New Member Here

Hi everyone,
I found this site looking for songwriting tips and techniques, so my landing page was actually the Sunday songwriter's Group. That lead me to the much larger forum above it, and the wealth of information here. I think I'm going to like it here :)

I've been playing guitar for about 23 years; mostly rock stuff. I grew up listening to classic rock, started playing guitar around the time Guns N Roses, Def Leopard, and Bon Jovi hit it big, got really into guitar heros (Vai, Satch, Jason Becker, Paul Gilbert), that lead to a bit of a prog-rock phase via Dream Theater, and now I'm playing more song-oriented, almost indie-rock music, like Raconteurs, Muse, The Shins, The Kooks, Death Cab for Cutie, Queens of the Stone Age, Wolfmother, and the like. Mostly I look for music that has a pulse. Something I can sink my teeth into lyrically (although I'm NOT a singer by any stretch of the imagination) or musically. Dynamic music is what really drives me lately.

I'm putting together my first original band in over a decade, so it's a little intimidating. I've always avoided original music, feeling like, "what's the point? I'm not going to write the next Baba O' Reily, so why bother." But, having moved to a smaller town with no original music scene at all, and a bunch of bar bands playing (not altogether uninteresting) covers, I feel like I need to play some gigs in music halls with original music again. So that's the impetus for the writing phase I'm going through.

With no one in my area that truly shares my influences and interests, the sound of the project is up to me at least at the start. Fortunately, I have no goals but to write enough material to book the gig, and play said gig(s) without driving people out of the room. That is, make it interesting enough to keep them watching for the 45 minutes or so. Looking to book some shows in Orlando or Gainesville, as I'm kinda in-between the two (Ocala, FL).

Wow, longest intro ever? I'll have to look through the welcome threads and see. If you read through all this and don't think I'm crazy, feel free drop me a line here or in the SSG.

Thanks,
Stephen