Tuesday, June 19, 2012

MBar Tomorrow - Gantry Plaza State Park in LIC Thursday (Make Music NY)

Howaaaaya?  Make it funky, make it funky, make it funky.   I've been on a James Brown kick lately (again)...

Tomorrow, you'll find me playing trombone, ukulele and singing at the The M Bar at the Mansfield Hotel  with Jim Whitney and Russ Meissner.  This is a really swell joint in Midtown that I've been playing at for a really long time.  Just the fact that I called it "swell" should be enough to tell you about how funky I'll be getting there.

Thursday is June 21st, the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, the first day of summer, the beginning of my 42nd trip around the sun, and the day of the annual 
Make Music NY Festival .   Music will be everywhere, for free, all over the city, including in my not-as-humble-as-it-used-to-be neighborhood, Long Island City.  I'll be playing a short duo set with Pat Irwin at beautiful Gantry Plaza State Park  on the East River.  We'll have a slightly smaller amount of equipment for this show than you may have seen in shows past.  (We don't have the luxury of spending 3 hours or more  for setup and breakdown each, which is about the average for me as of late.  Too.  Many.  Toys.)  It'll be our first venture into the outdoors together, and I'm lookin' forward to it.

You'll find the deets for the hootenannies in question on the gig schedule page.  That link is in the menu to the right.



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Friday, June 15, 2012

home grown ukulele video: It Might As Well Be Spring


I wrenched (literally) this file from an old hard drive in a dead enclosure... felt like posting it again, and this time not on MySpace.  This was recorded in my studio (hence all the retro computer pieces in the background) back in 2007 when I had a working video camera and a non working Mac Classic II. (I have since replaced the SMD caps on the logic board of that sucka, and now it's working.)

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Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Music/Art/Burlesque Tomorrow Night - Garage Friday


Maintenance.  Today is a maintenance day.  Be it digitally, as I'm upgrading the operating system on one of my computers, or domestically, as I'm just about to do some serious folding in the laundromat. (Better to fold there than onstage, you dig.)  Ah yes, I'm livin' the life.
Tomorrow I'll be playing at the Battles and Burlesque Speakeasy with Mona's Hot Four in er,.... W30th st... isn't quite midtown.... not quite Chelsea... ok.  In Manhattan!  Ahem.  Anyhoo...that's where the event will be.  There will be music making, an art battle*, and burslesquing.  (Including the incredible Angie Pontani.) I always have a blast with Dennis and Mona's Hot Four, so this will be a hoot, to boot.

Friday night I'll be playing tailgate trombone and singing a few tunes with the hardest rocking traditional jazz band alive on the planet, Kevin Dorn and  The Big 72.  I stand by those words and will defend them until the day I die.  We'll be playing at the Garage in the West Village, obnoxiously late, for an obnoxiously long time, for obnoxiously intoxicated people.  Do join us.  ;)

All of the pertinent info for the above mentioned shows is on the "gig schedule" page... link is to the right.



















* An "Art Battle" being art, painting in particular, as a competetive spectator sport...which is more or less 180 degrees from what many may believe about art and artists. However, when one is in mid swoon with a tasty cocktail, whilst immersed in an atmostphere of gin-swilling jazz and buxom burlesque performers shedding their skins, one may find that the height of one's ideals is inversely proportional (the reciprocal, if you will) to how high one actually is.  I've yet to perfectly balance the equasion, but I feel my hypothesis is correct.  More research is needed.  Much more.  ;)

Wednesday, June 06, 2012

NY Uke Fest 2012 this weekend

Greetings.

This weekend will mark, for my 7th year*, one of my craziest weekends of the year:  Uke Fest weekend.  This is when hundreds of freakin' wackos... er, I mean ukulele players and enthusiasts, converge from all around the world into New York City for a weekend of concerts, workshops, vendors, and general grass skirting.  Oh how I love/fear this weekend.   This is probably the biggest ukulele event of the year in town, and if you are at all interested in the ukulele and Hawaiian culture, I'm sure you'll find something you'll get a kick out of at the fest.  I also recommend it if you're in the market for a nice ukulele, as they typically have a bigger selection of good ukuleles than you will find at any one place in NYC.  There will be some interesting performances, with a few favorites of mine being Greg Hawkes (no relation) from The Cars, Mihana Souza  from Hawaii, Pat Enos, and fellow New Yorker Becca Stevens.  There'll  even a ukulele ensemble from British Colombia.  Crazy, man!

This year the fest will be at the beautiful New York Society for Ethical Culture on the Upper West Side.  I'll be playing a quick set with my trio this Friday night.  Joined by Jim Whitney and Andrew Burns, I'll be doing a uke-centric set, with some new-ish originals.   Saturday I'll teach a 2pm workshop called "Jazz Chord Tips and Tricks for the Ukulele," where intermediate/advanced players can learn some of my cheesy tricks.  Saturday night I'll play ukulele with the band of festival director Ken "Bari" Murray.  



C'mon by and say hi, er, Aloha!


All the pertinent information is on the "Gig Schedule" page on this here blog.  The link's to the right. :)