what do you do when your band runs out of material?

[mcnach]

Well, after last night's rehearsal, we have at least 8 new original songs added to our setlist, so things are looking good. Five were already known by everybody except the drummer, and he's picking them up fast. We haven't played those at least in a year. Three were works in progress that were never gigged. We are probably going to be able to include a couple more... so it looks like we will be doing only two covers, and three mini jams (one per set). One of them worked beautifully last time and people just continued dancing even when we were wanting to move on, so the initial 3min turned to 5-6min... cool

What this is doing to us is make us realise we have TONS of material half baked, and some of it is really good (even if I say so [1]) so we are going to use the momentum to work on new stuff over the following months.

[1] I was a fan of the band before I joined. The core of the band are the three guitarists (yes, three... but don't worry, they understand space ) and they've known eachother since school. Together they have hours and hours of home recordings which we sometimes listen back and discover songs in... so some of the material that I think is great has nothing to do with me (although, of course, my basslines take them to a new dimension ) I simply just like a lot this music.
I also have hours of recordings on tape and the computer... but 99% is pretty uninteresting when I listen to it again a few weeks later.

[Gust0o]

Give it a few months then listen back - I'm normally hyper-critical on the day; bored a few weeks later; but somehow find magic in the mundane months later... Since this thread inspired me to go back and have a listen, I've found more good stuff than I knew we had!

Sounds like you're well on the road McNach