Category: Music

Delirium

I just got back from a long, long trip to central Europe. It was an amazing time but it’s good to back home again. There’s alot to unpack, literally and figuratively, so it’ll take a few posts to get thru it all.

For now, rewinding a bit, the day before we left I saw Claypool Lennon Delirium at the Capital Theatre in Port Chester. The nucleus of the band is Les Claypool of Primus fame and Sean Lennon, son of John and Yoko, doing joyous psychedelic rock with a group rounded out by a keyboardist (synth, clav and mellotron) and an excellent drummer. Les and Sean split the lead vocals and the arrangements included lots of vocal harmonies and a good balance of melodies and jamming. They did mostly originals, but to give you an idea of their sound, the three covers they did were Astronomy Domine by Pink Floyd, In the Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson, and Tomorrow Never Knows by the Beatles, all of which they really made into their own.

I know Les Claypool best from his work with Primus, and of course the music for South Park, but I haven’t heard from him in a while. He’s a wildly creative bass player, and his style has evolved and matured alot to be less of a lead instrument taking up all the available space, and more fitting into to the groove in various ways, simultaneously anchoring and going beyond, but still sounding very much like him. Sean is a really good guitar player. He plays a Strat with a whammy bar and uses alot of tone and and phrasing bends in his solos, so I’d compare him to someone like David Gilmour. But he’s also capable of fast shredding riffs. He doesn’t use it like a metal guy though; he has in own thing going. In any event the two of them have great synergy and the whole show and the music was just fantastic.

Co-headlining with CLD was The Flaming Lips, who were not at the same level musically, although they opened with a rendition of Also Sprach Zarathustra, which was a promising start. The singer had an annoying habit of interrupting himself to demand the audience make more noise. Still they were fun and notable for their use of giant inflatable props, and they seemed to have something of a cult following.

Rock Out

In other news my rock band G Force has broken up. Before you get too upset I can tell you that by the last few gigs it was becoming a real drag. The music wasn’t happening and the crowds weren’t digging it. The musicians in the group had pretty much decided our other singer was not really all that great, especially when it came to harmonies, and her habit of acting like she was in charge was not especially tolerable. The last thing she said to me, at the end of the last gig, was “I can’t stay and help break down the equipment cuz I have to get up and go the beach tomorrow”. When I called her out on this, she up and quit. Too bad. We didn’t always agree on things but it was an interesting dynamic and a fun ride.

The last gig was with my friend Steve on drums rather than our regular drummer, and this was a real shot in the arm. Vinny, Ken and I had already been discussing doing a reboot, essentially leaving to form a new group, but I wanted to wait until the rest of our July gigs were over. Now those gigs are cancelled and we’re deciding how to move ahead. Steve is into being our regular drummer so it looks like we have the core of a group. We’ll certainly do material that’s more fun and interesting to us, but at this point it’s pretty wide-open. I’d like to get another vocalist besides myself, so that probably means holding auditions once we’re ready, unless somebody knows someone at it comes together that way.

Memorizing Jazz

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.

Take Me Home Country Roads

I just got back from a nice trip upstate, visiting my parents and celebrated the 4th of July. Lots of good barbecue and even cabbage rolls. Martin and his family were up there too. The weather was very hot.

I’m planning a trip to Europe later this year that includes a visit to Hungary. I’ve been learning Hungarian (as well as German, more on all this in a future post) and my Dad, being fluent in both languages had been helping me out. He translated a poem by the famous poet Sándor Petöfi for me, although right now I only recognize about one word per line and am still working out the basics of the grammar and nuances of the usage of common words. But I was able to pick thru it.

My Dad has a cousin living in the town he grew up in and I made contact. I discovered the house he used to live in is still in the family. It was destroyed in WWII but apparently they built a new house on the old site. So my Dad started making me a handdrawn map, and I pulled up google street view. The whole thing was kind of mind blowing.

On the 5th we went up to Niagara Falls. It was very crowded. We went to ride the Maid of the Mist. The lines were long and the management of the situation was very bad. I’d been there years before and at that time they gave you a ticket with a time to show up and it all ran very smoothly. Now there’s apparently new management and they just have you wait around in a single giant crowded queue for hours with no shade and no place to sit. It was so bad Michelle fainted and bumped her head and had to go cool off in the Visitor Center, and missed the boat ride altogether. And afterwards it was even worse, with another chaotic queue just to get back on the elevator to go back up the cliff, with people cutting line and hopping over fences and very bad crowd control. Oy!

That evening we visited my friend Chris down at Lake Chattaqua. I hadn’t seen Chris in years and it was good to catch up. He was the former keyboard player in my 80’s and early 90’s prog fusion band Event Horizon. He’s looking well and still playing music, going thru changes in life as we all are. He’s in the process of buying a grand piano and putting together a new home studio.

The scene at the lake is very nice, total cottage country. There was a little row of restaurants and bars on the waterfront with live music. Reminds of Lake George. There was a band there, a power trio and everyone sang. Excellent harmonies, I wish my rock band sounded that good. The surprise hit of the night was Never Been Any Reason by Head East. They totally nailed it.

On the ride home we were caught in the jaws of a huge stormfront for most of the drive. Hours and hours of the most torrential, tempestuous downpour you’ve ever seen. Very nasty. Finally we broke free and it was nothing but blue skies. But then after we stopped for lunch the storm caught up to us and the last part was raining again.

Global Jukebox in the Classroom

Just before my trip we completed a a major round of work on The Global Jukebox. We’re adding an education portal; we now have a working prototype. You can see it at:

http://dev.theglobaljukebox.org

Just scroll down to the bottom of the landing page to find the entry point.

We’ve been partnering with a group called City Lore to create this section for use as a classroom tool in the New York City Public Schools. We created an experience where students can search for the musical roots by listening to the music of different cultures, then create and share a playlist of songs from cultures associated with people in their family tree. We demoed it the other day with City Lore for a group of teachers doing a day of professional development. It went quite well; they were keenly interest in the app and the Jukebox as a whole, and afterwards was an interesting and productive discussion. This was the culmination of a long period of planning and work, and it’s good that it paid off. must say also that it’s been a long while since I gave a demo and it’d lots of fun.

As part of the project we’ve added a visual designer to the team to skin the portal and reskin the site. Her name is Alona and she’s doing great work and I finally got to meet here F2F at the demo. The next phase of the project for me will be integrating her comps into the actual software, while Martin will be focused on backend integration. Hopefully we’ll be pretty much there in the next few weeks, to give us some time for testing and tweaks before the start of the school year.

July Gigs

July is gonna be a busy month for gigging out.

Haven Street, the jazz group is playing at:

Thursday July 18 – The Barn at Quaker Hill Country Club, Pawling

I must say the last few jazz gigs have been really good and they keep getting better. My new song Wolf Whisper is coming along, and Gary brought in a really cool new song last week. The venues and audiences have been really warm and receptive too.

Meanwhile the rock group G-Force has three gigs coming up:

Saturday July 13 – Barney McNabbs, Tucakahoe
Friday Jul 19 – Boulevard Bar, Queens
Saturday Jul 27 – Man Overboard, City Island

Barney Mcnabbs is a place we know and is fun to play. For this gig we’re having my friend Steve sit in on drums since our regular drummer can’t make it. For the gig in Queens we have Jay sitting in on bass since our regular bassist Ken can’t make it. Steve and Jay are both excellent musicians. For Man Overboard we’re back to our regular line up. We played that place a while back and they liked us even thought that gig we weren’t at our our best musically, with two sub players and a brand new drummer.

I’m hoping for some good gigs; it’ll give us all a positive energy boost. Our last few gigs have been spotty, with a couple rained out and a couple playing to mostly empty rooms, the aforementioned disaster, and a couple decent gigs including the last one at Victors, which is one of our favorite places to play and always has a good crowd.

Why aren’t we winning over crowds everywhere we go? That’s a good question. Having sub players slows down our ability to to work new songs into the set. Maybe our choice of material has something to do with it. It also hinders us in drilling down to focus and get the songs really tight. If you’re gonna do tunes everyone knows you really gotta kick ass at it. Ah well. Kenny and Vinny remain excellent and lift up the level of the whole thing.

In any event we’ve been working hard and it’s bound to come together at some point. So as I say I’m hoping for some magic and it just might happen one of these nights.

Can’t Get No Fancy Notes on My Blue Guitar

Tonight’s gig at the street fair was rained out. Ah well. On the upside I have some unexpected free time, so here’s an update to my blog.

I picked up a new guitar not too long ago. This has been on my list for a long time but the stars never aligned. Every few month’s I’d go to the music store to see what they had but I never found one that felt right. I mainly play acoustic guitar, strictly rhythm, to accompany myself singing. I’ve written a few songs on guitar and I want to use it more in my recording.

I have a Strat that Martin lent me a long time ago but I could never really get the sound I was after. I wanted something with dual humbuckers, so I was looking at Les Pauls for a while, and finally figured I’d check out some hollowbody and semi-hollowbody guitars. I found a few new but I’m not such a good guitarist that it’s worth spending huge money, and there’s no point in getting a cheap guitar. So the strategy was to wait until the right used one went by.

This one was for sale at my rehearsal studio, in new condition and at less than half the original price, and right in my zone. It’s a hollowbody with the right pickups, an Epiphone Joe Pass signature model. It’s made in Korea, basically a knockoff of a Gibson (alot like the Chuck Berry one at the museum) that costs ten times the price, but you know, a well built instrument and a good value. It sounds great even unplugged, with excellent sustain and a smooth rich tone. The feel of the neck is great too, much more facile than any of my other guitars.

Gary was with me when I bought it and declared it an excellent jazz guitar (he’s a huge Joe Pass fan). Erik, the studio manager says there are two kinds of players who like a guitar like that: jazz guys, and punk/surf guys who crank it up and prize it for it’s nasty feedback. So perfect for me.

I came home and plugged it into my amp. Playing guitar thru an amp is the big missing piece in my sound, and it’s another thing you have to get used to. My amp is a Roland JC-120 which I use mainly as a keyboard amp since it has that built-in chorus and warm distortion, great for thickening up Fender Rhodes and organ sounds on stage. But it’s really made for guitars and pairs particularly well with a jazz guitar. Woah, totally awesome! So now I’m getting used to it and exploring the range of tones between smooth and chunky.

Next step is to hook it up to some effects. A long time ago Martin also lent me a Zoom multi-effects box, but for the life of me I can’t find it. Ah well, the main application is studio recording, and my method has always been to apply the effects in software. That’s still and option. I can come direct out of the guitar or out of the amp and it ought to sound better than before. But I’m unlikely to fire up my computer just to practice, and it’d be good to get together a bag of tones that I know and can use in various writing and arranging situations. So I might end up getting a new FX box anyway. But not until at least sometime in July.

Jazz at the Lodge and Rockin’ in the Street

Once again there’s so much going on. I bought a new guitar recently and have been getting to know it. Working on recording a new song Sun of the Son; up to the bass part now. The annual origami convention is coming up and I been working on designing new models, and I diagrammed my Flying Fish. Been jamming a ton of new work on the Global Jukebox. I got a new radiator for my Mustang, and washed and waxed it too. Been planning a trip to Europe and learning two new languages, and while I’m at researching Hungarian linguistics, mythology and ancient history. And of course my my day job: just finished a major milestone, now back in bug fixing mode. And there’s been lots and lots of rain. So there’s lots of things to write about for this blog, if I could, uh, find the time.

For tonight the topic is music. The Haven Street Jazz gig last Saturday night at the Elks Lodge in Ossining went really well. It turns out there’s a pretty cool little scene there, a concert series called Jazz at the Lodge. The guy who runs it is named John Codman, and he’s an Elk and huge jazz fan. He’s put together a room in the back with tables like a little jazz club, and has local jazz groups like ours come in and play. Up front they have a bar and food. He’s promoting it and selling tickets and making it into a thing. All in all it’s very cool and groovy and he made us feel very welcome.

The gig itself went quite well. The set list was:

Bye-Ya (T. Monk)
Buzzy Blue (J. Szinger)
Un Gato Gordo (R. Paganello)
Fever Dream (J. Militscher)
Nana’s Song G. (Bruce)
Lift Off (J. Szinger)
Close the Distance (G. Bruce)
Oleo (S. Rollins)

D-Bop (G. Bruce)
Mobility (J. Szinger)
Samba Astor (G. Bruce)
West Coast Blues (W. Montgomery)
King’s Hex (J. Szinger)
A Minor Event (G. Bruce)
All the Things You Are (J. Kern)

A couple of the songs sped up a bit, and there were a few minor clams, but overall the band was really on and having fun, and the audience was digging it. In particular I played a really good solo on West Coast Blues. I also have been woodshedding Lift Off, which is a real mofo to play at tempo (I know, I wrote it), which paid off in the melody being good and tight.

My next gig is with the rock band G Force, at the St Teresa’s Street Fair in the Bronx, this Thursday. For this gig our regular bass player Ken couldn’t make it, so we had to get a sub. For our last gig we were also sans Ken, so Vinny our guitarist played bass, and we brought in his friend Eddie on guitar. Vinny is a good bassist but not at Ken’s level, and Eddy is good but didn’t really know the tunes. Between having two subs and Adrian still learning the set on the drums, it was not our best gig. Which was too bad too cuz it was a nice venue, a bar on City Island with an octopus motif. One of the drunks there really loved the saxophone.

After that I had to insist we can’t do gigs anymore with two subs, at least not until Adrian can hold it together if there’s someone else who doesn’t know what’s going on. So this time we got my friend Jay from the jazz group to sit in on bass. We did a rehearsal last night and went really well. I’d never really heard Jay on electric bass doing rock, but he’s just great. And he memorized 30 songs in a week and a half. We were all very impressed. So all systems go for the Fest.

Unfortunately it’s an outdoor gig and it looks like it may be rained out. Ah well, we have two gigs coming up after that on June 28 and 29. So stay tuned for more.

Haven Street – Jazz at the Lodge

The weather has gotten really nice the last couple weeks. Most days are sunny in the mid 70’s and into the 80’s. Our flowering tree is in bloom. Still very busy, lots of things in motion. More updates soon.

Right now I’m just here to say my jazz group Haven Street has a gig coming up. Saturday June 15 at The Lodge in Ossining. 8 o’clock start time. Should be lots of fun, so come check it out.

Nice Weather If You’re a Duck

Spring progresses, the dude abides. It’s been unusually cold and rainy the last few weeks. Haven’t had 24 hours without rain since sometime last month. It’s pouring down again right now. We had one nice day last weekend and I did manage to get some yardwork in and take the Mustang for a drive. I ordered a new battery for my lawnmower and a mini chainsaw on a stick to take care of some high branches from a neighbor’s tree that’s been been growing into our yard. I also marked out the territory to expand my patio. Yesterday the guy came to hook up the transfer box for a generator to our house electric. This was the last piece of the solar power project. Glad to have that done with so we can move on to other things.

Michelle’s had a birthday. Rather than doing a big sweet sixteen party like her sister, she opted for Jeannie and I taking her for an evening out with a few friends. It’s interesting to see her interacting with her school friends. I hadn’t met them before but they seem like very nice kids, smart and sharp and fun. Plotting their takeover of the robotics team next fall. Now she’s taking her AP exams and Lizzy is already done with school and home for the summer. My how the time flies.

We had a jazz gig last weekend at the Green Growler in Croton. It’s a fun and cozy venue and the people there are into this kind of music. We had a couple guests sit in for a few standards at the end of each set. Ben on trumpet and Lisa on flute, friends of the drummer and the guitarist. Musically the band keeps getting better. I have some video clips which I’ll post soon. Gina from the rock band came out to see us, which I appreciate. She and Jeannie were talking loudly the whole time right in front of the camcorder. Ah well, we have another jazz gig coming up in a few weeks. Nice that the group is gigging out.

We had a gig with the rock band a couple weeks ago too. This was our first gig with the new drummer Adrian, and the first gig with my new keyboard. Unfortunately, it was a large place and not alot of people turned out. Also we’ve been adding more dance tunes lately and I think this place was more of a rock crowd. Gonna hafta swing back in that direction for the next batch of new songs. And since the drummer was still learning the set we had problems with tempos and with dead time between songs. On the plus side the new keyboard has lots of great sounds and I’m learning my way around it. Ah well, no time for adding new material just yet. We’ve been drilling on the fundamentals so the next show should be stronger. Coming this Saturday at Victor’s in Hawthorne, which a place we know well. Should be a good time.