Here’s another jazz demo in what I hope will become an ongoing series:
The group liked my last song, Dark Skies, but they really love this one. Your Dancing shoes was originally written as song with lyrics, and I recorded it for the Buzzy Tonic album Elixr. But since my rock band is not really open to doing originals and my jazz band is, I thought I’d try a jazz arrangement of it. It has a funk-boogie feel, in the same zone as songs like Red Clay and Mercy Mercy Mercy, and it’s great fun to play. They bass player Jay was particular enthusiastic after having just read the sheet music, and our drummer Mike wants to do the song in the Wednesday jazz group.
As an aside, our piano player Rich recently sold his business and retired and is going back to school to study jazz piano. He’s a really good piano player already even though he told me really only started playing and studying when was 50 years old. He’s 60 or so now. You really gotta admire that. (He’s also one of those guys who works out, so like my brother Martin he appears alot younger than his age in both looks and energy level.) He’s been encouraging me with my composing, and I’ve been encouraging him to write some stuff to bring to the group too.
Gary has been continuing to record our rehearsal, so hopefully sometime soon we’ll capture a good performance of these new originals. Meanwhile I’m gonna go ahead with my next jazz demo, a thing I’m calling Buzzy Blue.