Timbre, pronounced tam-ber, the quality given to a sound by its overtones: as a : the resonance by which the ear recognizes and identifies a voiced speech sound b : the quality of tone distinctive of a particular singing voice or musical instrument. Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary, © 2002 Merriam-Webster, Inc.
How, you may ask, does blood fit into this?
It's the old axiom, of something being "in your blood". So I suppose, where music is involved, my blood must have it's own timbre. I suppose.
My good old buddy Eric Phillippe has once again proposed playing together in a band. Over the years since the demise of Stonescrye we've bandied about the prospect of reforming, and about 2 years ago even made an attempt at doing so with former SC mates. Unfortunately it just wasn't the right time for that to happen. The upside of that failed attempt however is that we've remained in fairly close contact with each other, something we'd neglected through the years as we went down our own musical paths.
Mine took me into a nearly full time Praise band music ministry. Then into the forays of playing bass in Blaq Lily, an Indianapolis bar band doing pop covers and originals. Then into a few failed attempts at other bands with friends from BL. Then the SC failed reunion. After all of these failures one might think it's time to hang up the axe for good. Not to mention I'm on the back side of my 40's which is entirely too old to be trying one more time to "make it" in music. Let's face it, I don't have the energy for it, not to mention the desire to be in smoke-filled bars any more until 4AM. ugh! So, I've played maybe 10 hours TOTAL in the past year. Maybe a little more but not much.
Through all of this my tastes have changed a little. Oh I still really like the bands I've listened to all along, but I'm not quite feeling the angry hard rock/metal thing as much any more, at least not to play. I'm much more interested in acoustic stuff now. Celtic. But I still play how I play, a blues based edgy rock sort of style. One of my favorite bands has been King's X and I guess I'd have to say their style probably fits my style as well as anything. A little edge, a little soft, no pop, bluesy Texas rock. There's something about those bands from Texas – LOL.
Eric and I have continued to discuss our shared regret at never having recorded the old SC favorites and maybe one day we will. We've also discussed our changing musical tastes and styles as we get a little further down the road. While we've both "lightened up" our tastes over the years since SC, we've gone in slightly different directions as well. We still come back to our roots and will always have that in common. If we attempt another SC reunion in the future, after the old songs are in the can, it's hard to say what the new songs could sound like.
Yet, as our music tastes have somewhat diverged, we've found an even greater commonality in where we are in our faith, which is both amazing and comforting. And our friendship, our bond, has remained constant in spite of being out-of-touch at times. These elements, more than anything, will likely be the foundation of what ever we may or may not do musically.
Continued in Part 2
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