2021 Gumbo final - Book - Page 218
218
josh
“Music has always been a huge part of my life. I was playing Sims 3, and my person
in the videogame knew how to play guitar. He played a song that was so great that
I felt like I needed to learn how to play it myself. I don’t know the name of the song,
but it was some little random bit of tune. I still don’t know how to play it ironically, but
literally my dude played it, and I turned off the videogame, grabbed my brother’s
old guitar, and started practicing. That was the first day I picked up the guitar. Now
I’m in a band. The project first started off during the first two weeks of quarantine.
My friend Evan Hendry called me and said he wanted to make an album. He asked
me if I had any song ideas, and I said that I had a couple. Throughout quarantine
we’d get together and practice, but it was hard with social distancing. Eventually
we got a drummer, a bassist, and the whole shindig. We named ourselves “False
Negative” because of a covid joke. It was named that because we thought I had
gotten a false negative test for COVID right before our first gig, but it was fine.
However, we didn’t want it to just be a timely name and get old whenever covid is
over. We’ve since changed our name to “Hotel Burgundy” because burgundy was
the color of our drum set that we’d practice with and “hotel” just sound like a cool
word. The whole thing was such a homemade process. One of my friends goes
to a music college, and he came down to put up soundproofing in my house. We
recorded in my house! It was a very garage band type thing. I play rhythm guitar
for some songs and I sing. Evan Hendry is the lead guitarist, Jonathon Hidalgo is
the bassist, and right now, Jack Bidleman is our drummer. We’ve played at a couple
of events so far including engagement parties, an Alzheimer’s research fundraiser,
and next week we will play for KA at Tulane. Logistics is the hardest part about
being in a band. It’s hard getting everyone together, making sure they know their
parts, getting your equipment to the gigs, and finding time to practice with school.
People shouldn’t be afraid to start a band. You don’t have to be perfect, and you
can make mistakes. Nobody is great at it starting out!”