I’ve got the old bought OnSong app and love it! Have used it extensively over the years. However, I hate the idea of subscription software so have never “upgraded”.But I’ve noticed that certain functions have started to fall away for it. You used to be able to search for songs generally on the web and that’s stopped working recently. But like orders I’ve got a large library which I’ve built up over the years and also just create my own files using the internal editor.Which is t so hard when you get the hang of it. There are a few ChordPro / pdf compatible apps out there and many are free so not a bad idea to check them out.

So I’m now officially on the worship team rota at our church - which is so great. Looks like it’ll be once a month for the evening service, plus some ad hoc fill ins. Right now that really suits me right now. It’s also good that the regular band has a really good drummer who is a joy to play with (the previous two times I was asked to play he was on). So that’s a result. It was a lovely communion service this evening with an absolutely cracking set of songs. The running order was: To open: 1. Gonna Trust in God, in E (CCLI 2737744) 2. Here for You, in F (CCLI 5925649) 3. Better is One Day, in D (CCLI 1097451) Response songs: 4. I Will Offer Up My Life, in D (CCLI 1083764) Communion: 5. Trust in God, in E (CCLI 7206001) 6. Goodness of God, in A (CCLI 7117726) To Finish: 7. Lord I Lift Your Name on High, in E (CCLI 117947) 8. This is Amazing Grace, in E (CCLI 6333821) It was really great fun to play and all the team are great folks. With a female pianist and vocalist leading there were lots of songs in keys different from the recording but they were easy enough to change and worked fine. When we started rehearsing “Lord I Lift Your Name on High” bashed out a piano riff and asked, “Trevor, could you start with this?” So I said, “Ah, we’re going full ‘Steve Miller Band’ are we?” to which she grinned. So that song began on bass and drums with the bass riff from “The Joker” 🃏🤣 Next time she wants to do a tune which fits with the bass line from “You Can Call Me Al”!!! Played my lovely Sandberg VM4 through the house Warwick amp. Sounded great. Can’t wait for next time!