Thursday, March 1, 2012

Beerbelly Live March 2

As the regular followers of my blog know, I'm a drummer. I've been playing regularly in rock bands in Edmonton since 1993. I recall five bands in total. For the past six months, I'm back with some of the members of the band I played with for the longest time: The Ways. I backstopped The Ways for about 10 years. But the busy parts of life put us on hiatus for about a year and then we just decided to quit. The bass player and I formed another band with another guitarist, but that lasted only a few months, no gigs at all.

But then one of the guitarist from The Ways changed jobs and he had more time on his hand. He wanted to play. We formed up again, a three piece this time. We practiced for about three months, rehashing and rearranging old songs, writing new ones. Because of my connections in the local music industry, I got us a gig. We had no name but a gig.

We spent weeks coming up with ideas. I went for some literary themes, The John Updikes, The Gore Vidals, The Salmon Rushdies (yes spelled like the fish). All were rejected. Other names included the Wastrels, the Winsomes, the list went on. All rejected.

Finally, over beers after a solid band practice, we started throwing out names related to what we were doing and who we were. We're all in our 40s, we all don't have the same physique we had when we were younger. But we still liked to rock.

And thus Beerbelly was formed. We had to think about it for a few days but it grew on us (yes that's kind of a pun). We passed the name around to friends although our wives weren't that impressed but they understand it's our band, not theirs. Other folks like it. We confirmed it and told the promoter. He liked it. The poster designed to promote the show, clinched it. Beerbelly is an awesome band name; the visual potential is endless, although familiar at the same time.

So all you followers of this blog and of the Torforge authors twitter feed, check out the poster. Tell me what you think. Watch the name in the future. And if you're in Edmonton on March 2, come on down. Show us your Beerbelly.