I began attending a ukulele jam about three years ago as an excuse to get out of the house and down the pub on a school night. I soon realised that I wanted to do something more musically creative than strumming along to the same songs every week that had been forcefully shoe-horned into the key of C for ease of playing.
I met our singest/harmonica/baritone player at the jam, we got on and he mentioned that he had a bass guitar at home that he had never bothered to learn to play, and he would happily lend it to me, along with a small combo, if I wanted to give it a go. I ummed, ahhed and procrastinated for about a year before taking him up on his offer. It soon became apparent that if I was to make any real progress I was going to need to begin playing with other people, so the singest, a drummer that we knew who also played guitar, and I got together for a couple of informal, beer-fuelled jams. A twenty-minute slot in a multi-act musical evening presented itself recently and we decided to go for it. It went pretty well, we enjoyed it and we’ve got a few future dates pencilled in off the back of it.
To this day though not one of us has ever actually said “shall we form a band?” I’m assuming I’m in one, but not entirely certain.