Santa Fe podcast #3 - Here Come The Fat City Horns!

UPDATE: Bette Midler quote of the day-

"And the best part is, not one of them is a French Canadian circus performer."

Podcast number 3 now up for your listening pleasure.

Again, we gotta say an effusive thanks to Jerry Fink of the Las Vegas Sun for that killer full-page write-up today on the FCH.

Below, I'll re-post the YouTube clip from Bette Midler and our guys on Oprah a couple of weeks ago. We all hope the show is a totally wild success.



Also, let me re-post a quick iMovie clip I did a while back concerning our Nathan Tanouye. As I wrote on the YouTube copy:

Nathan Tanouye is the trombonist and an arranger (along with the equally fabulous Dave Richardson) with Santa Fe and The Fat City Horns of Las Vegas. This is the first 75 seconds of his tune "Crossings" from his Russ Freeman project CD. When I first heard it, I could not help but recall imagery from "Saving Private Ryan," so I put this together quickly in iMovie to make my point. This cat should be scoring films.

I simply grabbed some WWII jpegs off the 'net, and added a few from my 2004 UK/France trip (where we went to the D-Day stuff out in Normandy) and a few of my parents.

You can buy the "Crossings" CD here. It is off-the-scale fine.

Dave Richardson and Nathan Tanouye. Man, we have it all!

'NUTHER REMINDER

Gino Vannelli is comin'.

UPDATE, OUR HOMIES, MOSAIC




They will be a glorious part of my upcoming blog podcast "Friends of Santa Fe."

WEDNESDAY UPDATE

FYI, the guitarist in Bette's show is 2004 Grammy winner Wayne Johnson. Yikes! A bit of his stellar rap sheet:

Since the late '70s, Wayne Johnson has been touring and recording with the acclaimed jazz-pop-cabaret vocal group, Manhattan Transfer, all while engaging in an eclectic mix of side projects. Wayne has led his own envelope-pushing fusion-power-pop trio; worked with John Tesh, Rickie Lee Jones, and singer/harmonica player Lee Oskar (War); and recorded and performed as a solo acoustic artist. In that latter role, Johnson earned a 2004 Grammy Award for his contribution to the Solid Air Records release, Henry Mancini - Pink Guitar... (from his bio page on the Taylor Guitar site)

Awesome.

Break a leg tonight, y'all.

WEDNESDAY UPDATE: BETTE MIDLER QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Thirty years ago my fans were all on drugs. Today they're all on medication."

Gustavo!

OMG! Last night on the CBS "60 Minutes" show they ran a segment on the young Venezuelan musician and conductor Gustavo Dudamel.



This kid is incredible. He's only 27. Gonna soon be M.D./Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Read his rap sheet here. Another clip below, Gustavo Dudamel at the Proms - Arturo Márquez - Danzón Nº 2:



How's that for Salsa?

Kid is renowned for his work with El Sistema, the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra.

Every minute a child (or adult, for that matter) spends holding and learning a musical instrument is one spent not holding a weapon. That alone justifies the effort to promote the art.

UPDATE:
JERRY FINK ARTICLE ON THE FAT CITY HORNS

Brassy, just like Bette
Fat City Horns hand-picked for top gig, Midler’s show on Strip

By Jerry Fink Mon, Feb 18, 2008 (2 a.m.)
Bette Midler has a good ear. She revealed just how good when she plucked the Fat City Horns out of a lounge at the Palms and plunked them down in her extravagant show at Caesars Palace.

When “The Showgirl Must Go On” debuts Wednesday in the Colosseum, the 4,000-seat theater where Celine Dion held court for more than four years, Midler will shine an international spotlight on what had been one of those hidden Vegas treasures.

She’ll be backed by a 14-piece band, including the six Fat City Horns — saxophonists Rob Mader, Phil Wigfall and Jerry Merra; trumpeters Gil Kaupp and Danny Falcone; and trombonist Nathan Tanouye...
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Thank you, Jerry Fink!

Mid-week updates

First, an FYI reminder that Santa Fe will not be playing Monday night the 18th at The Palms.

Also, Ronnie Foster and his band Funk's Way will not be at the Ice House tonight. Our bro' Michael Grimm, on the other hand, is appearing at The Orleans this week. And, John Wedemeyer (along with Ronnie Foster, Tim Scott, and Jimmy Keegan) continue to throw down in the Salute Lounge at Palazzo on the Strip.

Also FYI, blog podcast #3 is underway. I thought I'd focus on our Fat City Horns as they get ready to launch on Feb 20th with Bette Midler at Caesar's.

FRIENDS OF SANTA FE

Podcast #4 will be a show featuring a number of the many "friends of Santa Fe" for whom I have available CD cuts and the artists' assent to use them. I will likely end up having to do more than one -- I have so much material with which to work. Currently on board:

• Tommy Alvarado
• Bill Champlin
• Tom Schuman (Spyro Gyra)
• Michael Grimm
• MOSAIC
• Fifth Avenue
• Robert Conti
• St. Paul Peterson
• Michael Ruff
• Steven Lee Group
• Ronnie and Mike Gutierrez
  

I have emails out to others asking permission, and I've asked our bro' John Wedemeyer to get me something to use. Stay tuned. Gonna be great fun.

Click here for Podcasts Number One or Number Two if you're not yet hip to them.

ROCHON

As I promised him, I have begun work on Rochon's website. The above is a quick draft homepage pic I did from a shot I took Monday night. I yanked the chroma and "vasoline'd" the edges (back before digital, film photographers would sometimes smear petroleum jelly around the perimeter of their UV lense filters to obtain that gauzy effect).

I hope to have content pages up in a week or so.

NEW MYSPACE PAGE, Jazzandsoul.eu

When discovering that there are just thousands of artists that are making the most incredible music on earth but with one problem -- their music is never promoted to a big audience because of the lack of a multimillion dollar advertising campaign to back them up, we thought it was time to do something about this. That's how Jazzandsoul.eu was born. We want to become a music portal for artists, record companies, promotors and fans. As an artist you can promote your work through reviews, artist features, etc. As a fan you will have a new way to discover great music and win goodies from time to time. That's what Jazzandsoul.eu is all about. Momentarily our website introduction page is online untill the 29th of february. If you're into good music, feel free to sign up for our NEWSLETTER. In this way you'll be the first to know about great deals, new artists, contests etc. this is all about the passion for good music.

Check it out.

BTW- these cats are affiliated with Antwerp Harbour Jazz and Soul Festival. Very cool. I will be following up on all of this. Would love to take the band over there. Antwerp would never be the same.

I've also now registered with their affiliated web radio station Crooze.fm, have it streaming right now as I write this.

Nice.

Feb 11th gig at The Palms

Man! I got welcomed back to a big birthday cake and a slammin' show! Awesome evening. The band did a crushing two-hour set that culminated in a big "System of Survival" jam featuring guests Alex Ligertwood (above, Santana alum), our homies Michito Sanchez and Alex Leon, and percussion cat A.B, new in town from from Venezuela. Below, Left to Right, A.B, Alex, Michito, and our regular fan, Cirque du Soleil "Ka" star Joerg.

Above, Michito and Alex throw it down.

OK, I have a Google/Blogger screw-up here now (3 a.m.). I just got this error message saying I've exceeded my free image storage limit of one gig.

Which is crap, because I knew I was getting close to the 1 gig limit and had already purchased another 10 gigs from the Google Picasa image service (where they store your uploads). When I go to the "available space" page it shows that I indeed should have another 10 gigs available.

Stay tuned, sorry.
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TUESDAY MORNING. TRY AGAIN

Looks like I got someone's attention. Appears to be working now. Thanks to whomever responded to rectify this (I got no direct email response from Google tech support, but something happened; it now says "You are currently using 1024MB (9%) of your 11264MB" on the image upload panel).

I'll finish this post this morning, got a bunch of good shots last night. Dumped 99 out of the camera, still going through them.

UPDATE

The neon logo sign on the back stage curtain has now been broken for about two months. Jeesh. Do they ever fix anything here? The blue wash radiating off that thing did help provide some subtle backlight highlights to my shots.

Whatever.

Below, Eric Tewalt and Tom Delibero again on the gig. You can't really call these cats "subs" anymore, they're integral to the Fat City Horns II unit.

Below: got a few low-hanging-fruit shots of both Nathan and Rochon. BTW, I've agreed to do Rochon's website for him. We'll try to get that thing up and running in a week or so, at least get some basic things in place. I may call on Dustin to help out.

BTW: last night's set list, according to my hastily scribbled list.

1. Intermission
2. Soul Trilogy
3. Come With Me
4. Higher Ground
5. Ain't That Peculiar?
6. Si Te Vas
7. What'cha Gonna Do With Dat Greazy Thing?
8. Ev'rybody Wants to Love You
9. Salvation
10. Come Together
11. Take My Heart Away
12. Living For The City
13. System of Survival

I think that was all. Great set (inclusive of the fleeting 'yeah,-they-ARE-human' Senior Moment in "Come Together," LOL).

More shots. Below, the hands of the compositional and melodic surgeon, Dave Richardson.

Below, Jami-EEEE!!!

Below: WTF? This cat got Healed all the way to near-flatline catatonia, LOL! Dude came in and sat down at the table that had been reserved for Andy Ebon's party (they never did show), and he looked a bit scary, so I thought 'nah, I ain't gonna challenge this unless/until Andy shows up...'

He zonked in short order. In retrospect, I think the ostensibly menacing visage was perhaps correlated with suppressing the urge to blow chunks. Where DO you get your meds, bro'? Security eventually had to come wake his butt up. It took a bit of doing.

Interesting.

BTW: A shout-out of props to Matty & Stella, and Danny & Antoinette for coming to hang last night.
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REMINDER: Gino's comin'

CAMPAIGN 2008 UPDATE

Wherein BobbyG monitors the ad nauseum developments to spare you the agony.



BTW- you can now Pimp your Ride and your MySpace, but Woe Be Unto You should you opine on the air about Pimping Out Chelsea, LOL! Yeah, it was gratuitous and tasteless, right down there with Imus's "Nappy-Headed Hoes" I suppose.

Ahhh.h.h...language.