The Big Whatever

November's Schedule

A couple of new gigs for next month:  Tuesday (11/1) at the Sheraton 4 Points LAX.  This is the quartet with Steve Carr, Kirk Smith and Albina singing.  Then on Sunday morning, Kirk and I will play the jazz brunch at  Spazio.  I always enjoy this gig for the challenge of playing in a relaxed way but staying creative and intense simultaneously. So, come by.  Y'know, if you'd come to the Reata Grill (RIP), they'd still be open.

Hail to the thief...or "Supply your own title"...

Here they are, the Earth Angels and the governator.  We played for the "official" 60th anniversary of WW2 in San Diego on Sunday.  The girls couldn't resist the photo op.

The trio at "Four Points"

Here's the "Originals" trio at the Sheraton Four Points (great pic by super vocalist and shutter gal Cathleen Crone).  Missing is Albina, who sat in and rocked the house.  Truly - they loved her.  We'll be back on Aug 16th.

More appearences coming next month: Spazio with the "Standards Project" - Kirk Smith and Dave Derge - at Spazio on June 15th, and I'll be with Ryan Cross and Lorca Hart at their "Cross Hart" night at the Bel Age on June 20th.  Y'all come.

Glad the Nuclear Option is off the table.  I spent my pre-teens cowering in the corner 'cause of the nuclear threat; don't want to go through my fifties the same way.

Lotsa Tech TV news.  The Systm is finally up.  I'm downloading it as I write this.  Kevin is leaving G4 (the rumors are always true).  The TWIT podcast is the coolest thing going.  It's the old "Screen Savers" gang (sans Sarah) geeked out all to hell.  Great way to spend an hour.  No iPod?  Just do the mp3 download and  listen on your computer while you're doing other stuff.  I love it. It's also  perfect airplane entertainment.

Three Earth Angels gigs this week.  Whoa!

Talk to me. And I'll tell you. What's goin' on, what's goin' on, what's goin' on...

Well it hardly seems like THREE FUCKING MONTHS (and that was just a note), but who's counting?  Suzi says I must be overloaded...that's not far from true.  It all came down... with me coming down with a deep cold/light flu last week.  Could've used that time to blog, I suppose, but I stayed in bed and did bloody nothing for two days and that seemed to fix things right up.  It's just been busy; what can I say:  If you know my life, you know what that means; if you don't then it probably seems like a threadbare alibi. .

But when you put together being a dad, being a free-lance musician trying to have both a creative and a commercial life, being a brother, trying to have a decent marriage; wanting to cook, do home maintenance, take care of my dog (she'd drink my bath water and I hadn't walked her in a week), plant the garden (bought plants and seeds, not planting yet and it's April); finding time to excercise, read something that isn't written in HTML, stay current with "DiGrassi," and "Deadwood," read the trades, practice, write, make travel arrangements for road gigs, and who knows what else, it's amazing that anything at all gets done. 

It mostly comes down to having a lot of work bunch up--late nights blending into early mornings.  Sessions, sidelines, some producing, a lot of playing gigs. Busy in the home studio too, lately.  That's good 'cause I can stay home, but it means maintenance and updates and downloading drivers and conference calls.  And that's just to order lunch (cymbal crash, snare hit).   Nobody here is complaining, by the way.  It just makes blogging seem like a luxury reserved for the leisure class, and I have had precious little of either of late.  I'll post pix to document all of this, maybe tonight. 

TV production is largely over for the year, but features have been calling: "Yours Mine and Ours" for Sony and added footage on "Rumor Has It" (formerly "Otherwise Engaged;" formerly "Untitled Rob Reiner Project;" formerly "Untitled Ted Griffin Project").  What else?  Don't fucking ask.  Oh alright-"One On One," "Las Vegas," "JAG" -- goodbye "JAG;" it's been great (more on that later), "Numb3rs," "Gilmore Girls," etc. 

And playing lots of jazz.  Thanks here to the Sheraton Four Points LAX (60 kinds of beer!! 60!), Spazio, the Jazz Bakery, etc.

Gotta go.  We're back, baby.

"That Other Seventies Show"

Tonight was the final edition of the Cantors' Cabaret 'seventies show at TAS.  Great work by Patty Linski, Allison Wissot and Evan Kent.  The band was directed by ace painist Carol Weiss, and included John Harvey on drums and Vic Koller on bass.  We're back next year doing the 'fifties in February. 

G4 has done it again, as the axe swung last Thursday at what remains of TechTV.  "Unscrewed" is gone altogether; TSS is being retooled sans Alex, Yoshi, et al.  Too bad, I guess for all those guys that relocated from SF to make it big in LA.  It's only Sarah and Kevin left now from what we'll remember as "classic" TechTV.  Ah well...

Tomorrow it's jazz day at Spazio and Henri's.  Join us at Henri's for the jam session.

Heigh ho, heigh, it's only work y'know...

...'Cause that's all there's been to tell lately. This week it's mostly been about "Complete Savages," a new show for ABC from NBC Prods (welcome to the new age of network cooperation). I had the Occidental College chorus recording and appearing as the "Smile Time Singers" (don't ask), a high school glee club. Thanks to Jeffrey Bernstein and the cool Oxy kids for their great singing and attitude. What else? A very cool gig at Spazio last Sunday; thanks to all who showed up. Please join us (a quartet this time) on Sunday night October 10. Also Rastine Calhoun recording some ultra-cool sax licks for "Girlfriends" at Paramount. And--a few nights playing this week too,

Off to Santa Rosa tomorrow for a gig with Mike Carney. Sunday, I do nothing; I promise.

I'm "Otherwise Engaged"

Where have I been? No, my friend, the question is clearly "where have you been?" I'm working on "Otherwise Engaged," the storied Warner Bros. pic that fired the writer/director after six troublesome days and re-started with Rob Reiner re-writing and (re?) directing.

I've got a big band working every night--all night--so I'm living the zombie life. I'm gone from five in the aft to seven in the morn. It's a good hang with some fine musician buddies, and we're well taken care of, so what's to complain? Pix soon; it's really hard to do anything except work and sleep on this schedule. Real life, such as it is, is lived between noon and five, and that's not much time. I'm not seeing any of the Republican back-slapping party at all, so it's easy to maintain a lofty distance. I did hear some of the Bush twins' snappy repartee replayed on NPR as I was driving home this morning, and I think they were more fun when they were drinking. Gotta go now; keeping my students going with this schedule is a challenge too, but life goes on.

Lest we forget: I'm playing at Spago this Sunday for the Jazz Brunch, so if you're reading this, you should be making reservations.

I'm Otherwise Engaged for a while

So it's a big film sideline: Rob Reiner's "Otherwise Engaged" has hired me to field a 17-piece band for a week of nights (oh no!). With Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Costner and Mark Ruffalo, this should be an interesting gig, and a pleasant way to spend a week. Night work sucks, though. Had Ben DiTosti there today, but they ended up cutting his scene. It's good to be able to put that many musicians to work for such a long stretch; that doesn't happen so often anymore.

Me and Clint, Me and Patty, more...

It's been a long time between posts, eh? Busy, so busy, last week. The big thing is that I produced a track on Clint Black for 'Las Vegas," We did an acoustic version of his hit from ten years ago or so, "Good Run Of Bad Luck." Just Clint singing, playing acoustic guitar and harmonica, with his long time guitarist and co-writer Hayden Nocolas adding some tasty fills. The nicest, most self-effacing guys you'd ever want to meet, and so easy to work with. No pretension at all; you'd never guess that Clint's an enormous star; he even drove himself to the studio from the Four Seasons. Always great to work at Capitol, too. See pix from the session in the photo album. And props to engineeer Jimmy, assistant Bruce and Captiol traffic mgr Pauline. The easiest way to get the job done and to look good is to have the right folks with you.

What a night on Monday: Clint at Capitol from 9PM to 11PM, then over to MCA in WLA to play on a record writer/singer/arranger Brian Basmajian. Thanks to Paul Goldberg for the call, and engineer Mike Fennell; nice to see another Nuendo facility sounding so sweet. Worked there 'till 3.30, then home to sleep. And then Tuesday: Got up to go to a shoot at "Navy NCIS" for Avery Drewe, producing pianist Paul Chipello recording a Mozart piano sonata (K311 for all you fans) for some onscreen piano shots. Then out to Vasquez Rocks at rush hour to film the visual for Clint's song.

Friday night the jazz service for Mike Stein at Aliayah (soon to be an album, by the way), more Basmajian last night, and Patty Linsky and the gang at TAS tonight. with pix of this too in the album.

Steve Carr and I with a bass player to be named later will be playing the '"Jazz Brunch" at Spazio in Sherman Oaks on September 5th. If brunch is as good as dinner there, we're all in for a good meal as well as some good music that day. Thanks to Karen Chamberlain for the shot; hope it turns into a regulatr thing. Come on out and support live music if you can.

And--Sarah got her drivers' license last week, so it's official--she's almost an adult.

Lots of activity at Kevin Rose's site lately. TSS starts on September 9th (I think). Wonder how CFH Canada is? Anyone with video is welcome to email me. I've put up my first created website here for Lori Mark's flower biz. It's a work in progress, but I'd love feedback on the basic look and functionality of the home page. I'm a baby at HTML, so all crits are welcome.

New Date for Monktet

Just got the word that the Monktete has been invited to return to the Jazz Bakery. The date is Sunday, July 11th, once again at four in the afternoon. Are we nuts, or what. That's Albina's birthday, by the way, but she's cool with it. I'd better play good, I guess. More on this later, but let's everybody go, OK?