Buon Giorno 12/7/12

Been a long time...

I've had a week to sit back and process the BG gig with Kristina Morland, and it all seems like a cool little dream. Kristina did great, in spite of some jitters, naturally, since she hasn't performed in public for what seems like ages. Her new songs were great and hopefully I added some atmosphere in my accompaniment on a few of them. A good turnout too, it was great to see so many of her friends and fans come out to support her.

She opened with six songs, a few from her first album Pidgin Music, and a few new ones. Nice fingerpicked guitar work, that fragile childlike vocal and abstract but accessible lyricism. She let me take over after that and I did my thing for about half an hour, and she came back and we did a few more songs together, which was the highlight, for me. We blended rather nicely I thought, in spite of having virtually no rehearsal beforehand. I closed out with a BL set with Ross Reitzammer joining me on flute, which is always a pleasure. That segment can be heard in the player below.

I certainly hope this was the first of many more shows for Kristina!

Buon Giorno 5/25/12

Playing in coffee shops can be a thankless experience, believe you me, I've done a few. At it's worst it can be like performing in a morgue, to baristas who wish you weren't even there. At the other end, it was like last night, at Buon Giorno where they at least seem to give a care about having live music (house p.a., assistance, and something in the tip jar), and aforementioned staff who were friendly and helpful.

It's also great when folks actually turn out to listen, and I think an attendance record was broken, as far as BL shows go. Again, infinite thanks to you who did. Was it all the FB pestering I did? Sorry, I hope not. And Ross Retzammer kinda saved my ass. The first set was a bit tepid and uninspired, then he broke out his flute and got me back on my toes.

Open Streets

In what is apparently becoming a tradition, I took the BL rig down to Fort Worth's southside for the semi-annual Open Streets event (I did the one last fall too). As I described in my post for the fall event, I had the battery powered Roland amp in tow, full of freshly charged AA batteries. My fears of being not loud enough were assuaged, as a fellow from the yoga group down the street approached, and very tactfully and kindly asked me to turn it down! They had hired a musician, he said. The wrong one, I thought to myself. Well I didn't turn down, but turned the amp in the other direction, eastward down Magnolia, where my buddy Darrin Kobetich and a DJ were blasting their sounds. When you have an event called "Open Streets" this tends to happen, performance/sound zones bleed into each other and it becomes a bit of a mess. I love it.

Several people stopped and listened, showed appreciation, and moved on. I gave away a few cds. Some beautiful little kids came up and stared rapt, like they'd never seen a guitar. A game of musical peekaboo ensued.

After about an hour I broke down, and moved over to listen to Darrin, grabbed a taco from the truck and did some people watching. The ever-gracious DK invited me to jam with he and Harry (on harmonica) and some properly kozmic blooze ensued.

AXE

Fellow IF'er (Improv Friday) Bruce Hamilton included me in this excellent experimental guitar compilation with many other fine pickers and pedal pushers. I'm listed under my real name and not the BL handle. You can download it from bandcamp as pay what you want, or order the cd!