never enough hope 1-30-2005

second show in two nights for the super group. this one went better though we were crammed in tight on the stage and front floor of the hungry brain. but it really shows that with a big group like that, in order to hear everyone, it's easier to not be in a big reverberrant space (reverberrant?). there was a very good turn out at the brain too: the first set was three smaller groups of improvising, there was an aggressive one with colin & dan letting the baritones out f the gate; a very nice melodic improvisation with bogie, amy cimini, dina maccabee & brian dibblee; and then the vibraphone duo of adasiewicz and tacket (not tucket or target) brown. good times. the long piece went well, and the audience really loved it - the way it's supposed to be....

never enough hope; open end 1-29-2005

toby summerfield wrote a piece for 16 of his friends - and gave it the name never enough hope. he's really put some serious effort into this project and i think it is good because of it. the piece is a long form, with several sections of a slow-build nature. most of it is in time with dense rhtymic parts fleshed out by drums & bass, 2 guitars and 4 vibraphones. add saxophone and string quartets and you'v egot yourself a large group. toby set up the show at the open end, which was a good thing as we could comfortably fit in there all together - also, just the atmosphere at open end, with a skyline view and super high ceilings give shows an aspect you can't get at other places. so, who was in the band? these folk:

Saxophones: Dan Bennett, Stuart Bogie, Colin Stetson, Aram Shelton
Vibes: Jason Adasiewicz, Dan Sylvester, Tim Daisy, TIm Brown
Strings: Amy Cimini, Kevin Davis, Brian Dibblee, Dina Maccabee
Rhythm: Frank Rosaly, Nathaniel Braddock, Joshua Tillinghast, Jason Ajemian

we had one day for a full rehearsal, which was kind of slow moving, as there are lots of things to have to practice with a group of that size: the instrument groups & the entire band need to be together - hearing where your part fits in can be tough. it was a good time - about a third of the group came in from out of town - from the east and west coast -

the show went off well - dragons 1976 played an opening set - a warm up for a tour we're starting on wednesday. while we were playing i was working with the room - you can play very softly and still fill the place up because there's so much natural reverb. and it seems unless the music is going through a PA, it won't wash out.
when never enough hope played, it felt good - in the rehearsal we kind of just jumped into the sections, but for the performance, toby let the piece take it's time building and receding, bringing in people for solos and sectional hits - keeping the piece changing by allowing different voices to come through. i think the piece worked well - we'll find out for sure with the recording....

improvising myopic & empty bottle 1-10-2005

played at the myopic bookstore with guillermo gregorio, josh abrams, jason roebke and jason adasiewicz. it was a nice ensemble with myself on Eb and bass clarinet, guillermo on Bb; josh & jason on bass; shevitz on vibes. we played for awhile, all improvised - guillermo is just the nicest guy you can think of, i always would like to play with him more, but time goes by quickly, and all of a sudden it's been three months since you saw each other. this is how time goes by in chicago. i've recently been playing the little Eb clarinet again, i forgot how much i enjoy playing it - it definitely has a high range, but i can get some flute like sounds out of it and the actual tone is very pleasant..or so i think. after we finished playing i had to head over to the empty bottle to play in fred lonberg-holm's lightbox orchestra...
it was a free night at the empty bottle, and the way it goes is that on a tuesday, very few people will come when the cover is $3, but if it's free the place is completely filled. people really get scared by cover charges. i get scared by them too. also, i'll buy a $3.50 beer and tip a dollar, and think it's allright, but when i see that half gallon of orange juice at the supermarket for $3, i think, that's a little pricey.....go figure.
anyhow. the night was for a terry plumbing cd-r release - terry plumb(m?)ing is a prose / poetry/ music zine put out by our frineds eric graf, mike merck, rotten milk and others - it's a nice diy thing. rotten milk played a noice set with this other guy going by the handle bubblegum shitface - almost electro there mr milk - watch out. next up was the girl trio sofserve, they tried the moves and whatnot, but they need to work on it more to make it convincing....the lightbox orchestra headlined - a big group, we spread out on the stage and the floor, i used my clarinets again, tv pow was all there, zerang, karel, payne, corbett, kapsalis, vida, sullender, morrow, pomerleau, and a fellow named matt who played a little synth next to me. it was good playing in front of a big crowd, and though you could hear the huge amoutns of talkers in the back, they were kind of quiet, and not disturbing the music what with the bulk of bodies quieting the din. it was a good set, if a bit short - walked home over the melting ice with jen, a walk that seems long if you think about it, but isn't so long when you're walking it....

jazz charleston 1-7-2005

i know it's been a bit since i wrote - the holidays and all of that - went down to florida for a week, but there was almost no sunshine, but it was warm - got to walk around outside with no shoes on. but i came back to chicago right before new years, and since then have been very busy with music : playing & recording. last friday i played at the charleston with jason ajemian on bass and frank rosaly on drums. we played monk tunes and standards - i like playing that music, it's a good time & challenging at the same time. we had some folk sit in with us - nick broste played some trombone solos, tim daisy and hatwich subbed out the rhythm section for a few tunes, and this fellow bob came up and played piano. he sounded good, it was one of those situations that i've been on the other side of - new guy in town, want to play with people, but are worried that you'll get vibed by the other people playing. that's one of the main drags about playing standard jazz - the mentality that some people get - they feel that they are so good that if someone shares the stage with them and aren't at that level, or share their ideas of how the music should go, they're not a good musician. i think that it is fine to dis-like the way someone plays, actually i think it's vital to be able to decide when you do or don't like someone's playing. it's not necessarily a personal thing, which is what people usually take it as. what i don't like is when someone doesn't like how you play, and then gives you attitude about it. this has happened to me before at sessions in the past. anyhow - bob sounded good, but he didn't give us his number or anything, so how can we call him now?
the rest of the night was good - shevitz poured the drinks, ajemian did some donuts in the snow that fell on the city a few nights before.

grey ghost hungry brain 12-19-2004

when it's this cold, you don't expect anyone to come to see you play, but then people do come, and it is good. it was 5 degrees when i woke up in the morning - it didn't seem that bad when i went outside at first, but it actually was that bad. trust me.
anyhow, grey ghost played for the first time in a wee bit in town. we've been able to get together alot to work on new things, and we're starting to make some headway - i think our goal right now is to have a good chunk of material ready so that when we play, we can be loose with our forms and bring things in when they feel right. i'm still using max/msp mainly for live sampling and manipulation, but am using reason more for synthesized sounds and sequences - the great thing about reason is the fact you can layer the hell out of a piece and remove parts & re-add them as you wish pretty simply. lots of possibilities - the dark side of reason is the ease with which you can make really bad music. ...
i liked how we played - a long set with a few breaks, couldn't tell how well it was received - some folks were talking up front - but most were listening - a good time.

second citizens hideout 12-15-2004

a good time and good night at the hideout. the second citizens returned to the hideout for a wednesday night double bill with michael columbia. there was a good crowd in the abr when we got there, we played a nice long set and the folks listened. playing with this band is fun- we all know the music so well that we can really let our instincts take over. afterwards someone asked me about the more open improvised sections, he said that he didn't really know what our goal was in them. i tried to explain to him that what we are doing by improvising is constantly trying to change the music to make it better. the great thing about improvising is that you can find new ways to play music - though of course some othings turn out better than others. but, if we played the same thing all the time, we'd be a jam band. michael columbia played kind of a short set - it's dave mcdonnell on saxophone, bass and electronics and dylan ryan on drums & electronics. a similar instrumentation to grey ghost, but an entirely different way of making music. i would say they are alot more rocking than grey ghost, with more emphasis on rhythm than looseness. all of us finished the night drinking beers that somehow became free after midnight - not bad...

mcbride / lonberg-holm / rosaly / shelton empty bottle 12-14-2004

it's finally cold here in chicago - who'd of thunk? nate mcbride recently moved into town from boston and he asked me to try to work on a group with him, fred lonberg-holm & frank rosaly. i said yes of course - nate is a great bass player and a top notch fellow, so playing with him is a good time, as well as challenging. the tunes he writes has so much looseness in their form that it truly is a challenge to remember where you are & what can possibly happen next. luckily we had two long rehearsals for this date - though we still were too loose for some of those forms. it was two sets at the empty bottle on a tuesday night - i had my work holiday dinner earlier in the night, but thankfully i didn't eat too much - almost, but not quite - a couple cups of coffee and i was ready to play. the first set we came out with alot of energy, i felt really good playing, it seemed like the first time in awhile that i got to play some music that was really wide open. nate's music tends to have alot of energy in it - which i like, and don't get to do so often.
we took a short break, some guys from the air force band were there - in town for some conference - pretty strange that guys in the air force band are into free jazz... vandermark was there - he's going to back in town for several months now - we talked about graduate schools; i've been thinking of applying to some, but am really torn as to where a program is that would really suit what i want to do. deadlines are fast approaching and i need to make some sort of decision.
the second set was good as well - it was a little hard for me to hear fred at times, but there was alot of good improvising going on - nate and i had a nice bass & clarinet duo; hope fully we'll be able to play some more and record some of the music.

dragons 1976 Impetus 12-5-2004

Dragons 1976 played for the first time since our tour and show at the Phrenology Fest. These fellows Raiichiro Iijima & Brad Loving put on a concert series called Impetus, which matches up good music from different genres onto the same bill. The concert was at 3030, and the other groups were Matt Leer, a singer/guitarist from Texas and Bear in Heaven, a group from NYC. This goes to prove once again that the best wayto have a good show is to have people dedicated to getting the word out and promoting it, while also including good music. The show started around 8:30, and there was a good crowd - Matt Leer started things out, he played solo, making good use of a variety of pedals and looping devices to create a big sound. We played the middle set and I felt really good about it - we had the chance to have a few rehearsals before the date, and it really helps - I also had the chance to make a little adjustment to my horn, so the low notes were coming out much easier. We played four songs, with lots of improvsing throughout to bridge the spaces in between. It felt good and we had a good response from the other musicians and people in the crowd. Bear in Heaven played last - they're normally a six piece band, but only two of their members could make it out to Chicago for the show - they used samples and triggers to flesh out the sound - but even with the stripped down performance, I really liked the music - lots of interesting rhythms, good textures - melodic songs. Not trying to be too much - a good thing.

quartet at charleston 12-3-2004

tonight i played at a bar called the charleston in bucktown with anton hatwich on bass, nori tanaka on drums and matt schneider on guitar - i played alto. we played tunes - mainly by thelonious monk, but some standards and one orenette tune - turnaround, not really my most facvorite ornette tune, mainly because it's basically a blues - not an open tune like most of his. i don't mind playing blues, but i love ornette's music so much, i'd rather just play it open. the monk tunes are great to play - they all have his particular characteristics stamped on them - good feels, & simple melodic statements that leave lots of room for interpretation. we played two sets - playing at the charleston is a good time - it's a small bar, and people are just hanging out, it's friday night, you play in the middle of the room with people only a few feet away - people have their choice of listening intently or not, everybody gives you some money if they want to, you play with no pressure, have a few drinks and spend the night enjoying yourself...

broste quintet 3030 12-2-2004

so it was a thursday night at 3030, and i was to play with nick broste's quintet - unfortunately, only four of us showed up - frank rosaly forgot about the gig, even though he was playing in two groups that were scheduled for the night. it was a quiet night, but relaxing - jim baker, anton hatwich and paul hartsaw did some trio improvisations - baker's work on the arp synthesizer is so right on right now - i really like watching him play that instrument - the interface is great - lots of knobs and controls - signal routing and all of that - here's a picture:



our set went well - nick on trombone, myself on alto and bass clarinet, anton on bass and kevin davis on cello. actually with frank not being there it was nice to be playing with all harmonic instruments - we concentrated on the tones and had a nice feeling throughout. one of these days broste's quintet will have a gig where everything works out -one time nick couldn't show up because he got stranded in another town with a wrong plane flight....

shelton ajemian tanaka rodan 11-25-2004

thanksgiving 2004 - we got a little snow here in chicago the day before, so it was a nice wintry start to the holiday season. i'd rather it snow than rain when it's 32 degrees outside....
i had a good dinner at johnathan, giselle and brandy's place on milwaukee avenue - had my fair share of food and wine, hung out for a bit and then headed up the street to rodan to play with jason ajemian and nori tanaka. we hadn't played as a trio before, so it was a good time to do some playing. we played two sets that had no breaks in between the songs - which is a challenge - if you feel like the music is headed somewhere you don't want to go, you can't just simply stop and start anew. you have to figure a way to slowly change the music and move it into a new direction. we went from repetitive drone-type musings to section swith nori and jason clearly defined as the rhythm section and me blowing over the top. i enjoy playing solos over a rhythm section, but always feel that i want to be truly part of the group. finding a way to make what i do both soloistic and ensemble orientated at the same time is always a challenge - sometimes with more success than other times. obviously.. we played late and finished the night - it was good to play with those guys.

second citizens hideout 11-22-2004

So the second citizens returned to the hideout to play our last monday night there. We thought that we were done with the mondays with the close of October and hadn't shown up two weeks ago, but got a message saying "where were you guys" from our guy Ryan Hembrey who helped us out in booking the shows....a bit of a mis-call. The good thing about not playing on mondays anymore is that we are going to get a wednesday night show there in december - it is a better night and i'm looking forward to it.
Fred was not in town for this night, and Frank had other engagements, so the group was me, Keefe, Josh & Anton with Mike Reed sitting in on the drums. We had a good time playing - I think we've played the music so much now that we can do alot of things to the music very comfortably. Dave Rempis and Tim Daisy played a duo set up front - they play very well together - Dave sounds great on the baritone saxophone.

solo laptop then duo AC 11-21-2004

i was asked to make some music at an installment of vadim sprikut's house series called AC. i've been working on a piece for 2 clarinets, bass clarinet and piano and computer; so decided to try it out at this concert. i've been working on the piece for about a week now; i've recorded in all the parts to protools and made a patch in MSP to work with the audio - rearranging the parts and attempting to turn it into something else. i feel there are alot of possibilities to explore, but this all takes time. i had some success earlier in the week, but felt like i kind of hurried myself along at the performance - which isn't all that unexpected i suppose. it was a good environment to work on the piece - i need to experiment more with the piece and write things down which work better in order to finalize it as a composition.
brian labycz also performed - he first did a kind of tape piece - though it was on a computer. we all listened to the piece through headphones, which was especially nice as brian used the possibilities of the spatial environemtn to good effect. he used what soudned like field recordings - but indoor ones. at one point vadim had to go answer the door - i almost thought that brian had pre-recorded such an encounter and put it into the piece - but i was wrong.
we played together after our solo pieces - we both worked with samples - and i think brian was taking a feed from me, which was a bit tricky to deal with - i felt the need to stay ahead of him so we wouldn't be working with the same material too much. it was a good challenge and a good night.

grey ghost iowa city 11-13-2004

so johnathan and i headed out west for one night - a saturday night. it wasn't our firt trip to iowa city - we played there a few years ago when we had first started playing together as grey ghost - johnathan went to school out there and knows plenty of folk - it's kind of funny as we walk through the streets because he sees people he knows driving by cars or going into a bar - and it's never a huge deal that they haven't seen each other in awhile, it's just kind of like he'd been gone a week or so. we played at a place called the glass lodge which had a killer ceiling:



the glass lodge makes it money selling glass pipes, they make their own pipes, so they have very few costs, and instead of having a real dorky looking headshop with tye-dye and other hippie shit, they keep most of the room open to hang artwork and have crafts made by local artists - it's a good place i'd say. the funy thing to happen early on was the big guy with a shaved head who came in wearing a duster and started asking about if any of us knew anybody that he could smoke with - huh? was he the most dim-witted undercover cop of all time? or can someone really be so desperate......

so, to the music - the night was a gallery opening as well as a show - so the place was filled up for all the music - some friend's of johnthan's played - tim who sang & played guitar, his guitars had some nice attachments on them which made interesting feedback style sounds; ed gray played with johnathan and this guy peter sat in on a wild saxophone solo for the last song whil keeping his young son on his shoulder (i'll have a picture up soon) - never thought i'd see a sax solo with a kid in tow.... we played a short set that went well - got alot of good compliments afterwards.... the show was over by ten, so we went out after dropping our equipment off at tim's place. first by this place gabe's, where a terrible band played - i had to leave, so headed to the sanctuary, a bar where they have the jazz music, to see anton hatwich, frank rosaly and nate lepine play - a nice coincidence that they were in town the same night.

so a good night in iowa city - and another grey ghost sighting....

flockterkit 3030 11-11-2004

another quiet night at the 3030. flockterkit had booked this date awhile ago, and i really though that by this time we would have had plenty of time to get together to rehearse, but unfortunately with everyone being busy we didn't. so we played a set without running through any of the written material. the thing is - the pieces aren't all that difficult, and we do alot of improvising, but a lack of rehearsal is always missed. and whenever mistakes happen within the pieces, it automatically triggers in the brain - we should have practiced. i also didn't feel like we had much of a communication going on in our improvisation - which really has more influence over whether the music works or not. if mistakes are made and you improvise well around it, then that pulls the whole night into the good column. (i'm not trying to be dark about it, just honest) nights like these make me want to have less performances and more time to just get together with the musicians. some might say, "well, it's basically a rehearsal", but it's really not - in a rehearsal if a mistake is made you can stop, work on the part & correct it. in front of people, you've got to just plow through the material. something not worked on in rehearsal enough is actually going through an entire piece, and so people will say, at least you got to go through the whole piece, and i somewhat agree...but in an ideal situation the rehearsal would provide for most major mistakes being weeded out and letting everyone think about the music being made at the time of rehearsal, and not be subject to mental mistakes.....an exciting entry here, right? i think i need to start a party blog....

speaking of getting together with other musicians, last night i got together with toby summerfield and jamie levinson for the second time. i think it will be fun to keep playing with them - jamie's good with the drums, i'm concentrating more on computer, using synthesizers and doing effects. this winter is the time to work consistently on groups that are collaborative - but also hopefully getting recordings together of compositions.....

vibraphone meets Max/MSP 11-7-2004

A return to the Hungry Brain for me after the Phrenology Festival a few weeks ago. This night was devoted to duets, and I was asked to bring one. I did a computer / vibraphone duet with jason adasiewicz. He improvised, I used him as a sound source for improvising, which he could then react to to continue th improvising. The largest challenge a computer based (especially sampling based - synthesis is different) improviser has when playing with "real" instruments, is that the live instruments can switch up what they're doing so very quickly. Unless you have a good interface set up for using your computer, it tends to be very loop based, and slow changing. I think I had a pretty good interface last night and was pretty active in terms of being able to move from one part to another, but there's more work to be done. I liked our setup - jason played on the stage and i sat in front, facing the stage so i could hear the mix of the vibraphone and the speakers which were outputting my sound. I was happy with the performance - instruments with clean sounds are best for manipulating, as when you do something to the sound, it actually makes it sound like a completely different thing. And the vibraphone has a great clean sound.

The other duets of the night were kevin davis on cello, electronics & radio with jake elliott on computer - which was good, but short - they did a drone piece, and then were done - james falzone witha drummer from boston, johnathan crawford with steve hess doing a solid drum duet, it made me think more about how i would really like to be in a band with two drummers. a nice night at the brain, but kind of a slow one, not too many folk, but still smoky....

no music only election bulls**t 11-3-2004

ah, so it has come to this. i definitely do not feel good about the "results" of yesterdays general election determining if or not W would be able to push the rightwing agenda for another 4 years. but the american people have "spoken" and have decided that:

it's ok that there wasn't any threat from Iraq.
it's allright to fight to protect those sacred oilfields.
it's ok that our leader is an incompetent, poorly tongued faker who is from new hampshire but puts his ranch in texas on his sleeve.
it's allright that the companies that the rpesident's friends & family work for are benefitting greatly from no bid contracts
it's ok that the christian conservative movement is hijacking the representative democracy
it's allright to be a divider, not a uniter

there's so much more that i'm not thinking clearly enough to put into words.....

as David Corn from the Nation says "there will be no good-bye to reckless preemptive war, an economic policy based on tax breaks tilted toward the wealthy, a war on environmental regulations, a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, excessive secrecy in government, unilateral machismo, the neocon theology of hubris and arrogance, a ban on effective stem cell research, no-bid Halliburton contracts, John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, and much more. Did I mention Dick Cheney?"

So what now? I have no idea. I had trouble sleeping last night. Jen & I stayed up for awhile wathching the returns come in after making some good stir fry with a sweet & sour & spicy sauce; i was getting optimistic for a bit there especially after pennsylvania went kerry's way - but florida seemed to fall to easy & then the ohio numbers started leaning bush's way. i turned off the tv right after peter jennings said, we're going to put ohio in the bush column. i knew i wasn't ready for bed - but also knew that continuing to watch wouldn't get anything done. that was the worst thing - feeling utterly powerless about something which has the power to affect my daily mood for a long time to come. it would be nice to be able to block out politics, but the bush gang are so opposite to my convictions on almost every issue that it just angers me to hear their voices or see their faces and expressions - their superiority complex is amazing - that's why they won this election - their smugness rubs off on the obvious majority of this nation who are undereducated, live sheltered lives and pampered in an american way of life whose greates hardship is a car break down or a bad haircut.

it really boils down to the fact that there are so many people in this coutnry that get spoon fed from the time they are born on a steady diet of consumerism, sensationalism, sports, and the great faith that american's, no matter what they do, how many people they kill, no matter how much oil they suck up, no matter how much nepotism, cronyism & racism is shown to be present in our society - we're still the best country in the world and our people are the most moral & best.

but thankfully, about 52 million other people hate george w like i do. well, maybe not hate him, but don't like him or his policies.

maybe another 4 years of this guys is best for the country - i've felt for a long time that's it's got to get a lot worse before it can get better - things are just too easy in this country - people forget how many things there are in this coutnry that are taken for granted.

someone said to me a few days ago - the best thing about w winning again is that he'd have to clean up his own messes. well, he pobably won't clean them up, but at least he won't be able to push off the blame.

kessler quartet 10-28-2004

a quiet night at the 3030. played with kent kessler's quartet - he plays the bass, fred lonberg hom plays cello, jeb bishop plays trombone and i play alto and clarinet. it's a nice group. the only time we had played before was at the empty bottle festival of improvised music back in the spring - i think the best thing about the group is the improvising - though i also think that sometimes the improvising was a bit hurried, trying to get to another spot quickly instead of lingering in certain places. but maybe it's good to do that in a group. most groups i play in i strive for the improvising to develop over time, maybe in this group i should be content with staying active and changing things up almost constantly, make it a real workout. we'll see. the concert had to start early because there is some neihgbor on the block who has been complaining alot about the noise coming from the church. i think it's pretty ridiculous, the music is never that loud - it's not like it's a rock club or anything. some people just love to complain - what can you do about it?
today it's really warm - which is strange for this late in october in chicago - i'm ready for it to cool down so i can bundle up in some layers.... election is on tuesday - i'm a getting a nervous feeling....

second citizens hideout 10-25-2004

monday night rolls around, you're tired from getting up early and going into work from 9 to 5 where you don't move around so much so you're body is sluggish. you've got a gig to play, but only after you go and see some folk play music at myopic books... this happens to me on mondays when i play the hideout - but it kind of feels like every monday i get no rest - but that's not really that bad as it's the only real hectic day of my week & most of the hecticness comes from playing music, which really isn't that bad at all. anyway....
played at the hideout with the second citizens this night - it was the first time i'd play with the citizens for about a month as i was out of twon when they played last. it might be the last time we play at the hideout for a good long while, but we will see... we had a very low turnout, which is frustrating, but it is a monday night, and if i have a hard time getting motivated to go play on monday night, i can definitely understand why other folk don't want to go out to see music (it's after the weekend, you've gone out a bunch, spent you're money, and now you're expected to go out again?) keefe has been asking folk to do an opening set - he asked paul hartsaw to do something, he ended up playing with frank and matt bauder who was in town for 2 days - but i really don't think the night needs another group. i think 2 sets of a sextet is enough for people to handle.
we played our set and had a fine time playing, but decided to do just one set as it felt like a rehearsal. funnny thing was right when we finished all these folks start coming through the door - about 20 people - turns out it was the entourage of two members of REM, who had played earlier that night in town. if they'd been asked to donate money as they came in, i guess we would have played more, but they weren't asked, so we packed up and left. just the luck of the draw i suppose....

dragons 1976 ann arbor 10-22-2004

house late
Originally uploaded by dragonseventysix.

so dragons hit the road for the last time for a little bit. we headed about four hours out of town to ann arbor, a place dominated by a university, but with a good music scene. our drive out there was fine, when we got to the canterbury house, where there is a concert series, we loaded up our things and then grabbed some falafel for dinner. big falafel sandwich from jerusalem garden, it was good, but i could've used some spice.
matt bauder was in town and he & ajemian played a duo set first. they used their concept of recording long tones into minidisc recorders and then having the minidiscs played back in a random shuffle to create accompaniment.
after a real short break dragons played a set - it was pretty good, i think we played better than earlier in the week at the brain. i feel more comfortable playing in front of new audiences than ones where i know folks in the crowd. i like something about them not having heard me before...
afterwards we went to a martini bar with bauder to see some folks playing jazz. we ended up sitting in on some tunes - i played matt's tenor for a solo - it was a good time.
we spent the next day hanging out in ann arbor, played some football, got some veggie dogs and saw our friend stewart bogie play with antibalas at a club called the blind pig which had bathrooms in a basement that smelled like vomit. ah, wonderful.