It always makes me so happy reading your updates. How lucky you are that you get to play together with your friend.
Hmm… It’s a long time until New Year’s though. Absolutely sure that there won’t be a small stage calling for you in-between? 
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When I told him that was the last until the new year that I knew of, he just gave me that ‘knowing’ smile. So we shall see. I don’t think it will be with our club as you can have too much of a good thing and people could get bored.
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Great to see Dusty Roads out in the green, Tony! 
Looks like an amazing setting, but I bet it was a challenge playing outside for the first time.
Congrats on the new gear an guitar - it’s a red beautiy!
Hope you don’t have to wait too long for the next gig, though! 
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Thanks Lisa, it was fun and different. New year will soon be here and it gives me time to improve my technique.
I’ve just worked it out, in the last 6 months, I have had to binge learn 75 new songs. The shortest time I was given (last weekend) was 3 hours to learn a song he heard on the radio that morning! That’s no way to improve my technique 
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Reading my comment above, fast learning sounds worse than it is Basically, With songs that I need to ‘learn’ quickly, I use the level system and play them at level 1, i.e. no frills.
These songs usually only have 2 chord progressions, chorus and verse, so I listen/ read the tabs a couple of times and note the sequences. Then I will just play a basic strumming pattern and simple chords, no 7th’s, suss chords etc. It won’t be my best performance but it will sound OK.
Just back from a great 5 days at the Debenham Country Music Festival. What a great crowd were there. We went to get a better idea on the depth of country music.
While there, Clint and I had a couple of jamming sessions on the field, it was great fun and those around us enjoyed it, even going so far to point it out to the management.
Clint decided that he wanted to play at the festival next year, so talked the management in to booking us! So we have had to suddenly form a ‘proper’ band and we are going to be called 'Freight Train A Facebook page he has created. Still very new at the moment but videos and photos will be added.
I must admit my guitar journey seems more of a runaway train then a freight train. 
I have got to practice now to build up our repertoire. !
Jamming in a field - Community Recordings / Playing Live - JustinGuitar Community
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Hi Tony, 
That friend of you is worth its weight in gold for your music learn curve and enjoyment,amazing
Greetings
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How great is that?!? 
Congrats 
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Thank you, I couldn’t agree more. I do sometimes wonder where he is going to take us next I have pointed out that Nashville was too far away!!!
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That’s great news, Tony!
Dusty Roads has become a part of a proper Country band and landed their first festival gig. That’s really amazing, congrats on that!
Your friend really enabled a very steep guitar learning curve for you. 
All the experiences and gigs you have had and will have together are just invaluable.
Looking forward to the recording of the jam as I’m currently travelling and can’t check it out right now.
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Fabulous Tony. Just jump aboard and enjoy the trip
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Time for another update. Things are settling down now and I now have time to improve my skills.
Guitar: As I am concentrating on country music we (Clint and myself) feel we need to up our selection of country songs we can play. We have got together a list of 30 songs to learn. I have several months to do this, so I am learning 3 at a time. When one is OK, it goes into my ‘practice list’ and a new one gets added to the ‘learning list’.
One thing I am finding, a lot of the songs either have to use a capo to use open chords, or not use a capo and use barre chords. As I have time, I am concentrating on learning barre chords, even though in theory they are above the level I am currently at. I have also started to learn Country licks and hybrid finger picking.
Singing. I am very slowly starting to try and sing some choruses of a song. however, I cannot sing and play properly yet, though this is to be expected. So, I have come up with a two pronged attack to this problem.
When practicing the songs in my guitar practice, I ‘sing’ along with the chorus, but concentrating on the playing not the singing. So words get missed out, the wrong note gets sung etc. I am trying to make the idea of singing the chorus automatic.
The second prong of the attack is to just practice singing without the guitar, to just practice singing in tune. I have only really just started to do this, so I have chosen a simple song with all the notes within my range and fun lyrics (Oh it’s hard to be humble by Willie Nelson).
Yesterday I did my first recording of it sending it through Reaper to see how it sounds with some delay, reverb etc. There is a lot of room for improvement, but I was trying to concentrate on keeping in tune. Timing and presentation needs a lot of work, but at least I have a starting point recording.
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Sounds as if you have a plan, Tony! It’s good to see the road ahead. 
The way you want to approach the singing anf playing part sounds reasonable. It’s good to practice the parts seperately until one or the other becomes automated more or less. It still is a little tricky to bring all together in the end, but going like this will help.
Your recording sounded quite good already. You have a pleasant voice already you can build upon. Also, you delivered the feeling of the tune quite well.
For me, there was a little too much of delay, but that’s also a matter of taste. You have a solid benchmark here, well done and have fun on the singing journey, too.
That’s a lot of work. Wow. Do you even have the chance to commit any chord progressions etc. to memory?
I think “theory” is the keyword here. Your reality is different. And what better motivation could there be than preparing for your gigs? Nothing to lose I think… If it doesn’t work out in the timespan you have, you can always fall back on the capo l 
The recording sounded very charming, Toby. I think your voice suited the song - and probably the country genre - very well. Next time “raw Tony” with a bit less post-production?
Thank you @Lisa_S and @JokuMuu for your kind comments. As you both say, I need to dial back the reaper processing. This is something I need to get a good handle on. Yet another thing to learn At the gig, my mate is in charge of the mixing of the voices and guitars thank goodness.
@JokuMuu I don’t tend to even try to memorise the chord progressions as such. What I do is, on my Ipad with the lyrics on, I note the progression for the verse and the chorus at the top of the lyrics sheet. As with most songs, there are only usually 2 progressions per song, so once I know what chords to expect, the order comes to mind as I play the song.
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Well, as usual, life has thrown my guitar practicing a curve ball
10 days ago, my local pub phoned up and asked us if we could do a country gig there. We said yes and the gig was yesterday. It turned into a 3 hour gig. What I have noticed is that country music fans really are not worried about coming up and requesting tunes. Thankfully our repertoire has grown by the week, so we didn’t get caught out
We have also got gigs for the next two weekends, but they are laid back ones with our caravanning friends.
My learning techniques obviously have taken a knock, but I am getting there slowly. I am finding learning rifts far harder than I thought. Whenever rifts came up in the Justin Guitar lessons came up I ignored them as they weren’t the songs I liked. With hindsight this was probably a mistake. So, my main practicing at the moment is hybrid picking and country rifts.
I will still add a new song every week to my practice session so that I continue to add to my Country repertoire.
So, onwards and upwards.
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Wow Tony …3 hours 
Sounds nice 
These are quite a workout for the hands, it’s nice that it’s going so well, and let’s start with the first riff and make sure it’s good in your fingers… a number will easily follow if you play so much… do what you do well and your star will continue to rise
Greetings
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Tony, do you remember how I doubted that your next gig would be next year only? Seems I was right
Three hours?! Wow 
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Yes I couldn’t see it happening, but I forgot how much my mate loves being on stage
Yes, but I am learning that country music fans don’t like to go home
As you say, start with one riff and work from there.
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