Tonight I will be playing with the Shawna Locey Band for the last time, and this past Sunday I played my last show with Soul Kata. The motivations for the changes in both bands are somewhat similar.
Although Soul Kata will continue, I didn’t see myself putting in the necessary effort and energy into getting that band where it could and very well should be, and for me to just show up and play (and have a tremendous amount of fun, mind you) without getting into the nitty gritty of rehearsing and promoting didn’t seem right to me. Soul Kata will go on to do great things, there’s no doubt in my mind, and there should be someone in the saxophone chair who’s completely committed to getting the band where it needs to go, rather than just picking up a gig. Again, despite all this, I can’t say enough that I loved every minute of my time with Soul Kata, and I hope to see Adam, Nate, Josh, Eli, Scott, Ben, and Katrina up on stage very soon.
Shawna will be taking some time off and then working to put together a new project, to a certain extent for the same reasons that Soul Kata should have a different saxophone player. The band had several members coming from different places, all of whom are very talented, and for that reason very busy. I admire Shawna a lot for recognizing what was working and what wasn’t, and then having the courage to change direction and start again, rather than just go with the flow. The next time around I am confident she’ll have the right band that is completely dedicated to hitting it big and taking the music somewhere beyond where we had it when I was playing there, because she definitely has the potential to take off. Shawna’s band was another group that would have me smiling every gig, and I am definitely thankful for that.
I learned so much from these bands about working with people, playing with your friends, and serving the music, and I am grateful for everything that these experiences have done for me as a musician. I’m also really happy that I met all the people in these bands, and I hope I can stay friends with all of them. To lose contact with so many great personalities would be a shame.