Tag: Haven Street

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.

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!

Bridge’n’Tunnel

We had a really fun and interesting weekend full of music and visiting the old neighborhood. First off, my jazz group Haven Street played a gig a club called Shapeshifter Lab in Brooklyn. The gig was on a Friday evening, so getting into the area took about two hours for a trip of fifteen or twenty miles, going thru, as Jeannie put it “all three boros”. We took the route down the FDR drive which was at least fun and scenic since I rarely go that way.

It turns out the club was only a few blocks away from where we used to live in Park Slope in the year 2000. Fun and intersting to see how the neighborhood has changed. It still seems lively as ever. We found a great pizza place right around the corner form the club.

Shapeshifter is a very nice place to play, with a big stage, grand piano, drums and PA already set up, and even a professional soundman. You can tell they care about the music and the musicians. It’s run byt the son of the bassist Jimmy Garrison, who is famous for playing the classic John Coltrane quartet among many others.

Our set went well. As mentioned previosuly, the band has been sounding better and better, and the songs getting freer and more interactive. Everyone’s playing was in top form and the set was all originals, wide-ranginng and expressive. We had only and hour and we focused on getting more songs in rather than stretching out. We played eight songs, four from our first record, and four from our upcoming future record.

The second band that night was a big band doing avant-garde material. They were very good musicains, and intersting music. But when the main idea is to eschew traditional melody, harmony and song structure, there’s only so much one can take. Still I’m happy they kept alive my streak: the eighth band in a row I’ve seen with a trombone player.

After the show Jeannie and I decided to drive past our old apartment in Brooklyn to see how the neighborhood had changed. Driving home we went across the new Kosciuszko bridge, which was pretty neat. Then we decided we might as well drive past our old apartment in Queens from the mid 90’s since it was pretty much on the way.

Saturday it rained all day. In the evening we went out to see Ravi Coltrane at the Village Vanguard. Wow, what a sax player! A very high level of vrituousity, and very expressive. He has alot of his father in his sound, but is doing his own thing, very modern and up to date. The thing that impressed me probably the most of anything is his tone on the soprano sax is so full and fierce it’s actually baddass! He also had a great group with him: piano bass and drums.

We hadn’t been in the Village for a while, and it was just a few blocks away from where I used to live in the early 90’s. It was Saturday night of Halloween weekend when we got out of the show, so it was extra fun to watch the people all dressed up and going out to party.

There’ll Be Spandex Jackets One for Everybody

It’s been another busy week. Last Friday my piano guy finally came by with my adjusted pedal board. If you recall, way back when I bought my piano I had them make some casters to raise the height of the keyboard 2″. This is because I’m tall and me knees need to fit underneath. However the pedals were quite high. Close inspection revealed it looked like they had been raised previously. So had them extend the pedals again to be lower. But they didn’t follow my directions and they made them too low, so that I would never be able to take the piano off the casters. I had to have them raise them back up again partway. This is all custom work and it took a long time, and I’ve been without my pedals the last few weeks. Now at last it’s at the right height and all is well. Ah happiness.

I’ve been trying to get out to see more live music. Jeannie and I saw Steely Dan at the Beacon in NYC last weekend. It was a great show. They do complete albums nowadays, a different one each night, and for us it was The Nightly. Technically it was a Donald Fagen solo record, produced by Walter Becker, but I guess now it’s part of the Dan cannon. Of course it’s a great record, opening with the retrofuturistic classic I.G.Y., and naturally the band played the heck out of it. It was a big group, with Donald on vocals, piano and melodica, two guitars, another keyboardist, bass and drums, three backup singers and four horns. When I’ve seen the Dan in the past the horn section was all saxophones, but this time they added a trumpet and trombone, extending my streak to seven of the last seven bands I’ve seen have had a trombone player.

The second set was a bunch of hits and deep tracks from throughout their career, all great stuff. In a group of top-notch musicians doing complex arrangements, the drummer really stood out over all the rest, with Neil Peart level chops applied to nonstop funk and soul grooves. At the end of the set he did a drum solo. Just wow.

The opening act was an unexpected treat: the Peter Bernstein trio with Jimmy Cobb on drums and some old guy whose name I didn’t catch on organ, just amazing.

As mentioned a few posts ago we had to get rid of the guitar player in my rock band cuz he was always too loud, wouldn’t stop playing between songs, was generally unprofessional and just didn’t get along with the others in the group. But we have a whole string of gigs coming up between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so we need a new guitar player fast. This week we got a new guy Vinny who came in. He seems like a nice guy, learned a bunch of the tunes, and he’s a good player. So it looks like we can move ahead again. Looking forward to the new lineup coming together.

I had to go the music store this week to get a box of reeds. We have a jazz gig coming up Friday in Brooklyn and I was down to my last one. While I was there, they had for sale the Real Book, Sixth Edition in Bb. So I finally replaced my old 5th edition which I bought out of the trunk of some dude’s car my freshman year of college, before they were legal, and is so deteriorated it can longer properly even be called a book.

One other thing they had for sale in wind section – a melodica! I picked one up, inspired by the Dan, and also Michelle has been asking for one. I brought it to jazz rehearsal, thinking i might try it out. I told Jay about it, and he asked “Is the the instrument with the little keyboard that you blow into? I hate those!”

So that was that. Nevertheless the jazz group continues to sound better and better, tighter and more free each rehearsal. We’re starting to plan our next record. I’m totally psyched for our gig on Friday.

Haven Street in Brooklyn

Here’s announcing my jazz group Haven Street will be playing at Shapeshifters Lab in Brooklyn, Friday October 26 at 7 pm. Should be a good show, featuring half originals of our debut record, half new stuff, and maybe a standard or two.

Spoiler alert: I’ve been getting deep into All the Things You Are. It was Gary’s idea to do an original arrangement. It’s a song I’ve played a million times, but recently I realized I was just kind of riding my way along the changes without having much to say, so I decided to really learn it. With a song like that the melody and the harmonies are so strong it’s kinda hard to go a fresh new way when you solo, but the material is so rich it’s really worth it to explore. I found a really cool version by Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan that I’m kind of using to influence my approach.

Also I should mention that Eric Puente is now our full time drummer. He brings a great energy and swing to the group, and it’s great having him on board.

Heavy Skies

Last Friday my jazz group Haven Street had a gig at Hayfields in North Salem, NY. It was a cool place and a fun time. Hayfields is out in the woods past Katonah, and it’s a sort of cafe restaurant with wine and beer and yummy food fresh farmer’s market fare. They treated us really nice.

The band set up in an enclosed porch area with roll-down plastic screens in case there’s a change in the weather. Which was a good thing, because right at the start of the second song the sky opened up and it started pouring down rain. A few songs later I announced the next song was called Heavy Skies. Just then a huge gust of wind came up, knocking everything over in the outside area just beyond us and causing a general panic. We had to stop the song and start over. The rain continued off and on the rest of the night.

All in all it was a good show. The crowd wasn’t huge because of the storms, but a good number of people turned out and enjoyed the music. We played most of the music of our record, plus four new originals: A Fat Cat, Fever Dream, Lift Off, and Closing the Distance, as well as a handful of covers and standards. The group’s sound and playing and solos were all right on, a couple minor glitches in the new tunes aside. The Hayfields said we sounded great. I hope we get to go back.

On the way home the weather turned stormy again. At one point it looked like we had just missed a tornado touching down. There was debris swirling in the air everywhere. At another point it the roads were starting to flood and I drove thru some pretty deep water.

We were supposed to go camping the next day, but we had to cancel cuz of the weather. In fact we were supposed to go the week before but that got rained out too. So we replanned again for next weekend. On Sunday the weather finally broke and it went from weeks of being in the 90’s down to the 70’s. In lieu of camping Jeannie and I decided to go for a hike.

We picked Anthony’s Nose, a trail near the Bear Mountain Bridge. It’s only about three miles there and back but the first half is very steep, about 700 feet vertical, and very rocky. The view from the top looks down on the bridge, and across the river at Bear Mountain and Harriman Park, and the whole vista of that part of the Hudson Valley. You can even see the new Tappen Zee bridge far to the south. We did the hike in about two hours and afterward stopped by a scenic overlook to check out the eagles flying around. It was as great hike and we felt invigorated afterward, and now we want to do a few more hikes this summer and fall.

As the summer draws to a close we’ve been trying to maximize our weekends. It turns out Sunday morning is a good time for some good outdoor time. A couple weeks ago we went to the beach and swan in the ocean, and the week after that we went to a BBQ brunch out on Long Island for our friend Antonio who is moving to Florida for college.

This morning Lizzy drove off for her second year at college and now she’s on her way upstate. It was great having her home for the summer, but wow it went by fast. We’ll miss her but we wish her well.

Haven Street Live

Here’s announcing that my jazz band, Haven Street, is playing live:

Hayfields Market
North Salem, New York
Friday August 17 6:30 PM

This is our fist time playing at Hayfields, really looking forward to it. It looks like the place is a farmers market with a cafe offering food and wine where the group is set up. Cozy local vibe. Looks like fun. We’ll be playing two sets, so we’ve prepared a bunch of new material. Find out more at:

http://hayfieldsmarket.com/events/winter-live-music-nights/

This is the first of several upcoming gigs for my jazz band and mew rock band this summer into early fall, so watch this space for future updates.