Building a new community
John Avilla is a bassist and retired marketing executive. He's reached the point in his life where he's had a career, made his money, raised his family, and wants to play music... without going full circle back to garages and basements.
So, John built a club. Like a country club, but for musicians. John describes it this way:
It'd be like walking into, I hope, the lobby of like a five star hotel. Everybody knows your name. We know why you're here. We know what you like. You immediately see other people that you know and have built relationships with. And you have a little time, most likely before you step into the studio, to step up to the bar. We have snacks and evenings we'll have treats and somebody behind the bar pouring you something.
I think in certain circles there's kind of a pride and a romanticism in the grunge aspect of playing certain kinds of music. Garage bands are basically an entire genre in themselves.
But eventually (I would say hopefully?) yeah, some of us do end up raising our standards as we get older.
Maybe we don't need to couch surf anymore and can get a hotel with a real bed. A moment for me was being able to go to the grocery store and just buy food without that tally running through my head of how much each item is adding to my bill.
If I knew there was a place I could walk in the door and have this immediate shared interest with everyone in there, play music with them, talk shop, or even just drink a beer and shoot the breeze, not gonna lie... That sounds appealing.
