Talking Gypsy Heir Blues

[nyyki]

Okay, here's the history...
Back in 1996, I answered an ad for a keyboardist for a new band. The singer and bass player came over, and we talked about getting something started. At the time my ex was in grad school, so we discussed it, and agreed that a band was a good use of my time, far better than computer games, so I told them yeah, and suggested a friend of mine for guitar. The bass player had a name -- Gypsy Heir.
We learned something very quickly -- the lead singer sucked. And not just a little bit, but so bad that if nature truly abhorred a vacuum, he'd be attacked by wildlife every time he left the house. It's always a bad sign when a singer has as his hero Jim Morrison -- Morrison managed to do well because of the times and because of his band mates, not because of his talent as a singer. (As a poet, that's another matter) Plus, this guy was a huge karaoke fan, which is usually a sign of someone with rhythm problems. He had that in spades.
To make a long, very agonizing story that involved all sorts of pain just short of bleeding from the ears, we finally told him that we couldn't do it if he was singing, so he bailed. I contacted my former lead singer, and we continued, this time sounding a lot better but lacking a drummer. We auditioned lots of them, but none really worked out for long. We did a few gigs, recorded rehearsals, and worked on tunes. I have two strong tapes from this time.
But all was not happy in paradise. First was The Ordeal, which landed me in the hospital for three months and shut down the band for about five. Then I went off to a Pagan convention, and got the spirit as it were. Plus, though the lead singer was pretty painful, the guitarist also had some substantial rhythm problems, and finally I had to tell him that it wasn't working. We tried another guitarist, but he was a rockabilly guy, and it didn't really gel. Then I decided that I wanted to "put the gypsy into Gypsy Heir" and take it more pagan in tone and leanings. Several songs were stricken from the roster, a lot of others came in, and our singer opted out, as she thought herself Christian and wasn't comfortable singing things that she didn't believe in. This was the end of what is known as Gypsy Heir Mark I.
On to Mark II. The plan was to write music that used sequencers for drums and lots of other things to free us up to do different things. Our bass player also handled acoustic guitar and played some percussion, along with backup singing, and I was getting deeper into percussion too. So we found a singer, then lost that one, and found another, etc. We had one singer that actually stayed with us for about a year, but it became harder and harder to find the people to do the gig. And Tribe, the first album, was constantly delayed. Even though I had the resources to record it in house, we could never get the people in place.
2000 brought a divorce, loss of job for me, and a loss of a bass player. He was working in two other bands by then, and though he always wanted a project like GH, we were having personnel problems. In 2002 I lost the house, and until last year didn't have rehearsal space to even think about doing anything, though I did try constantly to re-populate the band.
Gypsy Heir is Aggressive World Music -- think of Santana crossed with Lorena McKinnet and other ethnic influences. The lyrics are metaphysical bordering on pagan, and in some places openly pagan, sometimes even a bit Wiccan.
I'm working in the studio this month and the first part of next month to get everything ready for two projects -- Evidence and Gypsy Heir. So, I need musicians. For Gypsy Heir I need a female vocalist who sings in the soprano range, a percussionist with skills on djembe and doumbek at the very least, (though frame drums would be great) and an electric violinist or violist. I only need these people to be able to show up here long enough to record parts for now, though I hope to do festivals in the future that may require a bit of rehearsal and some travel. If anyone knows anyone who is a good option for this, please let me know, as I want to get this started soon.

Comments

[pixie1771.livejournal.com]

You know, I was incredibly honored when you asked me to join the band. Unfortunately with grad school, work, trying to find permanent work, belly dancing and CMA right now I have too much on my plate as is (and that isn't even including coven).

I'd love to come jam with you sometime and wanted to ask if you'd like me to bring my drums to the X-mas party?

[nyyki.livejournal.com]

Of course. I'll also have a bunch of music therapy types around who have already taken the ethnic percussion class -- one of the cool things about this university is that they actually understand the importance of percussion in music therapy -- AMTA hasn't figured that out yet. We could have one heck of a drum jam, especially with the studio room. (You've got to see it to believe it, it's so radically different from what was crammed into the duplex)