I had a couple of options here. First, since the studio musicians on the record already knew all of my songs, the most pragmatic thing to do was to hire them to play the four-song set at the Battle of the Bands. Simple. But after a round of phone calls, I was crestfallen to find out that every single one of them was already booked for the night of the contest, a mere two weeks later. Not yet panicked, I went with option two: I called the guys from Cool Band Luke. Jann, my bass player, was unequivocally in. See? It’s all gonna work out. So was my drummer. Another relief. Rob, in his characteristically self-deprecating fashion, said he’d play guitar for me, too, but he thought I should get a professional if I could. I assessed the situation: I needed a violinist, a keyboardist, and possibly a guitarist. No biggie. I did what I always do when I need to locate a difficult-to-find item: I shopped online. A website catering to bands and musicians led me to a photograph of a beautiful blond woman with a violin.
