Tag: G! Force

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.

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.

Here Comes the Sun Machine

It looks like spring is finally arriving in earnest. Everything feels warmer and coming alive. The big news here is we got solar panels installed on our new roof. The company that did the work was Apex, and I must say they did a great job. Like the roof they came and installed everything in one day. Of course before all that they spec’d the system and did the engineering and got the permits from the town and all that. A few random tasks remain. We’re adding a hookup so we can power the house off a generator more directly. Also the city needs to do an inspection and the electric company to come and install a two-way meter. Then we’ll be all set to let the sun shine in and face it with a grin.

I’ve been practicing sax more lately, trying to level up my playing. Been woodshedding alot of standards as well as our originals. Working on heads and melodies as well as being able to run the changes and put good ideas over them with fluidity. There’s just so many tunes out there, many of which I haven’t played in quite a few years. Some songs I haven’t played since college, when I played alto, so the key and the layout is all different. Been working on Take Five and A Night In Tunisia in particular.

I saw Joshua Redman at the Blue Note in NYC the other night. I never realized it before but he’s Dewey Redman’s son. Joshua is one of my favorite modern tenor players. Such a high level of virtuosity and technical facility. He has an unbelievable altissimo range, and not just for blasting out the occasional high note, but with dexterity and dynamics, like a whole third register on the horn. But you don’t even pay attention to his chops because his musical ideas are at the forefront and very compelling. The band was a quartet and the set was mostly originals and a few standards including the Dexter Gordon classic I Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry. Excellent piano player too.

In the rock world, G! Force played our last gig with our drummer Pete last Saturday night. It was our best gig yet and musically the group keeps getting better and sounding tighter. He’s a good guy and will be missed.

Luckily we auditioned a new drummer tonight. He’s even better, with a super solid sense of time and everything sounds a bit more snappy and energetic. Just lifts everybody’s playing a notch. Plus he already knows alot of the tunes. So hopefully this will work out. We have a few weeks before our next gigs, and then there’s ten shows in May, June and July. Onwards and upwards.

Double Shot

Winter grinds on. We are in the midst of an epic cold snap. High today is 6 degrees F. Lizzy is back in Buffalo enjoying sub-zero temperatures and lake effect blizzards. More on all that later.

Last weekend we had two excellent gigs back to back, one with the jazz group and one with the rock group.

First, Friday night was the the jazz group Haven Street at the Bean Runner Cafe in Peekskill. This turned out to be a great venue. It had a very San Francisco vibe, with good food, coffee, beer and wine, and a sunny, unpretentious and casually put together decor. There a stage with a PA and the owner was also the sound man, made the band sound great. The room in front of the stage was set up like a night club, with two rows of tables going back, and waiter service so the people there were able to stay in their seats and listen to the music. We had a full crowd, and everyone seemed to dig it. My friend Joe from work and his wife Liz came out. Joe and I always talk about music.

I’m still touched at how an audience will applaud after every solo. And I’m kinda of amazed how, even with a really out-there song like King’s Hex, the audience is right there with us. The band’s playing was tight and solid, good grooves and tempos and dynamics. We all had several really good solos, free and spontaneous and musically happening. We played two sets, about two and half hours. By the end of the second set, after we’d played all our originals and were going out with a couple standards, I felt my energy and imagination flagging. I find when I play in front of an audience I’m a little less inclined to take risks, and sometimes end up falling back and wishing I had a larger vocabulary of canned patterns, but ah well. They don’t know about all the things I might have played. All in all a great gig, and they invited us back. The next jazz gig is this Friday at Silvana’s in Harlem at 6:00, happy hour.

Then Saturday night the rock band, G-Force had our debut gig with our new drummer Pete at Fogherty’s in Bronxville, right up the street from my house. Vinny came and helped load the gear before the gig, which was super helpful. When we got there the setup was a little weird cuz the stage is really small and three of us were out in front, but there was also heavy traffic from the waitstaff right there. The drummer was in a corner and couldn’t see half the band. But once we started playing everything was okay. Pete’s drumming lifts the whole band up a level and everything is much more solid and groovin’. He also sings, so we learned a few few songs for this gig including the Grand Funk Railroad classic Some Kind of Wonderful with Pete on lead. I can hardly wait to get him to harmonies on some other songs; having three voices really will take it to the next level. Onward and upward!

Shiny New Year

Ok so, the new year is off to a roaring start.

Two weeks ago we had just returned to work for new year. Coldness and darkness and all that. That weekend Jeannie was putting away the Christmas decorations in the closet under the stairs, a.k.a. the wizard room. Forgetting where she was, she stood up too fast and bumped her head pretty hard on the low ceiling. The next day Jeannie was driving to work and has a headache and started feeling dizzy. It turned out she had a concussion, which took the better part of a week to get over.

Right around that time the pain in my ankle went from kinda bad to really bad, and it was clear that I’d have to seriously and assiduously stay off my feet for a little while.

That same day we got the news Jeannie’s Aunt Mary died. She was 87 years old. A dear sweet lady. I still remember visiting her house in New Jersey way back when I first moved to NYC. I just saw her at Christmas and she seemed to being doing pretty well. The end was pretty fast.

So bang 1-2-3. At least Lizzy was home and was able to give us rides to the doctors and the funeral home. I was able to work from home until I started feeling better, and we got thru all that. I finally went into the office today. It was good to see everyone again.

We managed to get the Honda fixed somewhere in there. The dealer in White Plains where I bought the car was completely useless, lying to us about the scheduling and the work they intended to perform, recommending thousands of dollars in unnecessary repairs, and not addressing the issue we brought it in for in the first place. After multiple visits we had the give up on them. We took it another Honda dealer in Yonkers, and they were no better. We finally took it to the local garage near Jeannie’s work and they fixed it up for a reasonable price. Never got the firmware in the car’s computer updated, but it seems that was probably unnecessary anyway. Yeesh done with the dealers.

…

On a more upbeat note, the first gig of the new year was with my jazz group Haven Street at the Green Growler in Croton, and it went really well. We played two sets, 10 songs and then 6, with a total of 12 originals and 4 standards. Of the originals, 6 were on our record and 6 are new, destined for record #2. I think the newer songs are all really interesting and some of them really challenging to play, and all offer something new and different compositionally and tonally to solo on, so we’re not just repeating ourselves. The group is at a level where we pretty consistently get into a zone of really good listening/interactivity/spontaneity. A friend of the drummer sat in on trumpet on the standards, and he was quite good, tone phrasing riffs and chops.

Green Growler is a fun and cozy venue. It’s not exactly strictly a bar. They have hundreds of kinds of beer in cans and bottles that you can buy and carry out. It’s right by the Croton train station so there’s alot of walk-in traffic and the bar itself is like a counter. They also have a bunch of beers on tap and you can come in with a jug and have it filled. Then there’s a lounge area across from the bar, where the band plays, and in addition to some chairs and tables they have couches and board games, so it’s a pretty cool hang. They mostly have jazz and alternative music. It’s not very large but the room was full for the first set and still half full at the end, and the people really dug it. There was even dancing, and a guy drawing us the whole show. He showed me the drawings, pretty cool. Captured alot of the improvisational energy.

Our next gig is this Friday at the Bean Runner Cafe in Peekskill. Should be even better.

…

On the rock’n’roll front, we had to kick out our old drummer. We all felt really bad about it, but we had gone as far as we could with him. Andy was a really great guy, very dedicated and eager to help in every way. Unfortunately he was just not an experienced player. The rest of the group has several decades each of experience in working bands, and Andy had been playing about a year and was still getting the basics together.

So Gina had a friend Pete, who is a former wedding band drummer and has a great sense of time and groove. As soon as he entered it lifted the whole sound of the band. Pete sings too, so now we can do three-part harmonies.

We had a gig last weekend, which we had to cancel due to the threat of a snowstorm. Our guitarist Vinny works as a supervisor of a snowplow crew in the Bronx, so he got called in. As it turned out the storm was mostly just rain. Still it’s just as well. No one would’ve come out on a nasty stormy night. And having another week to get the set together with Pete is good thing. To top it off I wouldn’t’ve been able to hump the PA gear coming off and ankle injury.

So we have our debut gig with the new lineup this Saturday at P. J. Fogherty’s in Bronxville. Conveniently just five minutes from my house.

Jazz Season

We have more gig in our holiday season run with G-Force, at Chat 19 in Larchmont this Saturday night. I’ve never played that venue, but Gina seems pretty excited about it and says they always have a good crowd.

I’m thinking of upgrading some of my equipment to make load-in, setup, teardown and load-out quicker and easier. In particular I’m looking for a new lighter keyboard stand, a smaller stage mixer, probably eight channels instead of sixteen, and maybe a couple mic stands if I can find some where the legs don’t flop around after they’ve been collapsed. For the moment I’m thinking of putting a hair scrunchie arond the base of the mic stand to hold the legs shut.

Anyway, as it turns out, the first few gigs in the new year are for the jazz group, so it’s time to hype that.

Haven Street will be playing:

Sat Jan 12, 8pm – The Green Growler, Croton-On-Hudson

Fri Jan 25, 8pm – The Bean Runner Cafe, Peekskill

Fri Feb 1, 6pm – Silvana, Harlem

We’ve played the Growler before. It’s a fun and cozy place with a huge variety of craft beer, and the people who run it really like like music. Sure to be a great time. We might even come back for Sonic Thursday there on Feb 21.

I’ve never played the Bean Runner, but some of the guys in the band have. It has a reputation as a great place for jazz.

Silvana is a happy hour gig uptown Manhattan. That’s supposedly a good jazz venue too.

It’s been a little while since we’ve a rehearsal with the full group, so rather than honing our originals we’ve been exploring the world of standards with an eye toward adopting a few as our own to incorporate our own versions into our repertoire. We’ve also been taking the opportunity to get deeper into extended soloing and group improvisation. That’s been fun and interesting. For the Growler and Bean Runner shows we’re the only band on the bill, so it’s full sets including both originals and covers. So come on out and see us. Should be a really fun time!

G! Force Gigs

You may be wondering whatever happened to the rock band since we had to kick out our old guitar player. Well, the new guy Vinny has been jamming with us a few weeks now. He’s really good and is a nice and fun guy too, and has learned the whole set. So it’s all systems go! Next rehearsal we’re gonna start in on some new tunes, mostly Xmas carols. We have a run of gigs coming up between now and the end of the year. Hope to see y’all at one or more:

November 30 – Dudley’s in New Rochelle
December 1 – Victors of Hawthorne
December 8 – Barney Mc Nabb’s in Tuckahoe
December 15 – Chat 19 in Larchmont

The Debut of G! Force

Last Saturday night was the debut of my new rock pop dance party band, G! Force. It was a fun and successful night. The venue was Victor’s of Hawthorne. I’d played there a couple times before, but never got a huge crowd (once was a snowstorm, the other the day before Thanksgiving). But this night the place was packed. The music went over well, and the band was reasonably together, considering we learned 40 tunes in about six weeks. The bar even invited us back for another gig in November.

We played two long sets, about an hour and a half each. We do a mix of tunes from the 80s up to the present, with a few reaching back to the 60’s and 70’s. To give you an idea, the first few sung by Gina were Exes and Ohs by Elle King, Mercy by Duffy, Domino by Jessie J, Valerie by Amy Winehouse, and No Roots by Alice Merton. Gina has a powerful voice and pulls off that kind of stuff of really well. She also sang lead on a number of rock numbers like Any Way You Want It, Working for the Weekend, and Hit Me With Your Best Shot, as well as some disco tunes like I Will Survive, Boogie Oogie, and Hot Stuff. I sang lead on a bunch of numbers including You Can’t Get What You Want (Till You Know What You Want) by Joe Jackson, I Want a New Drug, Cheap Sunglasses, Drops of Jupiter, Closing Time, Vehicle, and I Just Want to Celebrate. I’ve really been working on my singing and it’s definitely been been improving. Some of the best songs we do are duets: Stop Dragging My Heart Around, Get Lucky by Daft Punk, and Tub Thumping by Chumbawumba.

There were a handful of good sax tunes in there as well. And unlike in previous bands, I’m playing a bunch of synthesizer sounds in addition to the usual piano and organ. It’s fun and a throwback to the 80’s when these songs were new. Right now I’m just calling up various presets but I’d like to put some time into crafting the sounds on some of the tunes.

Gina of course is polished and professional, has a fantastic voice and uses it well. Ken on bass is awesome, especially on the funk and disco numbers. He even had a few solos. Andy on drums is not the steadiest drummer I ever played with, but his playing earnest and powerful. Walter on guitar is versatile and can pull of all the parts in a variety of styles, and had some really good solos. He was the last to join and got it together very quickly. He seems most at home with the hard rock numbers. Unfortunately he tends to turn up his amplifier too loud, and he and Gina don’t seem to get along very well. Ah well, we’ll see how everything plays out.

Now that we have the basics together we’re gonna work on refining things and getting tight. Our next show is in two weeks. After that we have a few weeks to maybe learn a few more songs, then a run of shows from mid November thru mid December.

Come check us our at:

Barney McNabbs on Tuckahoe Rd in Yonkers, Saturday October 13.

G! Force Live

Here’s announcing my new rock band G! Force will be playing our debut gig Saturday September 29 and Victor’s in Hawthorne NY, starting at 9:00. Wow that’s only two weeks away!

We do a combination of rock, pop and dance music. Unlike my last band we’re doing alot of newer stuff, from the 90’s and the 21st century as well as from the 80’s and earlier. It’s a really good group, versatile and solid, and things came together pretty quickly. The lineup is Gina Gee on lead vocals, Walter O on guitar, the inimitable Ken on bass, and Andy on drums, with yours truly on vocals, piano and sax. I’ve never been in a group with a female lead singer before, and it opens up a whole new set of material we can do. I’m singing lead on about 14 out of 40 songs, plus there are few more that are essentially duets, which are probably the most fun.

Hope to see you at the show!

Also here’s a link to our facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/G-Force-585865498482960/

It has few videos from a recent rehearsal, and a really sharp-looking logo. I’ll be making a proper web page for the group as soon as I get around to it.

We have more shows coming up, so look to this space for future announcement. So does my jazz group Haven Street. Between the two have six shows confirmed between now and the end of the year!