UPDATE: We had our first get-together last night.
I was not nearly as polished as I would have liked, but we went through as many tunes as we could fake an came up with 10 strong ones, 4-5 weak ones, and about 10 more that we need to learn. I have marked the strong 10 for next week, focusing on getting the real solo riffs down (I was improvising most of my stuff last night)
Jammin with these guys was a lot of fun, they totally get the idea of dynamics and they're really good at keeping a pocket while I get lost in solo-land. I'll develop some 'tells' for them to know when I'm getting out of the solos, but man it was fun jammin and makin stuff up on the fly. I like to keep a little 'creative spot' in many of my cover tunes for that purpose, but I am able to JAM with these guys, and that's a whole 'nuther thing.
I used my MP-1 Classic and got some awesome feedback sustain with my small-bodied semi hollow Ibanez...man that sounded good. Since I'm only using three patches and a boost, I may be converting my GT-8 and Mesa Boogie DC-5 combo into the ZZ rig and saving my rack rig for the cover band. I'll probably go buy a cheap 4x12 for large stages and simply power it with the Boogie combo (damn...I just let a pair of split stacks escape me on Craigslist)
The guy that put this thing together runs a local sound / lighting company, so we'll always have that covered and he is well connected in the area for getting us great paying gigs. We only have 3 people in the band, so getting paid well is much easier than a band of six :/ Also, we only have to play for 2 hours and I still make as much $$ as I do in a 4 hour gig with the cover band. WIN!
This is gonna be a fun project, I can tell already