out of georgia, back to the carolina's. i was excited about this date - this fellow brent bagwell set things up and he seemed to be really excited about it - got a 12 piece band together to play free jazz and got some press. we rolled into town in the evening (pretty routine by this point) and met up with him and others for a bite. not that we were hungry as we had the big meal only a few hours before in atlanta. the place we played at was kind of a dive, and i was a bit worried, what with a unc vs duke game going on and being shown on about 20 tvs but the night turned out to be a real good time. the first group was a duo that used plenty of different electronic sounds, and which i thought was quite good. another thing - it struck me while listening to them, that it must be really tough to play out there music in places like charlotte. but people get alot of satisfaction out of it - why else would they be doing it? after they were done, the game also ended, so thankfully all the tvs in the music room were turned off. dragons played acoustically, as always (the other bands were amplified) and i think it really changed the tone of the evening from "hey, these people play weird music" to " wow, these people are serious about it and are making some music in a way i haven't heard before". we played our set with a good amount of changes in the way we normally play the tunes. these last few shows are time to get ready for recording, which we're going to be able to do as soon as we get back to chicago.
the 12 piece band sounded good - i really enjoyed them because it seemed like everyone playing was really getting in to it - they were playing straight up free jazz - 4 saxes, trumpet, two basses, two drummers, two guitarists, and a keyboard player. there were a couple of spots in the improvising that were great - this alto & tenor player that were really going off - screaming into their horns to get the feelings out. brent also did a great job with the arrangements, using the whole group together, while having nice spacing between solos & duos.
we went out to his place afterwards - it was almost an hour drive out of charlotte outside of the small town of oakbar, nc. he lives in a house that is on a piece of land of about 300 acres. he and his wife moved down from nyc about 2 years ago = trying to find a place completely different from their last experience - they've found it. i finally got to sleep outside for a night - i've been wanting to the whole trip, but it hadn't really been warm enough until that night. it's strange sleeping outside when you almost never do it - little sounds can get you excited - and in the morning when the sun rises it's great, but you have no idea what time it is, for some reason i let it get me anxious. also in the morning it got real windy and i had to move inside. brent is a real good guy - really glad to have met him. we also got to take a nice walk to the river near his place - we skipped stones for awhile and got spooked by some cows that were pretty interestedin what we were up to...
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