Category: Music

Spacecats Live at the Green Growler November 30

My group Spacecats is going to be making a rare and much-anticipated live appearance at The Green Growler in Croton, NY on Saturday, November 30 from 7 to 10 pm.  The group features John Szinger on saxophone, Josh Deutchman on piano and synthesizer, Ken Matthews on Bass and Rick Arecco on drums, with special guest Robyn Ferracane on vocals.  We play a blend jazz and funk, originals, standards, and pop songs with our own unique twist.  Come out and enjoy!

Spacecats – Jazz and Funk
Saturday, November 30, 7 to 10 pm
at
The Green Growler
4 Croton Point Ave., Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520

Plutonium Dirigible is Live!!!

Here it is at long last, Plutonium Dirigible, the new album by Buzzy Tonic, available on all your favorite streaming services. Buzzy Tonic is my home studio project, and the new record features nine new original tunes.

This record is dedicated to my brother Martin, who started Buzzy Tonic with me years ago, contributed a song to the record, and will always be a part of the creative spirit of the project.

Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/album/5zyYCVFrVi6U4BYPKD8PDW

Apple Music:
https://music.apple.com/us/album/plutonium-dirigible/1777655404

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DLLMJ657

For more info, check out the album’s web page at:
https://zingman.com/music/plutoniumdirigible.php

Enjoy!

And the Wonder Will Set Me Free

This past weekend Jeannie and I went up to the greater Berne area, in the hills between Albany and the Catskills to visit Kathleen and the kids and participate in a benefit concert in Martin’s honor.  We had to get up early Saturday so I could be there for rehearsal.  I hadn’t used my rock keyboard setup in a while, so Friday night I plugged everything in and turned it all to make sure it still worked and sounded good, and if I still remembered my way around the controls of my synth.  Then I tore it all down, figured out what to pack, and pre-loaded the car.

The rehearsal was at the East Berne Band’s drummer John’s house.   He has a nice rehearsal space, set up a bit like mine in that you come in thru the garage and don’t have to go up or down any stairs.  I’d met the guys in the band briefly once before, and had been texting and emailing them, so I felt pretty good about the situation.  John sent me a list of tunes to learn a few weeks ago, then last week sent me a mostly different list.  One thing that was for sure was that we’d be doing two of Martin’s original songs.

The band consists of John on drums and vocals, Dan on bass and vocals, Chris on guitar and backing vocals, Jim on keyboards in the summertime, and sometime vocalist Lorissa, who wasn’t at the practice.  They’re all excellent musicians, who sound really good together, and the vibe was very relaxed and friendly.  They’re very versatile and can handle everything from the E Street Band to Brittany Spears.  We ran thru a good part of the setlist they’d given me, focusing alot of the time on Martin’s songs, which they asked me to sing.  Everyone said I sound just like Martin.  I guess that’s not far from the truth.  I’ve been going over some old recordings we did together and can’t always tell who is singing what part.  I was playing sax as well as keyboards and singing.  I’ve been playing more and more on Martin’s old sax, a Selmer Mark VI tenor from the late 1950’s and really growing to love it.

After that I went back to Kathleen’s house and hung out with her and the kids.  We’re trying to spend some time with them, be more of a presence and get to know them better individually.  This time it was mostly Charlie and Abbie I was talking with, with Match interjecting now and then.  I also seem to be their dog Gus’s new best friend, having played countless rounds of fetch with him.  I spent some time talking with Kathleen’s father Charlie too.  We went for a hike later in the afternoon in some nearby woods overlooking the escarpment and, at the furthest point out, offering a scenic view of Albany.  Apparently it was one of Martin’s favorite hikes.  Kathleen and Jeannie and I went out to dinner with John and his wife Linda, who had been raising alpacas for their wool.  Abbie and Ellie and their cousin Bailey came too.

Next morning we spent more time with the kids.  Jeannie taught Abbie how to fold Sonobe modules, a kind of geometric origami system that’s very popular.  I helped organize some stuff in Martin’s studio.  I found a notebook of some of his older songs.  He never seemed to write down his chord progressions, but sometimes there were hand drawn tabs in the margins.  He liked to explore patterns alot and figure out the names of the chords later.  The concert was out at a brewery about a half hour from the house.  I got there around 1:30 to set up.  The stage was out at the edge of a big lawn behind the brewery, bordered by wildflowers all around.  Out in front was a bunch of picnic tables and a shelter.  A very nice scene.  With four bands on the bill the stage was pretty full: two drum sets, three keyboard rigs, multiple guitar amps.  The bass player Dan was in all four bands, so we pretty much front and center the whole time.  The first two bands did a mixture of covers and originals, all very good.  The overall vibe was a cross between the Grateful Dead and the Barenaked Ladies.  I spent the time meeting and talking to alot of Martin’s friends.  He definitely made an impact on people.  Alot of people seemed to be part of extended family clans, like Martin and Kathleen.  Also a whole networked scene of musicians.  There was a food truck there that served dumplings.  Very yummy.

The East Berne Band went on third, and we started with Lorissa singing, doing a bunch of songs which we hadn’t rehearsed and I didn’t know about.  So they called out the key (sometimes) and I followed along by ear and watching the bass player’s fingers.  I sang Martin’s songs, One of These Days and Making Miles, and both went well.  I almost made it thru without breaking up, but then I looked out into the crowd and there was Jeannie and Kathleen crying.  Still, overall a fun and joyous occasion.  At the end of our set, a bunch of musicians from all the bands came on stage for an epic jam session to close out the day.  Tons of fun.  Lots of good feeling and healing energy.  I hope they do it again sometime.  Meanwhile we’ll be back up there to visit again before too long.

Making Miles for Martin

This coming weekend would have been Martin’s birthday. On Sunday afternoon his rock group, the East Berne Band, is putting on a benefit concert in his memory up at the Wayward Lane Brewery in the greater Berne area, in the hills between Albany and the Catskills Albany where he used to live. I might also be sitting with another one of the bands on the bill, One Wing Duck, which I as understand it is sort of a jam collective of which Martin was also a member. I haven’t played a rock show since before the pandemic, so I’ve been learning a bunch of new songs and practicing real hard. We’re doing a couple of Martin’s originals, including one I hadn’t heard until a few weeks ago. It should be a fun time with some great music.

The Brothers Zing

Martin and I have been making music together from the time we were little kids. I’d always dreamed of putting together a live band with him someday to perform our original songs. With the upcoming release of the fifth Buzzy Tonic album, now is a good time to look back the first Buzzy Tonic album, called The Brothers Zing, a collaboration between Martin and myself. Actually, the album was originally called Buzzy Tonic and the name of the group was The Brothers Zing. (I retconned it just like certain film directors add a subtitle like A New Hope to their movie after it’s been out in theaters a while, then years later try and play it off like the subtitle has always been the actual title. But I digress …) I should mention that Martin came up with the name Buzzy Tonic, meaning both a description of the sound, consonant yet distorted, and also some kind of intoxicating libation that staggers the mind.

Back in 2004 or so, twenty years ago now (wow!), I was in a sort of musical hiatus and looking to do something new when Martin approached me. The idea was to do a virtual collaboration, which was unusual at the time. We built matching ProTools based recording studio setups, and we’d send files back and forth, building up a song track by track, changing things around and refining them as we went. We wrote, arranged, preformed and produced eight original songs in a period of about a year.

For me it was a big step forward in many ways. It was the first time I’d really written rock songs with a lyric (I’d previously written mainly jazz instrumentals up to that point, and I’d done a whole lot of computer and electronic music) and focused on an actual album of songs, with the aim of producing a professional quality record. He gave me alot of confidence to step up with my writing and singing. He also wrote a computer program called Guitar George to help him figure out how to play guitar voicings for all the crazy jazz chords that appeared in my songs!

Obviously it was fun and successful, and I’ve kept on making records, getting better with each one. Martin had to drop out of the second record due to other commitments, and I sort of took it over as a a solo project. He remained very generous, contributing one song for every album (except the jazz instrumental one), and often adding vocal or guitar parts to my songs, and giving constructive critical feedback along the way. In fact, I kind of think of all the Buzzy Tonic records as being in a way by The Brothers Zing. And don’t worry, we’ve done other project before and after, so there’s more music from the two of us in the offing.

Meanwhile, you can hear the songs here:
https://zingman.com/music/#BeeZee

And learn all about the the songs and making of the record here:
https://zingman.com/music/beezee.php

Enjoy!

Plutonium Dirigible

It’s been another fun and busy week for music.  Last Thursday I saw the current touring versions of the classic prog bands Yes and ELP at the Capitol Theatre.  It was a really good show.  The only surviving member of Emerson Lake and Palmer is Carl Palmer, and he did an ELP tribute show that combined live musicians with canned tracks and video from ELP’s 1992 tour.  It was pretty effective.  They opened with Karn Evil 9 1st Impression Part 2.  Both the bass player and the guitarist had midi pickups on their instruments.  Once the singing part was done the bass player played the organ solo, and then the guitar player did the synth solo.  Very impressive.  They did one new tune with no legacy tracks, a pretty cool instrumental prog jam.  The only thing I didn’t love was using vocals from old fat 90’s Greg Lake rather than from the 70’s when the band was in their prime, but I guess they didn’t have isolated tracks they could use from way back then.

Yes was actually Jon Anderson with The Band Geeks, a Yes tribute band he apparently saw on the internet and asked to tour with him.  They were very good, actually better than some versions of real Yes I’ve seen.  The bass player and and guitarist in particular leaned heavily into the classic sounds of Chris Squire and Steve Howe, with the the same instruments, and every nuance of every riff lovingly memorized.  The set was entirely the big numbers off The Yes Album, Fragile, and Close to the Edge, with one new song that fit right in.  Jon can still really sing and lead that great vocal harmony sound.  And, sitting on 12-string acoustic guitar for And You And I was special guest John McLaughlin!

Then on Saturday night I saw my friend Erik play a set of rock covers on the patio of a bar next to parking lot in Hastings.  I haven’t seen him since before the pandemic.  Good to get together and talk, even if only briefly.  I’ve been trying to connect with friends again recently.

Also, I biked twenty-six miles in an hour and forty-five minutes on Sunday, a personal best for the season.

But the big news for tonight is the tracks for the new Buzzy Tonic record, Plutonium Dirigible, are complete! 

You can hear the tracks here:

https://zingman.com/music/#beezeevee

And learn more about all the songs and the whole project here:

https://zingman.com/music/beezeevee.php

All that remains is the album artwork and to submit it for publication. So watch this space for the release of the album on CD and streaming services in a few weeks.

Fall Forward

Been trying to get back to normal life the last few weeks, and settling into some kind of fall routine.  There’s been alot of random tasks piling up.  Did a bunch of yardwork the last few weekends.  Almost at the end of the late summer cycle, nothing to do after but wait for the leaves to start falling.  Also been doing work on our various cars. Michelle and I patched the bumper on the camry before she went back to school.

One piece of good news of good news is that I got the Mustang fixed.  Way back in July one day I took it out of the garage to take it for a spin, only to discover the brake pedal felt soft.  I did a little research and determined it was probably nothing I could fix myself.  Being an old car, I didn’t want to take any chances.  However I didn’t have to time to actually take into the shop until September, and then it took them a couple days because my mechanic needed to order a new master cylinder.  So I finally got the car back and took it for a spin last weekend.  Good as new, woo-hoo!

I’ve also been getting back to biking and working out.  For a while my energy felt very depleted, and it was hard to concentrate.  Working out was one thing I could do that was good for my focus, but I had to drop down to like 70% of my regular weight.  Over the last few weeks I’ve been building back up, and now I’m basically I’m at the point where I was before, and building up to surpass my previous plateau this fall.

Meanwhile, back in July I had built up to biking over fifty miles a week.  The first Sunday in August I decided to go for a little further than usual.  On the ride, I passed a woman who then asked if I’d mind if she rode behind me to catch my slipstream.  She looked all cute and sporty in one of those one-piece spandex biking outfits, and in any event why would I object?  After a few miles she had caught her breath and pulled up next to me, and we got to talking, mostly about biking and going further and faster.  She said she was going 30 miles that day, and told me “never plateau”.  When I was done my ride I saw that I’d gone twenty-two and a half miles in a little over ninety minutes.  I was really looking forward to telling Martin, but never got the chance.  In August I scaled back, averaging closer to 30 miles, going out only three or four times a week.  Now I’m ramping back up again.  September is the perfect time for biking.  The weather is not so hot, and you’ve been training all season.  This last weekend I went 22.5 miles again, beating my previous time by about three minutes, closing in on the ninety-minute mark.  Next weekend I’m gonna go for 25 miles, and hopefully do a 30 mile ride before the end of the season.  I’d like to keep on biking into November if possible.

I’ve also returned to working on The Global Jukebox and getting that back on track.  I’ve recruited my friend Nick to work with me as a second engineer.  Nick and Martin and I worked together to create an online version of the game Iron Dragon back in the year 2000.  For now the main tasks is to get him ramped up.  Also, Martin left behind some unfinished work in the form of an experimental branch that he never committed.  I’ve pulled it of his old computer but I have yet to merge it.

In my day job I had been finding it hard to focus too, but that’s steadily improving.  If I can find a task where I can follow a prefab pattern or script rather than have to do deep, open-ending thinking, that suits me better these days.  Fortunately, on one of my project I get to just that: building some new web pages and updating other based on mocks from our designers.  Ginny said that building web sites is my happy place, and that’s not so far from the truth.  In my other project it’s all herding cats, pulling together multiple engineering and management teams from multiple companies for integration testing.  I think I finally found the root cause of a strange, intermittent bug that’s been bedeviling us and blocking our progress, and designed a workaround.  Hopefully I’ll have it implemented this week and progress can resume.

There’s lots going in in music these days too.  For one thing Jeannie and I saw Earth Wind and Fire and Chicago, two of the greatest horn-section bands of all time, at some amphitheater in New Jersey Saturday night.  We attempted to go see this show the first Saturday in August, but it go rained out.  This time the weather was good, but the traffic, limited ways into the venue, and chaotic overcrowded lawn seating arrangements made for a less than promising start. 

I’ve always been a big fan of both bands, but particularly Chicago, with their prog-jazz influenced stuff from the Terry Kath days in the 70’s.  They played plenty of that, including some great deep cuts, and were quite good.  But I guess I’d mentally blocked out their cheesy power ballad phase from the 80’s.  They played a good number of those too, including not one but two about You being the/my inspiration. 

Alot of people seemed to have left after Earth Wind and Fire, so it was easy to move closer for a better view.  At then end, both bands played together, which was pretty epic.  A six-piece horn section, plus two or three of everything else: drums, percussion, bass, guitars, keyboards and singers.  You’d think it might be a giant mess, but they were really tight.  They closed the show with an extended jam of 25 or 6 to 4 (presumably in answer to the question Does Anybody Really Know What Time it Is?)  It seemed we were among the younger people at the show, which was great because by time we got back to car at the end of the night, the parking lot was mostly empty, and it was a breeze getting out of there.

Lots more going on in the music work including a new guitar, a tribute concert, and a new Buzzy Tonic record about to drop.  More on that in a future post.

The Shade Songbook

I’ve been taking some solace in listening to Martin’s music.  Martin left behind six or eight albums worth of songs in various stages of completion.  In fact, we were were starting to work on album together, with me producing some of his newer original songs, and he’d been sending me material.

A couple of weeks ago I found on my hard drive a set of eighteen songs he wrote way back in the 80’s when he was first learning guitar.  He recorded them on a little 4-track cassette recorder in the early 90’s with Kim playing drums and him doing everything else. I’d totally forgotten about alot of those songs. Now I’m learning them on guitar. I even bought a new guitar because I never had a good rock’n’roll electric guitar before.

https://zingman.com/music/victoryhearts/shadesongbook.html

Announcing the Release of the Spacecats Debut Album – Los Gatos del Cosmos

The debut album for my jazz group Spacecats is complete.  Spacecats is a funky jazz quartet featuring John Szinger on sax, Josh Deutchman on piano/synth, Ken Mathews on bass and Rick Arecco on drums. The group grooves across a spectrum of styles from cool hard bop to the high energy fusion, modern jazz, and rock and jam music of the present day. We are excited to announce the release of our debut album, Los Gatos del Cosmos.

The album is available on major digital streaming services:

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/71lUrJKbrW1tMu3k6ti4mE

Apple Music:
https://music.apple.com/us/album/los-gatos-del-cosmos/1756181613

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D934S1SW

For more info, check out the band’s web page at:
https://spacecatsjazz.com

Jazz and the Mountains

Just got back from a nice vacation to the Montreal Jazz Festival and the Adirondack mountains.  I feel like I’ve been in one long run of deep focus between work and music and other things, so it was a welcome break.

Jeannie and I drove up to Montreal on Monday, which also happened to be Canada day. We arrived mid-afternoon and our hotel was right downtown where the jazz fest was, so we just walked out into the street to enjoy things.  The festival is centered around their big performing arts center call Place des Arts, which is on the level of Lincoln Center here in New York.  The streets around it are closed to cars and become a big public party space with several outdoor concert stages, and lots of vendors for food, libations and merch.  Several other clubs, bars, theaters and other venues host concerts as well.  We found a Canadian Asian fusion place for dinner in view of one of the stages.  I had a Bloody Ceaser with dinner because, when in Rome …

The main act that night was Robert Glasper, who is sort of a jazz-soul-hiphop crossover guy, somewhat comparable to Kamasi, except he sings and plays keyboards, and his band consists of him, a bass, drums and a DJ.  The music was generally groovy and soulful, with some songs featuring modern and minimalist ideas juxtaposed against the main groove.  The band were excellent improvisors, individual and collectively, going beyond just taking solos to build moods and structures and atmospheres. It was cool to see the DJ as an integral part of the sound too.

The next day we lounged around the hotel in the morning and got breakfast, then went for a big walk in the scenic downtown dominated by old stone buildings, and finally out to the waterfront.  The weather was beautiful, sunny and not too hot.  We checked out a science museum on a pier with lots of interactive hands-on exhibit.  We got lunch at a cafe nearby: poutine, shrimp and avocado salad, and some Molsons.  We bought some souvenirs including a stone sculpture of an Inukshuk in the shape of a human figure.  If it can be carved from a single stone, it seems like it might also be a good subject for an origami model too.

That evening the big musical attraction was Joshua Redmond with a new group in one of the theaters in the Place des Arts.  The band were excellent and featured a vocalist in addition to the rhythm section.  She and Joshua on sax did really cool tight harmony sections together a few times.  The theme of the new record they were touring for had to do with the concept place so most of the songs had the name of a place in the title, including some standards like a mashup of John Coltrane’s Alabama with Stars Fell on Alabama, and a surprising way-out jazz version of Hotel California.  I’ve seen Joshua a few times at clubs in New York, but this performance was a whole ‘nuther level.  There was also a really excellent light show in the theater, which enhanced the sound and mood alot.

After that we took more acts on the outdoor stages, including the Low Down Brass Band, whom we heard on our first trip to Montreal six years ago.  Wow, how the time flies!

Next morning we took another walk around the city, looking for baked good to bring back to the States for our friends Mark and Kelly in the Adirondacks.  I also picked up a nice-looking (and, it turned out, lovely-tasting) bottle of whiskey at the duty free shop.  We arrived in the high peaks area mid-afternoon, and when for a hike at a place called High Falls Gorge on the Ausable River near Mount Whiteface. 

The next day was the Fourth of July.  Out main adventure in the morning was a bike ride up a rail trail from Saranac Lake to Lake Placid.  It was twenty-two miles round trip, my best distance so far of the season, although we took a fairly leisurely pace, and stopped for a while at the turnaround point.  This was Jeannie’s fifth or sixth big bike ride of the year.  In the evening we went to a party hosted by Mark’s friend Cory, at a very nice summer cottage on a nearby lake.  Cory happens to be a passionate cocktail mixologist, and has the best home-bar I’ve ever seen made in a former woodshed.  He was very into mixing drinks for everyone using a whole array of bespoke elixirs, infusions, spirits and spices.  Like a master chef for drinks.  Huzzah!

Mark and I talked at length about improvisational music and the challenges of breaking out of genre boxes and other expectations to explore new frontiers.  In addition to his main group Crackin’ Foxy, Mark has been exploring the world of looper jams using pedal and an electric guitar.  He played me lots of interesting loop-based stuff from the classical world, including stuff featuring cello and clarinet.

After the party we headed back into to town to try and catch the fireworks show, but we were too late.  We ended up at a local bar called the Watering Hole, which I hadn’t been to in many years, and used to be kinda run down but is now very nice indeed.  They had a live band doing funk soul party music featuring a trombone player.  Alot of fun.

Friday we went for a canoe ride on some nearby lakes.  Not quite as epic as some canoe rides of seasons past, but we were out on the water for over two hours.  That evening we drove out to a concert venue near Lake Champlain to see Nate Wood doing a project called Four.  Nate is a one-man band and quite astounding.  He plays drum with one hand and both feet, and also guitar or bass with his other hand (using mainly tap technique), all augmented with some keyboards played in interstitial free moments.  The amazing thing is not just that he can do all this at once, but that it actually sounds musical and cool!  The songs are basically structured improv jams with a sort of prog-rock-meets-jazz-fusion sound.  My kind of weird!

Saturday we drove to a weekend of catching up on chores and things including doing yardwork in the ninety-degree heat.  Jeannie and I did another bike ride Sunday morning.  I did sixteen miles with an average pace of 14mph, a personal best for speed this season so far.  Today Jeannie took off for an IT Admin conference in Pennsylvania; she’ll be back Friday.