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!

Avant Garden, Houston 12/28/11

I'm always looking for venues to play down in H-town when I'm down there visiting relatives for the holidays, and when I saw my friend and mentor (whether she knows it or not!) Susan Alcorn was playing at Avant Garden, I looked into the place. An old two-story on Westheimer, Avant Garden houses a small bar with a huge patio and has a new and improvised music show on Wednesdays, in addition to other cool activities. The kind of place I wish I had in my neighborhood.

So I packed up mom (who just turned 90 a week before), my bro and my rig and headed out. Got there way too early, but Robert, who organizes the event was there. There had been some overbooking, with another band added to the bill, but ok by me because I would be the second set as planned. It was a bit cold inside, so mom stayed out in the car until I played. Seth Paynter was the first act. Looping sounds from a contact mike (scratching, breathing), he also played EWI (electronic wind instrument) and did a nice improv on sax. His pedal board resembled a guitarist rig, with a couple of Moog boxes I could have had real fun with. As I entered the bar at the beginning of his set I was struck by the silence. The small bar was full of patrons but you could hear a pin drop, everyone was focused on what was happening on stage. I knew then this would be a special night. Seth played for half an hour. Then I did my thing. Mom and bro got a table up front and I gave him a crash course on operating my camera, pix below. Also below, some edits from the performance. The recording got a bit saturated on the loud bits so I had edit those out, unfortunately. Nothing new here, but I decided to pull out the motif Hymn, which is a good show ender when there is a quiet attentive audience like this. Everything worked well, with a minimum of mistakes, and I think the setting had a lot to do with that. The audience was very kind and appreciative after the set.

Thanks to Robert Pearson, Susan Alcorn, Mariana, Mom and Duane.