2023: Changes, Trials, and Triumph
Happy Holidays all!
Hope you are having a fantastic holiday season! Thanks for reading and your support.
Quick housekeeping:
I have been working diligently on the BlairOutLoud 2024 calendar and will be posting events very soon! I’ve already scheduled several SOLO and DUO gigs, as well as some TRIO and/or full BAND events. Announcements regarding some of the bigger shows will be posted here on the blog soon, and be sure to check the calendar here or the BOL FB Page for the latest updates!
I’m renewing my efforts to send weekly show notifications (and other news) to my email subscriber list, so if you would like to be a part of that, please SUBSCRIBE HERE! And.. by the way, if your algorithm sends you everything that I post, and you don’t want to also be on my mailing list, I won’t mind if you unsubscribe.. I would rather have a healthy list of folks that enjoy that platform for finding out about new events.. so no worries!
Click and browse photos from great events in 2023!
Reflections:
Well.. here we are .. the last week of 2023. If you own a business, it’s hard not to look back and reflect on the performance of your business, your wins, your losses, and think about what you should have done better, or what changes you should make moving forward. Despite some disappointment that we faced in the beginning of the year with some line-up changes on bass guitar, this interestingly led to opportunities to jam with many musicians that I had wanted to collaborate with for years. The end result is that several new players got to jam with the BlairOutLoud group, offering us some fresh energy, new song choices, and some nice inspiration to sustain us throughout 2023.
And one other unplanned item that happened this year, is that I was asked to join Jeremy Would Let Me Drown, a grunge tribute band performing the music of Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, and Soundgarden. This opportunity offered me a chance to work on music in a separate direction from the material of BlairOutLoud, and in the process I have been able to expand my repertoire of covers to unexpected heights.
Let’s get some numbers on the table:
Total number of gigs that I have performed this year, including SOLO, DUO, TRIO, BAND, and JWLMD: 199!
It just couldn’t be 200 could it.. HA. I was actually surprised to get closer to 200 this year.. the elusive gig record for me is 247 from 2019. But I’m okay not to hit that again.. that year was brutal on my schedule.
The SOLO gigs once again outweighed everything else, but that’s a given when I fill up most of my weekdays and some weekends with those events.
Like a repeat of ‘22, we played all over the place this year, had lots of great private events, set up in lots of different spaces, some stages, some floors, some outdoor tents, etc etc. Lots of variation kept it random, but we brought the party every time.
Gig breakdown for each line-up:
SOLO: 146
DUO: 23
TRIO: 8
BAND: 11
JWLMD: 11
New faces on stage with us this year:
Gary Stone, a seasoned approachable pro musician (he’s actually a drummer but also plays guitar and bass in many projects) has filled in on bass more than anyone else for TRIO and BAND gigs this year. We could call him the un-official official 4th member of BlairOutLoud BAND, but he is busy enough with his own projects that he has also had a few people fill-in for him! Gary is also highly experienced in live sound applications, so we benefitted greatly from his ear and expertise with dialing in our live performance.
Gary Stone
Derrick Gaddis, an incredible guitar player and great friend of the BlairOutLoud group, filled in on bass for several TRIO and BAND gigs earlier in 2023. He also participates in many other rock and country tribute projects which kept him busy all year long.
Derrick Gaddis
John Sousa: Once, when Gary Stone wasn’t available for a private event, he graciously lined up a killer bass player, another fine musician very active on the local scene in various projects, Mr. John Sousa. John has bass chops for days, and really brought a lot of bottom-end musicality to our material. So far he’s played a handful of gigs with us and we look forward to more in ‘24.
John Sousa
Chris Butler, someone I had known only from a distance, seeing him active with teaching and performing all around metro Atlanta, filled in on bass with the TRIO recently in December. We had a fantastic evening, and we look forward to another fun event with Chris on bass in January of ‘24!
Chris Butler
Jake Kitchen (bass) and Zach Neal (drums): Finally, there was one TRIO gig this year where I had to replace both the drummer and bass player position, and I was fortunate enough to have these two amazing players on a gig. This was a fun one. I’ve played with both of these guys in the past in other bands, so getting to jam with them as “BlairOutLoud TRIO” was a real treat and we had a blast.
So let’s talk about this other thing:
From left to right: Ben Daniels - guitar, Jeff Wheeler - drums/vocals, Keith Tuggle - bass, Tom Blair - guitar/vocals
This past April, Jeff Wheeler, the drummer/vocalist of Jeremy Would Let Me Drown, called me and asked if I would be interested.. or have the ability.. to sing a lot of Chris Cornell material, including the old school stuff. I responded that was fairly confident that I could handle it, and I mentioned that I’d done it before (at Chris Cornell Tribute shows). However, performing a 2-3 hour set, singing like that, could definitely pose a challenge for me.
So.. with challenge accepted.. I was asked to come rehearse some songs with them. What transpired after this definitely changed the momentum of 2023 for me. In July, we officially announced that I was the new guitarist/co-vocalist, and I played my first show at a brand new venue in Gainesville called Boot Barn Hall. This place is massive, and the stage is one of the biggest stages that I have played on in some time (possibly since my Colossick days even). We rocked it.. and even though you need about 1200 people there to fill the place, our 130 pre-sale tickets felt like a small victory for this brand new effort. New town, new band member (me), new venue.. and we played great and sounded massive.
Jeremy Would Let Me Drown on stage at Boot Barn Hall in Gainesville, GA on July 29th, 2023.
Gratitudes:
So, as we faced some challenges early on, it became apparent that all of the hard work in ‘21 and ‘22 to build momentum with BlairOutLoud is starting to pay off. It was easier than I thought to attract great guest-star talent. We discovered greater opportunities and we were able to fill the books with lots of fun events. The potential is growing, and everything that we’ve accomplished this year, both with BlairOutLoud and with JWLMD, seems to be propelling us into a fantastic new year.
We need to take a second to express DEEP APPRECIATION, and give a whole-hearted THANK YOU to all the players, their contributions, time, energy, and dedication to performing, supporting, and promoting for BlairOutLoud events in 2023. I had them all brushing up on tons of songs, following me on stage for starts and stops, and meeting me for early load-ins, light and sound installations, and late night load-outs. We did it all, and these guys rocked it!
One more time, give it up for:
Gary Stone, Derrick Gaddis, John Sousa, Chris Butler, Jake Kitchen, and Zach Neal! 🤘🙌👏👏👏👏
Bravo gentlemen!
Let’s not forget.. the GOOT.. we call him the Greatest Of Our Time.. Darren Goot: always solid on the drums in any style! It was a pleasure working with him again this year as always. Amanda Blair and I are very fortunate to have access to all of these great players and again we look forward to more collaborative efforts in ‘24.
And now.. THANK YOU.. to each and every one of you (especially if you’ve read this blog post down to this point) for all the support. You make this possible for us!
Closing Thoughts:
BlairOutLoud wasn’t established to be a performing entity exclusively, but I was planning at a very early stage to create video posts for music opinion pieces, product testing, vlogging, and other random musings. I have a renewed interest in making that happen in ‘24. This effort will start with small promo videos.. mostly talking to my subscriber list about things of interest, cool events coming soon, and other ramblings. So once again.. if you’d like to participate..
Here’s where I will also be promoting for shows:
I will continue to post gigs and special events on the Calendar, and Events Page (where BandsInTown is synced). Plus we will continue to post a weekly cluster on the BlairOutLoud FB Page. The facebook page will also list some of my Events: both BlairOutLoud TRIO or BAND plus JWLMD Events. Lastly, I post occasionally to X (formerly Twitter), and we will continue to post Reels promoting events to Instagram, where they are auto-shared back to the BOL FB Page.
Hope all of this helps! Thanks for reading. I will see you all next year! I hope that you have a fantastic and safe NYE, and a glorious and productive fresh and shiny 2024!
-Tom Blair
