Date Registered @ Justin Guitar: May 16, 2011
Hi,
I probably should have started on a road case long ago as I don’t know if anyone really knows what LBro has been up to all these years on JG.
What you get is mostly some background history at this point. In the future, who knows. I would like to get in with a band but more so as the sound guy that perhaps plays a bit too, or helps write songs for the band. I have been GASING for years and every time I buy gear it is overkill, but with an eye towards being able to set up and record a full band. Drum kit – multi mic setup - all included and more.
Some have asked “why the screen name of LBro?”
The name comes from the fact my Big Brother who was about 7 years and 7 days older than me used to call me Little Brother. It stuck and was used for my screen name at hotmail. When I signed up here I simply carried that forward and used LBro as my screen name here.
I guess my guitar journey started back in about the mid 1970’s. We used to make noise and pretend we were a band back then in my Dad’s basement. We stunk, but had fun and I was always the guy that built speaker cabs, trying to record us and play some too. Alas that was when I was about 15 years old in 73’. At around 22 or so the guitar got put away for a decade. When I had my kids, we would mess around with bedtime songs and they loved to sing “with dad”. NaNa of course was in this picture then and it was about 1985 or so we sang the song GMO (Give Me Oil in my Lamp) that we did (per the link below - which is a much later studio version of the song), in front of the entire packed church, on talent night.
This version of the song was done with 3 generations of the family. My oldest daughter’s 2 girls are about 6-9 in this and they sing the entire 2nd verse! I think they are pretty good in this one!
After a few years of playing along with the kids, the guitar hit the rack again until about 2008 or so. So that must have been a good 30 years. Sigh, wish I had continued to play all that time, but it was not meant to be…
It was at the suggestion from Big Bro that I check out justinguitar.com in about 2009. He said it was a good site with some lessons and stuff. I did not act on that right away and in fact was just getting back into things since I had not picked up a guitar in years. So, for a couple of years I noodled around on a Strat, a cheap AI and used Cubase as my DAW. I did some jams back then and tried to turn them into songs and they were pretty bad. It was not until about 2011 that I went ahead and stopped lurking and finally joined the JG site. I even bought Reaper at this time but did not use it much as it seemed complicated compared to Cubase to me.
What I did not know in all this was I a little medical challenge called Hep C that was eating on me and my liver. I became a lot more tired and worn down as time went on. Finally, a doc was wise enough to guess I might have some sort of issue and ran some blood tests, finding out what I had. I went for treatment and almost signed up for an interferon treatment. However, that liver doc was short sighted and failed to look at all the meds I took back then. Had they, they would have found that a yearlong treatment on basically chemotherapy would be next to useless in clearing the bug. I researched the issue over the weekend as I was to start treatment the following Monday. What I came up with stopped my treatment plan in its track as I had a 1% chance of clearing or beating the bug. There were no all oral treatments available at the time. Some promising studies or trials were on the horizon and I made it my goal to get in one as time was running short. I had my name in from coast to coast in the USA at about 9 places around the country from the Pacific Northwest to Washington DC, down to Colorado and California. I learned everything I could about these new treatments; how to read labs, the bug itself and much more. I was on a special forum that focused on these new treatments and the bug. At all the places I mentioned I was on a lengthy wait list and it looked like I was not going to get into a trial. All this time the bug was working it evil path of destruction on my system. I finally got into a trial in San Diego. I flew there for 2 years doing 24 round trip flights. These cost me a lot, maybe 10 grand with hotel rooms and what not. Yet it was a bargain as the treatment would come out costing $150,000 USD. But it was worth it as I got the new all oral treatment free and it worked well. After just a few weeks I had cleared the bug, but the program did take a full 2 years of follow ups and more. A lot of folks on the help C forum reported new found energy after treatment. I did not and that might have due to my cirrhosis, which was left over from the 30 years the bug worked over my liver. Meh, I was still kicking, so I moved on. During this whole period of time and for 2 years I was off the JG board pretty much as I was beat. Guys like Roman came aboard after me during this time. Pat the Bunny came on and others as well.
In 2014 I started to feel a bit better and picked up my guitar again to start playing. I got active on the JG forum and even posted some in AVOYP. That is still probably out there but Sound Cloud was kind enough to delete all my content from up there while I was ill. I refuse to post there anymore because of that.
On guitar I find it real hard to get into proper, needed strumming patterns to do covers. I try, get frustrated and go back to doing my thing. I also find learning to be difficult due to suspected brain fog. Thus, my focus is on writing and doing original songs. Most of these that are posted here remain to this day and if you look in my footer you will find a link to my channel on YouTube. I think the first song I did was “We Have It”.
I made a mix of “We Have It” and did the song with NaNa, my youngest daughter. The tracks were horribly recorded but I had an ace guy name Scooter Trash who agreed to re-mix the song. He had been in live sound for over 30 years. He taught me a ton about mixing and GAS in buying plugs. He also helped me transition over to Reaper. I have tried to help some on the JG forum, just as Scooter helped me… Justin calls this: “paying it forward”.
At any rate his mix of that first song was great. You can still listen to that mix. I think it came out great. My wife, NaNa and I were so excited over that song and more so the mix Scooter did. Alas Scooter and I parted ways at his request, but I will always remember our friendship at the time and what he did for me.
That brings things up to date and that is pretty much it. I simply play now, working on things on the guitar. I do luthier/guitar tech type stuff and continue to set up my shop and tools. The shop is for working on guitars. I have a few of them and some need some TLC. So, I keep working on songwriting now, doing projects that lead to songs and more. I am going to beat this strumming road block and one day take on some covers, but my focus will likely always be on writing songs… I subscribe to the ‘Close2u’ motto on songwriting. He says; “if you write a song and it sucks, write another”. I can fully relate to this!
So, from LBro who was nearly a done rocker, I will as always say – Rock on – for the alternative is pretty bleak.
Play well, be well and Rock On!
LBro
