What I'm up to now: Sour Bounty (I)
Today I want to start telling you about my current music project, the acoustic duo Sour Bounty, formerly known as Lefty and the Spaniard. My partner in this venture is Vincent Searfoss, an amazing banjo player from the States who, as fate or coincidence would have it, ended up in the same advanced Chinese class as me during our language training program. That's how it all started, back in 2014. Have a listen to his solo work.
It was a tiny class of six and Vinny and I were the only ones with a musical second life, so we became good friends almost instantly and started making music together almost immediately. I nearly forgot about it, but I was reminded recently that our first jam, in my dorm room, was actually carried out in Chinese. That, in light of how close we became and how good communication is the cornerstone of our friendship, is just plain ridiculous, and that was probably me overdoing the good Chinese student thing by not letting go by a single opportunity to practice. If I remember correctly, one of the first songs we worked on together was an original of mine called Nautilus. This is the result:
Don't get the wrong idea, I sing in most of the songs and most of the instrumental ones are his compositions. But somehow this is the one we started with, and also the first one we recorded.
We took things easy at the beginning, with no particular purpose in mind but to make nice songs together. We didn't even bother with a name until much later! At one point we got the chance to play weekly in a tiny joint called Old Time. As we needed a long repertoire, we started working on covers as well and taking things more and more seriously. This is us at one of those gigs (thanks to Bo for the video).
And here we are now, in the process of recording an album and getting our name out there, while trying to make sense of life in exile and not lose our heads in the process. It's quite a ride, and it's a lot more fun with a good buddy by your side, especially if the buddy has an absurd sense of humor that will make you laugh until you choke on a regular basis. He's a crazy one, Vinny is.
This is only the beginning of an ongoing story... more to come.