When I started putting this project together, I knew it wouldn’t be simple or easy. I didn’t, however, think that finding a lead guitarist would be this much of a pain in the ass. “Back in the day” when I was in other bands, lead guitarists seemed to be coming out of the woodwork and now, I can’t find one that’ll stick.

We’ve had a few people come down and try out (and even more just not show up) but for whatever reason, they tend to disappear after the audition. With the exception of one guy, none of them followed up on my thank you e-mails. Not even a “no thanks” or “not interested”.

I tell ya, it’s been well over 10 years since I was in a band and I really don’t miss some of the jerks out there. We even had this one guy reply who told me it’s not worth his time to come down if he’s not going to be the ONLY audition that night and have the whole two hours of our rehearsal time - that we’re paying for. Keep in mind that in the “real world” auditions last all of about 15 minutes. I don’t miss that whole “ego” thing, that’s for sure.

Anyhow, as you can see we still need to fill this one slot. I’ve become quite frustrated and mentally exhausted in dealing with the ads, the replies, the flakes, the auditions and everything else - so I put it on the other guys to give it a shot. Now I can bitch at them a little instead of the other way around. Sweet revenge.

Of course, the ghost of Jack - the guy who was originally supposed to be in the band before he bailed on us 2 days before the first practice - has returned. Pete keeps dragging his ass back into this somehow so we’ll see how that goes. I can’t say I’m 100% behind this notion yet but we have no one else and he can play lead pretty well from what I can gather. I just have this bad premonition that 4 months down the line he’ll up and walk or start missing rehearsals or something that’s going to put us right back here again, looking for a lead guy again. Hopefully that won’t happen.

As for the rest of things, they’re going just fine. The songs are sounding better, we’re all improving, and it’s starting to sound like a real band now.

So what are we called? Nothing, yet. We keep throwing new names around and it’s getting tiring, so I had the guys all submit to me a “top 5″ list. From there we’ll vote the thing down and call it a day. I’ll keep you posted on the finalists but for now, some of the semi-finalists include New Found Karma, Three Chords & The Truth, Hump Day Heroes and Kind Assassins. I’m pretty sure one of those will stick. Feel free to leave a comment below on which one you like best.

That’s it for this installment. I’ll keep it short. If Jack pans out, we’ll have lead guitar and thus have momentum. Gigs over the summer? Possibly…

Stay tuned.

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Late Update: We’re down to three final names: New Found Karma, Fast Mannequin, and Three Chords & The Truth. Fast Mannequin is dying a slow death so it looks like we may end up with one of the others. Voting is taking place today… stay tuned. (I actually suggested dropping the “found” if we go with Karma, which I didn’t like as a name at all. Three Chords & The Truth was one of mine so I’m voting for that one!

Another Late Update: The whiners didn’t like the names after all that so back to  Square One with that… hmm, that has a ring to it…