The Riveter Story, Part 2: Laurena picks the bass

So last time I left you with me not dying of the flu and Laurena wanting to start a girl band and vowing to learn an instrument.

Laurena decided on the bass. Smart girl, she rocks the bass.

Now it was just past New Years 2004, Mar and I had recovered from the flu and it was time to start creating a plan for our new band.

First, Laurena and I were going to start working on some cover songs.

Not having a clue, we just picked songs that we liked without regard for difficulty or whether or not our non-existent singer could sing it.

We picked songs like Tom Petty's "American Girl," AC/DC's "You shook me all night long," Sheryl Crow's "If it makes you happy." And also a couple songs that I already knew like Neil Young's "Heart of gold" and the White Stripes' "Dead leaves and the dirty ground."

Next we planned to audition singers and drummers.

I have to laugh at the audacity that Laurena and I — who had just started learning instruments — were trying out other musicians to be in our band. (Hello musicians, we don't know how to play yet, but let's hear if you're good enough for us ... crazy!)

We had a couple great gals sing for us and ultimately decided on Sally.

At the time, Sally was a copy editor for the newspaper where I work and she sang in an a Capella group in college (trying ... very ... hard to not ... make an Office reference ... 'Nard Dog ... doh). We found a cute young drummer, Nicki, from the local college, too.

We had all our pieces, now we just need to bring them all together. It was tricky at first coordinating all our schedules. Sally worked at night. Nicki was a student and Laurena and I were juggling full-time jobs and kids.

Before we knew it, we had our first gig. We were going to be play for Bill's work's end of the year party. This was a pretty big deal as the other band playing this party was a bunch of seasoned musicians, including my guitar instructor.

Not long after, we found out our drummer was going to be working at DisneyWorld for the summer.

So now we had our first gig, but no drummer.

I dug out the phone number for a girl I'd met at the bar through a mutual friend. This girl was a drummer (among other things). She said she wanted to be in a band with her husband, but barring that, she'd be interesting in being in an all-girl band.

I called her and pretty much convinced her that she would at least play with us for this one show. Now that I look back on it, it was pretty out of character for me to push a stranger like that, but I did.

Bridgett agreed and I said we'd be right over to bring her a CD of the songs we were working on.

Drummer problem solved.

We had four band members who had never practice together and about four weeks to get our set together.

Oh and we needed a name. Bill immediately started coming up with band names.

If you ever need a name for a band, Bill's your man ... most of the time. The first name he came up with was nixed summarily.

I'm hesitant to even mention it because he still thinks it's hilarious.

OK, Bill thought our all-girl band should be called "Camel Toe."

Yeah, no.

But I loved his second name ... Riveter ... after Rosie the Riveter, of course.

My Gramma Dearing was a Rosie the Riveter during World War II in the Alameda, California ship yards.

I ran it by Laurena and she liked it, too. As did Bridgett and Sally.

Riveter was born.