Tonight, 10:15 pm in The Lounge, the Healing resumes. Be there.
Got home from Marquette about midnight last night. Unbelievably easy trip. No problems going or coming. Lake Superior is an awesome sight. And, my sister's family is the best!
Not certain yet (have to check some stuff at the day gig), but I probably will not be able to make the gig tonight, 'cuz I have to be up in Utah early tomorrow for two days of medical clinic consultations, and I have a 2do list a mile long. Looking for a "reporter" to cover for me. Somebody, step up and get a byline.
FYI- Next Sunday from 10 to 11 a.m., Ric Gould of 97.1 The Point will conduct a live in-studio interview with Jerry Lopez, and perhaps a couple of the guys, which will include playing and discussing material from the band's CD. Everyone, please tune in to that, it's gonna be great.
5:30 a.m., I'm outa here for Utah in about an hour. Dang! I hate that I missed this. Clint Holmes and Joe Bergeron sat in. I know that had to be great.
Quoting Dave: "Clint was on stage to scat with the boys for a song. Joe Bergeron joined them. There were a lot of new faces in the audience, including 2 female singers from Pittsburgh that said the show "brought tears to their eyes" it was so good. Loretta St. John, Bobby Black and Kelly Clinton were also in the audience."
Thanks, Dave! I'll be back next Monday night. Don't forget, y'all, the Petersons are coming to sit in again on December 11th. See Jerry's message, with links, in the prior post. And, remember that Jerry will be on 97.1 FM from 10 to 11 a.m. this Sunday for a live interview with Ric Gould.
Man, it's 2:25 a.m., and I'm startin' to feel an onset attack of acute clinical T.O.R., a.k.a., "Transient Opthamological Rectalitis" -- a.k.a. "I jus' can't see my ass goin' to work in the morning."
Where to start? The band was utterly fryin' tonight. And, Lenny was off his meds, big-time!
Then, Jerry starts givin' props to notable guests in the audience, and he mentions the kick-ass former guitarist for Tower of Power, Danny Hoefer. DANNY HOEFER!!! I about flipped out, and went back to collar him and bring him to our table. Danny lives in Seattle, and is now a Regional Rep for Gibson Guitars. I first met Danny in the late 1960's when I moved to Seattle from San Francisco. We had this big tribe of hippie bands that all hung and gigged and jammed together (recall my blog post about that era). Danny was this young, tasty blues cat that just took off musically and left us all in the dust (moving on to Tower of Power and beyond). A George Benson calibre player. Seriously.
Well, Danny got up and sat in with Santa Fe, and blew it out. Pic below.
BobbyG is one happy camper tonight. What an awesome, blessed surprise. Man!
A few more pics from the evening:
OK, I gotta crash (I took 65 shots tonight, I'll post more -- of the ones that don't suck -- as I have time). Major thanks to Palms co-owner Gavin Maloof for comin' to hang tonight. Also, thanks to 97.1 FM's jazz show producer Ric Gould for coming to hear this awesome band. And, huge props to Alex Leon for sitting on percussion, and to Sean from the fabulous Mosaic for jumpin' up on stage to sing (check out their re-designed website).
3 1/2 HRS' SLEEP LATER...
Quick, get me the defibrillator paddles and Venti Latte IV pic line...CLEAR!!!
OK, below, briefly, before I split for the day gig (yeah, gonna make the 8:30 conference call), Dave Siefkes sent me a few pics. Ric Gould of 97.1 The Point with Jerry, then JJ mugs for the lense, and BobbyG crackin' up at something crazy onstage.
Danny really dug it. He was askin' me all kinds of questions about the band. And, Rob's solo in "Higher Ground" got away with him, 'cuz he'd asked me a while before 'does that cat ever solo?'
Yep, he does. Like the dude in the Saturday Night Live band.
Bro', what can I say? Wait till Pat Hughes hears about this.
UPDATE: HAPPY THANKSGIVING
Cheryl and I are off to my Sister's place in Marquette, Michigan early Wednesday morning for the Thanksgiving Holiday, be back Sunday night. Thanks to our son Nick for house sitting and taking care of Lucie, Jaco, and Max. We wish all of you a safe and joyful Thanksgiving. Once I get back, I have to be up in Utah early the following Tuesday for two days of consulting visits with a bunch of our client medical clinics, so I will probably not be able to make it to the gig Monday night (27th). Need for someone to step up as a guest blogger to cover the night.
HI FROM MARQUETTE, MICHIGAN
Sunday. It's different here. Lovely, too. Pic below of Cheryl and I with my sister's family (what a great tribe), standing atop Sugarloaf Mountain, which overlooks the entire area. Be back in Vegas late tonight.
Mundo Juillerat (Jerry Lopez's immensely talented brother-in-law) is Principal Guitarist in the Vegas production of the Mamma Mia show at Mandalay Bay (which also features Santa Fe's Pepe Jimenez on drums). Mundo is also founder of the wonderful Gypsy Jazz trio "Hot Club of Las Vegas," regarding whom I've posted recently on this blog. You gotta go catch their group (recall my pic here of them featuring the incredible Mamma Mia lead Carol Linnea Johnson last Sunday).
Well, Mundo got us a pair of comps to the show last night. Thanks, bro', it was very, very nice of you, and the show was great. The lengthy, detailed score is wonderful; goes way beyond just a medley of ABBA tunes. The show runs about 2 hours, and these cats (9 pc orchestra) play some awesome, finesse stuff. They work hard. Great cast, beautiful set and lighting, great fun music.
Cool mp3 clip of Mundo here. Cat can seriously play, lotsa different genres. Mundo is also the cat who hipped us to the life-changing Steven Pressfield book "The War of Art" (a must-read).
Blaise Sison invited me out last night to see him perform with The Family Stone. What a treat! The band was tight, tight ,tight ! I had never seen Blaise in the "Rock Star Concert Mode"
But as Ronnie Foster says he’s a "Bad Boy." We have all seen Blaise play around town in the Jazz-R&B groove and he is such a tasteful, precision player never over playing. Just providing the solid pocket for the drummer to be in and when he needs to stand out he can do that too. Let me tell you "Blazin Blaise," who is also the Musical Director, was almost stealing the show. I didn’t know he could dance like that. He hung right in there with lead singer Fred Ross, who really put on a show, and never missed a note. I don’t know how he can play at the level he plays at and move like he did. The visual choreography has always been a signature of Sly and The Family Stone and they still have it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a band having so much fun on stage. They are truly Entertainers.
Sly’s, Sister Rose Stone, was on Keyboard as well as other founding members Cynthia Robinson on Trumpet and Leader Jerry Martini on Sax. All three are Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees. Nate Wingfield on Guitar, from Las Vegas, was performing his second show with the group, but you would have never known it. Tasche Cryer from the Oakland area was on keyboards and laying down the sounds just like the hit records. Drummer, John Mader, laid down the solid foundation with Brother Blaise for this incredible group. The crowd did not want them to stop and I look forward to my next Family Stone Experience.
Blaise invited me back stage to meet the band and their manager, Paul Curcio. Paul tells me the group will be touring extensively next year. They usually play much larger venues and I believe Blaise told me that they recently played to an audience of close to 20,000. Everyone in the band was great. We enjoyed a short after party back stage, photos and rapping about mutual musician friends from the Oakland area.
I have attached photos from the show and back stage and recommend it highly to the "Bloggy G" audience. Their web site is www.familystonemusic.com
Steve Tuminello, "Bloggy G," field reporter signing off. (Hey, it’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it!)
Cheryl just emailed me this true story. Makes ya feel kinda wimpy.
From A Father:
I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots. But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.
Eighty-five (85) times Dick Hoyt has pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight (8) times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.
Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?
And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.
This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs. "He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life" Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. "Put him in an Institution.''
But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the Engineering Department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. "No way,'' Dick says he was told. "There's nothing going on in his brain.'' "Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed Him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? "Go Bruins!''
And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, "Dad, I want to do that.'' Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described "porker'' who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. "Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. "I was sore for two weeks.''
That day changed Rick's life. "Dad,'' he typed, "when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!'' And that sentence changed Dick's life.
He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon. "No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway; then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.
Then somebody said, "Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?'' How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick Tried.
Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzz kill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?
"Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? "No way,'' he says. Dick does it purely for "the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.
This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best Time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world Record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the Time.
"No question about it,'' Rick types. "My dad is the Father of the Century.''
And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. "If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor told him, "you probably would've died 15 years ago.'' So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's lives.
Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.
At night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy. "The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, "is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.''
Wow. The band was hittin' on all 14 cylinders tonight. Rochon is out of town this week, so Derek Jones from the Cirque du Soleil "Ka" show subbed on bass. Derek was ALL OVER IT! Man, the band sounded so good. I am so spoiled to Rochon, but I gotta give it up huge to Derek, he really stepped up and delivered -- no easy task. I knew right from the opening verse of "Just Kidding" that this was gonna be killer, and sure enough, the band's energy and tightness were totally there. Major props to this awesome cat, and to the band for throwing down so fine yet again.
Some pics from the evening before I crash:
OK, now, check this out. I just bought a 2 gigabyte chip for my digital still camera, it's a 3.2 megapixel Fuji that's a couple of years old (and passe by now), but it does 30 fps VGA video and has a built-in condensor mic. So I shot the Fat City Horns opening the 2nd show doing "Intermission." No editing or anything, just converted it to mpeg and uploaded it to YouTube. LOL!
It loses some resolution in the conversion from straight QuickTime mp4 video (looks a lot cleaner on my iMac), but, hey...
I first used the camera this way a couple of weeks ago, shooting my Grandson's tennis tournament final up in Summerlin. Keenan is only 12 (and already 5'8"), and just broke into the top 100 National USTA amateur rank for his age group (he's now 98th in the country). Proud Granddaddy (particularly proud that he's a straight-A student and perfect gentleman).
So, the little camera did OK tonight, 'eh? (the video comes outa the camera in AVI format, and this short ~1.5 min clip was about 87 megs before conversion to mpeg, which compressed it down to about 10.2 megs.)
Tonight, at Cedars' Mediterranean Grill on Durango at Twain, vocalist Loni Clark and jazz drummer husband Eugene Balog will be performing beginning at 9 pm. They are again opening up the stage to interested players wishing to sit in and jam. Check it out. See my prior blog post about this gig.
Also, don't forget the Ronnie Foster group on Saturdays at 9 pm at the University Patio Bar & Grill, 4275 S. Maryland Pkwy by UNLV.
Today is Veterans' Day. As the only son of one of a Real Band of Brothers, one who suffers to this day from the after-effects of his war injuries, I think about these cats all the time.
My Pop (above, at his wedding in 1945 after spending a year in hospitals) is now 90 and caught up in the throes of dementia, last surviving brother of five who served and fought. He left a leg behind in Europe during WWII (nighttime glider crash on Sicily). Also, recall the opening invasion scene in "Saving Private Ryan," the scared-shitless, puking, praying soldiers in those landing craft, waiting to get slaughtered? One of my Mom's brothers was on one of those during D-Day (he survived, and told me of the terror of it; Spielberg really nailed it).
Young men and women (and, increasingly, the not-so-young) continue to give their all so that we might continue to live comfortably in peace and safety and enjoy our musical "healing." They need and deserve far more than plastic magnetic yellow ribbon bumper decals and other episodic platitudes. Here are a couple of sites to visit and ponder. Consider donating to these causes. I know Cheryl and I will be contributing.
We went to hang with Ronnie Foster for a bit last night. Subbing on the kit was Brooklyn homie Jess Gopen. Below, I found this article about him and his work (click to enlarge). Notable in the quartet are Chris Gordon on bass, and Bill Zappia on keys, both of whom are now appearing with Jerry, Joel Richman, and Tommy Alvarado on Tuesday nights at the E-String in Henderson (posted about this gig earlier).
OK, I'm off to see Mundo at ReJAVAnate...
HOT CLUB OF LAS VEGAS UPDATE
Gotta say, this was a really, really nice performance. Good, appreciative turnout, too. Carol sang wonderfully, and the guys played it to the firewall. Kasey Carmody did a solo classical piece that was breathtaking in its complexity (I'd like to see him sit in and do it at the Santa Fe gig; it'd bring the house down), and Mundo showed off some blazing, aggressive gypsy jazz chops. Serious players here, doing some way against-the-grain stuff that is worth your time.
PS- Here's an mp3 clip I found of Kasey doing a tune entitled "Tango en Skai." It is excellent. Man!
Got home from Marquette about midnight last night. Unbelievably easy trip. No problems going or coming. Lake Superior is an awesome sight. And, my sister's family is the best!
Not certain yet (have to check some stuff at the day gig), but I probably will not be able to make the gig tonight, 'cuz I have to be up in Utah early tomorrow for two days of medical clinic consultations, and I have a 2do list a mile long. Looking for a "reporter" to cover for me. Somebody, step up and get a byline.
Quoting Dave: "Clint was on stage to scat with the boys for a song. Joe Bergeron joined them. There were a lot of new faces in the audience, including 2 female singers from Pittsburgh that said the show "brought tears to their eyes" it was so good. Loretta St. John, Bobby Black and Kelly Clinton were also in the audience."
