My jazz group Haven Street played a most excellent gig a few days ago at The Barn at Quaker Hill Country Club, up in Pawling NY. It’s a very nice place, reeks of old money, with pictures of F.D.R. and Babe Ruth on the wall, and a grand fireplace with cultural and historical artifacts from around the world, going back to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, embedded in the facade. The venue was a large restaurant and lounge adjacent to the bar. The hall had a nice stage and a high ceiling and the acoustics were superb.
We started playing at a moderate volume because right in front of us was a large party of diners including a few little kids, and we didn’t want to blow them away. Musically the band was really good, and the crowd was digging it. The kids got up and danced and people came out from the bar to hear and see us better. Man I swear the group keeps sounding better and better.
One thing I’ve been doing recently is memorizing all our material, our originals and a good bunch of standards we have in heavy rotation (All The Things You Are is still a real M.F.). I feel like people in general used to memorize things alot more, now it’s a dying art cuz everyone always just looks stuff up on their phone. But it’s a skill worth cultivating.
I’ve always memorized songs in the rock group, where I sing and play keys. One reason is the songs tend to be simpler. Another is that I’ve never been able to sight read piano music unless it’s a single melody line or a just a chord progression; if there’s complicated parts written out for both hands, I usually have to read thru at least once and break it down and put it back together before I can play it at speed. And of course when you’re singing it’s a drag to have to look at the words. At this point I know hundreds and hundreds of songs, although not all of them are sharpened up to perform on any given day.
In the jazz group I only play sax. It’s a melody instrument and it’s easy to read a single line. The downside is that you come to rely on the chart and never really REALLY get to know the song. Now that I’ve undertaken the task, I can’t believe it took my this long get around to it; I memorized everything for Event Horizon back in the day. Of course I do know much of the material, and I’m familiar with lots of standards, but we have are some intricate passages (especially in some my own tunes like Lift Off), and I don’t always know what note a song starts on, or maybe some of the chords in the bridge, or whatever. Now it’s all being pulled up into the conscious level. Since jazz tends to modulate alot I’m thinking about the songs much more in terms of their structure and harmonies, and how the melody note relates to the chord. This is natural on piano but easy to skip over on sax. As a bonus suddenly my soloing has gotten more 3-D.
We’re pretty much taking August off because all of us are taking vacation in that time. We have a couple gigs lined up in September and October at two of our favorite venues, The Bean Runner Cafe in Peekskill and the Green Growler in Croton. More details on that coming soon. Meanwhile the push is on to find more gigs, and it’s time to start thinking about heading back into the studio to record a second album. We have an ample amount of material that’s now been road tested in front of a live audience.