About a month ago we also suffered the departure of our fine bassist, Len Dupilka. On one hand I can hardly blame him for losing patience with this project, but on the other, well, it was becoming clear that Len thought our talent was not sufficient for his pieces, and we were having to rein in his inner Jaco to play symphonic prog which frustrated him to no end. So he rather unceremoniously left us hanging with some promising prospects for next summer now in grave jeopardy. But we intend, as always, to press on and get product finished, and we are now actually seeing the music take shape.
We have not yet replaced Len. It appears that Jaymi Millard, a great Rickenbacker player in Nashville, will be playing on our CD. Jaymi has stepped up for us before when we had no bassist and he came to play the Prog Day Pre-Show with us in 2010. He has assured us that if we don't get somebody local to Richmond, he'll be there for us. We're very grateful to him. We have found a terrific singer in the Virginia Beach area who has been coming up to Richmond to work with us and who has been singing with a prog tribute band down there. We are close to a decision on him. I am fairly certain I'll be able to announce him soon.
If you follow us on Facebook you know we are now at around 60 minutes of new music. It still has to be tightened up and recorded, and we are still learning how to do a decent capture so progress in recording has been slow. But since George and Len departed there has been an outpouring of new material from me and Todd.
Just to see if there is any interest, I have a scratch mix of an 18-minute piece called War Song that I will link you to if I hear from you. It's kind of a mono mix and it has Len and George on it, so actually it will sound a bit different on the CD when we get it done. I have gotten some good reaction on it from some trusted proghead friends and musical peers.
Thanks for your interest. Someday we will get to play a festival for you. :-)
PROG LIVES ... it keeps us young.
MV