A guy who plays trumpet, sings, and plays keyboard (keyboard while other band members are soloing or while he's singing) hired me a couple of times before and - since I can play choruses and know the changes to a whole bunch of songs, he seems to be calling me more and more.
We've got three Friday nights in a row in a little town north of Jackson,Tennessee (a decent size city about halfway between Memphis and Nashville on I-40) called Humboldt, Tennessee. I believe there's a town by the same name (Humboldt) in California.
Humboldt Tennessee didn't used to be much, but it seems to morphing into a highfalutin northern suburb of Jackson, whereas already north Jackson is the highfalutin part of Jackson.
The venue is a former church which has been converted into an event center with a small upstairs bar and a downstairs restaurant/bar.
The bar restaurant is in the basement's former fellowship hall, with the bartender in the corner and there's a kitchen back where the kitchen (of course) was before.
I haven't seen the sanctuary or what that's supposed to have been converted to, but there's also an outside venue courtyard sort of thing.
There's a little bitty bar upstairs that is sort of like a speakeasy with maybe seating for 15 (no tables) and a bartender.
It's called i.y.k.y.k. and it stands for "if you know, you know". The name refers to how to get into that tiny little upstairs bar. There's an old wooden antique crank telephone outside the door, and you have to lift the earpiece and it's cradle goes up which is actually a switch for an electromagnetic deadbolt lock on the door to the bar, and when it buzzes after you lift the phone earpiece, you can get in the door - which is solid wood with no window.
Again we played in the basement fellowship hall where food is served.
We played three 45 minutes sets which were mostly dixieland jazz, but we played some ballads and later jazz standards such as "Funny Valentine", "Moonlight in Vermont", "Satin Doll", "Don't Get Around Much Anymore", and those sorts of things as well... nothing particularly esoteric. Since there were only two of us that were playing pitches, we played a whole bunch of songs and each of them only lasted about as long as an old 45 RPM record. For those of you who don't remember or weren't yet born, most all pop tunes recordings lasted about 2 minutes and 45 seconds, because it was easy to fit those into a radio format.)
I had to play a whole bunch, because it was just the leader guy with the trumpet and keyboard and his singing voice, a drummer, and me on tuba and bass... Honestly, I haven't played bass in years and years and years, but it's sort of like riding a bike... thankfully. (I didn't even bring my bass... The leader actually brought his and asked me if I would play it.)
I think the funniest thing about the job is that the leader had a book, the drummer had a book, but I had no book. The guy seems to have a lot of confidence in me.
I think he's also enjoying having the correct bass lines played in the correct inversions and with all the passing chords outlined, particularly since it's really only the two of us - other than the drummer. You know... like the chromatic descending half steps in "Funny Valentine", whereby you sort of have to know to do that... I guess that's sort of like the name of the tiny upstairs speakeasy, isn't it?Two more Friday nights of this ... Hey, we got enough tips in the tip jar to where we each got 20 bucks, so my gas was covered.
I guess there is more status for Band Directors in trying to be fake orchestras. 
. I know this won’t impress the real players on the site, but here’s how we do it, with some success:
...if so...CHECK THE BATTERY !!! 
