{"id":1177,"date":"2008-12-12T09:56:39","date_gmt":"2008-12-12T15:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/?p=1177"},"modified":"2008-12-12T09:56:39","modified_gmt":"2008-12-12T15:56:39","slug":"how-to-respond-to-a-wake-up-call-take-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/?p=1177","title":{"rendered":"How to respond to a wake up call, take 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb_share_1\" style=\"clear:left; float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-top:10px;;width: 55px;\" name=\"fb_share\"><div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#appId=125029517579627&amp;xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/?p=1177\" send=\"false\" layout=\"box_count\" width=\"55\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\"><\/fb:like><\/div><p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"reflect\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3274\/3101325036_f726fa65b0.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"Red Maple Heron 2 by you.\" width=\"335\" height=\"500\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Hi everybody,<\/p>\n<p>Been procrastinating about writing this post for some reason. Maybe I was waiting for some insight or witty tag line to help me tie it all together. I have been running hard now for a little over 17 months or, if you want to be technical, maybe a while longer than that. My experience this fall working for Metallica was one of the highlights of my career and a great way to wrap up a good year of touring in a bad economic time.<\/p>\n<p>I have spent most of my work life touring, usually taking care of the band or sidemen but very rarely the guy or gal down front. It&#8217;s a different kind of pressure. If you screw something up, the show often comes off the rails; no place to run no place to hide. I often catch myself playing &#8220;under speed&#8221;, a term used by pool players when you don&#8217;t play as good as you can to sucker in a mark and build up his confidence. Not wanting to take on the challenge or attention, I guess I have stuck to the shadows.<\/p>\n<p>When I contacted my friend Arthur about working this fall, I wasn&#8217;t even sure which position I was looking at. I just wanted to work with my friend again and having learned that it was a temp job filling in for someone who had the job for years, I figured I could pull it off one way or the other.<\/p>\n<p>It turned out to be taking care of guitars for James, the singer. I had inadvertently taken on a pretty good sized challenge. My fear was replaced by a drive to prep as much as possible and find a way to stay relaxed, believing in myself. Thanks to the crew, Chad (the guy I was filling in for) and James, I learned the set up and the songs. I tried to make my mistakes when it didn&#8217;t count and just focus on the details I needed to make his show smooth. I think my most valuable asset<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi everybody, Been procrastinating about writing this post for some reason. Maybe I was waiting for some insight or witty tag line to help me tie it all together. I have been running hard now for a little over 17 months or, if you want to be technical, maybe a while longer than that. My [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[19,4],"tags":[79,82,81,83,84,80],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peNcU-iZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}