concert musings

Well, our Swing Into Christmas concert was a roaring success! We had about 80 reservations and I would have considered that to be a decent attendance but we ended up with about 130 tickets sold and had to add a row of seats. My good friend, Erica Viezner worked with me and she really put a lot of effort into making this venture so successful. Rush to her website right here and support her great group of dancers!

Neo Mundo opened the concert. They played a great set - I'd probably call what they do world music, though there are unmistakable jazz influences. After dismantling their instruments in an incredible hurry (we wanted to keep the intermission short), my new band, Bohemian Swing took the stage (sorry, no website yet!) The best way to describe what we do would be "ethnic swing". We play a lot of the old swing standards arranged for trumpet and violin and then spice things up with gypsy jazz tunes and my original melodies which definitely have a klezmer-ish feel to them. The tp/vln combination works really great. Bruce Whitehead did a fine job on bass and I was called upon not just to do my usual guitar and vox job but also to serve as MC for the evening. Since there were quite a few pauses - our set was interspersed with MMM dances - I had to step up and ad lib, keeping the audience happy while the dancers changed costumes. I felt very relaxed in front of an appreciative crowd.

The glow from the concert hasn't completely abated yet - and it's now four days later. I know this can be a very successful band and I'm spending a lot of time thinking about how best to promote it. Our next gig is at the Rex in January. Go to my main website for details.

The weather has been unbelievably mild. It was about 14 degrees and partly sunny yesterday. Not sure who enjoyed it more - me or the pooch. We went for two long walks and Hugo tried to sniff every blade of grass between here and Steeles Avenue. I let him.....even though the walks took forever!











It made me think about how great it would be to live in Southern California and enjoy weather like that all the time. There are some who claim that you must have four seasons in order to truly enjoy the warm days to which I say: tosh and hogwash! Give me SoCal any day, baby! Then again...mudslides...earthquakes....perhaps not! Just give me a warm autumn day and a happy dog!