Hey. If you’ve been around JfH for a while, you may remember me as one of the reviewers; otherwise, my prolonged absence due to second-year university studies, looking for a job (and getting one), and working in that aforementioned job might have rendered my name relatively unknown. Anyways, I’ve had this little musical project going with my mates for almost 2 years now, called “New Day Dawning”; the idea I put to John (head honcho here) was a blog series on what it’s like to be in a start-up band, the trials and tribulations associated with it, and whether it experiences success or a lack of it.
A bit of backstory…
New Day Dawning started life as…err, we actually didn’t have a name for it back then. We in due course came up with “Pentomuse”, but that was scrapped as people thought we were trying to rip-off Muse (we weren’t).
Myself and a friend came up with the idea for forming the band after our first musical project—“Off-Kilter”—went south due to a lack of spare time and commitment from some of the members. To start off with we had 6 members: Matthew (bassist, previously rhythm guitar in Off-Kilter), Joseph (pianist, also in Off-Kilter), Jasher (lead guitarist), Sam (rhythm guitarist), David (drummer) and myself (lead vocalist and songwriter). The year went by…and so did two of our members. Joseph wasn’t as keen as the rest of us on performing, and Matthew ended up becoming a dairy farm worker, which took him away from us in Auckland (one of the principal cities in New Zealand) for long periods of time. Fast forward about a year, and we acquired our new rhythm guitarist—David (we now call the drummer by his last name “Hubble” to avoid confusion); with Sam having already moved to fill the bassist’s position, he was a much needed addition to the band.
That was then, this is now
Last week we went through one of our most significant role re-shuffles ever: I stepped down as frontman and ceded the position to our rhythm guitarist, David, while I took the role as keyboardist. When you’ve harboured aspirations of leading a rock band on stage, it is rather painful to admit that you may not be the best man for the job and let someone else take the spotlight. But if it helps the band, then it’s worth it. I hope.
…
Looks like I’m holding a pity-party—anyone got the consolation-cake? 😀
Ha ha, ANYWAY. Ahem. So far, 2011 looks like it might be the IT year for the band. To this date, we haven’t performed live for anyone yet (I utterly refuse to acknowledge the talent show as a performance, because it’s a bad memory and I wish to wipe that stain from the annals of band history. Don’t ask), but that’s about to change. Our first gig will be at David’s 21st birthday party on the 5th of March, which will be the perfect dress rehearsal for our second gig at a youth music venue in West Auckland called Zeal, at 7:00 PM on the 11th of March. I’d say I’m nervous, but I reckon most of that will fall onto David now—I’m just the key-lackey (hey, there ARE advantages to not being the frontman anymore! Positive thinking, right there for ya).
Jasher and David are staying with me while I housesit for my family, who are enjoying a beach holiday for 12 days. Hopefully, we’ll have more opportunities to practice our songs because of it. I’ll keep you all posted.
God bless!
Adam Dawson