While I did some reflection on 2020 in my last blog post, when we last did a full retrospective it was 2019—the “before times.”
Since, musicians have entered this sort of limbo. In 2020, there were no gigs. When places started opening up, just to pay the bills, working musicians had (and have continued) to risk getting exposed to a virus that could either end their life or debilitate their career (see: effects of covid on your lungs). Our regular haunts are rightfully still being cautious: our most frequented venue didn’t have live music until September last year, and are on hiatus until at least April this.
We Modes are fortunate in that we all have day jobs or are retired. It’s demotivating and depressing not to have any opportunities to play (whether out or even just rehearsing), but it also makes no sense to take unnecessary risks while Omicron is surging.
This is all to say that 2022 is unpredictable for the band. We hope to start gigging again in April (and getting together to rehearse well before that), but there’s no telling. Outside of playing live, though, there’s still plenty going on!
The LAN Sessions
In late 2020 we started our virtual recording (“LAN”) sessions, and in the first half of 2021 we released four new videos of four of our latest arrangements: “Sunset Waltz” (FFXV), “Can You Really Call this a Hotel…” (Undertale), “Courtroom Lobby/Trial” (Phoenix Wright), and “Ideal and the Real” (Persona 5: Royal).
This project hit a wall when venues started opening up—suddenly we had gigs again and our off-time was spent focusing on and preparing for those. We released our fifth video (pictured) just last week, and we have one more in the tank. After that last video is released, we’ll remaster our tracks and drop them on Spotify.
As far as future LAN videos, we’ll have to see how the pandemic goes. If we have gigs, we won’t be doing more of these; but even if we don’t, Andre will still have his hands full mixing…
Speed Run
Back in October we got together to record Speed Run, an upcoming full-length release featuring versions of our tunes that are around 5 minutes or less. I’ll leave the details for another post in the future, but we have so many tunes in our repertoire that we wanted to get a large chunk of them out. By keeping the tracks short, we’re keeping things a bit more palatable for most audiences.
As an added bonus, we were able to bring back the vibraphonist of our original lineup, Trevor Williams. Per usual, Trevor absolutely kills it. Not only did his presence allow us to record our arrangements that requires six people to perform, and not only are his solos fire, his work fills out the tunes we’re able to do as a quintet in such a way that at one point, Gabe—our keys player, who came on after Trevor had left—remarked something akin to “oh, that’s how it’s really supposed to sound!” Indeed, we’re excited to bring these to you.
Greg and Brandon recording Speed Run
Our first gig back! Feat. our friend Nick on soprano
Live Shows
For the next couple of months we’ll be working out the majority of our gigs for at least the first half of the year. We already have one exciting one on the books though: In June we’ll be playing at Hardywood brewery in Richmond!
More details to come, but we’ve been waiting to venture outside of Charlottesville, and Hardywood is one place that has been at the top of my list for the last few years (immediately starts arranging “Wood Man”).
Locally, I’d like to do some album release shows this year: one for the LAN Sessions (that will hopefully feature our guest artist, guitarist Colin Greggs) and one for Speed Run. Furthermore, we have plenty of new arrangements in the cooker, so perhaps by the end of the year we can have another special show that features new content.
Whatever direction the year takes us, you can guarantee that we’ll be coming out with a lot of great content. I hope that we’ll be able to see you live at one of our gigs, but regardless, we’ll continue to see you on the interwebs!
Be well, stay healthy, and thanks for reading and listening.
