Autumn Leaves

We had a very nice Thanksgiving weekend.  I was ready for some downtime, since it had been a pretty busy couple of weeks.  The week before I hit a major milestone for my project at work, so now life got a bit easier just in time for the holiday season.

Biking season is over now because it’s too cold and too dark, but I did manage to get a few rides in the first few weeks of November.  Looking forward to starting again next spring.  Meanwhile we have ice skating and skiing to look forward too, and I’ve switched back to the Nordic Track on what used to be biking days.  On the plus side, I can listen to tunes while I do that.  Meanwhile, my shoulder has been hurting off and on the last few months, no doubt from using the computer too much.  So I’ve been going up and down on the amount of weight I’ve been using on weightlifting days.  This is the time of year when I usually start to feel generally tired and achy and low energy anyway, and I often go down in weight for the winter and back up again in the springtime.  In any event, I seem to have stabilized at a level that’s close to my nominal maximum for everything but bench press, which is about 20 lbs. less.  If I continue to feel okay, I’ll probably go up in a week or two.

November is the time of year for raking leaves, and we’ve been out and at it every weekend since we got home from our trip out west.  Most of the leaves are down now, and this last time we filled up only two cans, compared with 6 or seven cans and bags a couple weeks ago when it was peaking.  We also put up fresh new holiday lights outside.  I like to keep them up over the winter, and last year I just never got around to taking them down, but they all burned out over time. 

Lots of people in our neighborhood go in for big Hallowe’en and Christmas displays on their lawns.  Some of them even do Thanksgiving, but compared the other holidays the choice of imagery is kind of thin.  Pretty much you can have an inflatable turkey, and that’s about it.  If I ever do a lawn display, I want something that will last the whole season.  Start with a scary dragon, then give him a pilgrim hat, then a Santa hat.  Something like that.

Michelle came home from school to visit for a whole week.  The weekend before Thanksgiving we went up to Albany to visit Kathleen and the kids.  Now Michelle and I are planning a D&D campaign with them as a fun way to get more regular face time with everyone.  More on that as it develops.  Michelle spent Monday and Tuesday baking up a storm – cookies, sós kifli, more cookies. 

On Thanksgiving day we had a whole lot of family over: Mary’s family, Denis’s too, and Jeannie’s parents.  She made a turkey and all the things – stuffing, potatoes, gravy, and our guests brought lasagna, sweet potatoes, Brussel sprouts, pie, lots of great stuff, and a really good time.  Good to be around family. 

The next day, which in our house we’ve dubbed Slack Friday, we normally stay home and strive to nothing at all.  This year, however we went out to Long Island to visit Mary, since Denis was in town, as well as her cousin Carla.  After that we went over to visit Nick and Lisa, who live just ten minutes away.  The motivating excuse was to sync up with Nick on his progress on the Global Jukebox, but we ended up staying and enjoying Nick’s homemade bread and talking well into the night.

As for Nick’s progress on the Global Jukebox, that’s coming along nicely.  He’s been ramping up and doing his first major chunk of feature work, so we had a code review and I was able to explain to him a bunch of things he wasn’t ready for before, but now that he’s in the problem space he can grok.  He’ll make a good partner going forward.

Saturday was the Spacecats gig up at the Green Growler.  It went amazingly well and was alot of fun.  Thanksgiving weekend is a bit of a wildcard for playing in bars.  Sometimes it’s dead because everyone is out of town or doing family things.  Other times is packed because people are home visiting family and also want to go out and see their friends.  This night the place was really packed, the most crowded I’d ever seen the place because it turned out thee was a group having an informal ten-year high school reunion.  And everyone seemed to really dig the music.  They’d come in, notice the band and start bobbing their heads or doing a little dance.  We also had a good number of family and friends of the band, including a couple of the guys from my Wednesday group.

We did combination of straight-ahead jazz and more rock-funk oriented stuff, including eight songs off our record Los Gatos Del Cosmos, and a new song by Josh called Getaway Car.  We also had our drummer’s wife Robyn sitting in on vocals.  She’s sort of a theatre and show tunes type singer, but can do some standards and pop stuff.  She’s really good.  So we had her sit on on three songs each set, plus accompany the sax on the melody of Kamasi Washington’s Street Fighter Mas.  Having a singer provided a different kind of energy that helped the overall package I’d say.  We’ll probably ask her to sit in again.

The only downside is we were supposed didn’t have quite enough material to cover three hours.  We ended up spending more time rehearsing with Robyn than I’d planned because we wanted her songs to sound good.  We tried a good bunch of songs with her before we settled on the ones we chose, and there was just some getting to know one another musically and work out the arrangements.  A few of her songs had rubato beginnings and endings and we had to get a feel for how to do that together as a group.  This meant there were a few other new things that weren’t adequately rehearsed that we decided to skip.  Ah well. We ended up closing the second set with an extended jam of John Coltrane’s Mr. P.C., which went over great, and did a short third set that included a couple repeats from the beginning of the night.  No one in the audience seemed to mind, and the bar invited us back for another gig.

Sunday we finally had a day to sit at home and relax.  The Bills game was on TV.  The week before they defeated our arch-rivals the Kansas City Chiefs, which was great to see.   This week they played the Forty-Niners, and it was a lake-effect snowstorm the whole game.  Buffalo showed their cold weather prowess and won handily while SF totally fell apart, and the Bills clinched the AFC East championship.  Woo-hoo!

Spacecats Live at the Green Growler November 30

My group Spacecats is going to be making a rare and much-anticipated live appearance at The Green Growler in Croton, NY on Saturday, November 30 from 7 to 10 pm.  The group features John Szinger on saxophone, Josh Deutchman on piano and synthesizer, Ken Matthews on Bass and Rick Arecco on drums, with special guest Robyn Ferracane on vocals.  We play a blend jazz and funk, originals, standards, and pop songs with our own unique twist.  Come out and enjoy!

Spacecats – Jazz and Funk
Saturday, November 30, 7 to 10 pm
at
The Green Growler
4 Croton Point Ave., Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520

Plutonium Dirigible is Live!!!

Here it is at long last, Plutonium Dirigible, the new album by Buzzy Tonic, available on all your favorite streaming services. Buzzy Tonic is my home studio project, and the new record features nine new original tunes.

This record is dedicated to my brother Martin, who started Buzzy Tonic with me years ago, contributed a song to the record, and will always be a part of the creative spirit of the project.

Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/album/5zyYCVFrVi6U4BYPKD8PDW

Apple Music:
https://music.apple.com/us/album/plutonium-dirigible/1777655404

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DLLMJ657

For more info, check out the album’s web page at:
https://zingman.com/music/plutoniumdirigible.php

Enjoy!

Comings and Goings

It was another busy week.  We got home from our trip Monday morning and it was straight to work.  Wednesday evening we went to see a rock show, Cyndi Lauper at Madison Square Garden.  Had dinner in the Persian place Jeannie likes before the show.  Cyndi put on an excellent show.  The band was great, and so was the light and video show, and she can really still sing.  There were lots of costume changes, and a fair amount of long storytelling intros to songs.  Between the two, they rarely played more than two or three songs without a pause.  Ah well, she’s got alot of great, fun hits.

Friday night we went up to Boston for the OrigaMIT convention, which was on Saturday.  It’s fun to be able to say I teach a MIT every year, even if it’s just origami.  This year I taught my Flying Fish, since I recently folded a bunch of the for the OUSA holiday tree, and made some improvements to the design along the way.  This year’s convention seemed a bit more low key than other years, and the only person I really ended up talking to in any depth was Brian Chan.  Erik Demaine did his usual lecture on his research, and this year seems to have made good progress in cracking the layering problem, which central to the whole question of modeling origami in software.  After the main classes were over, there was a group activity, a design challenge.  For the prompt “things you find in a kitchen” I folded a cake with a slice cut out, and the missing slice out of another sheet of paper.  Interested 3-D geometry challenge. 

We drove Saturday after dinner.  It was good to get an extra hour of sleep Sunday morning, and finally have a low pressure day off.  The weather was nice so Jeannie and did a bike ride, maybe the last of the year.  I went sixteen miles in a little over an hour.  Also took the Mustang out for a ride, and raked up the leaves in the yard, which we hadn’t done since before our trip.

Monday came and I was pretty exhausted today, and also feeling out of sorts with it getting dark so early now that the clocks have shifted.  Ah well, looking forward to not having to do any traveling for a while, and get some things done at home.

Way Out West, Part II

Wednesday we got up early to watch the sun rise. Then we drove out of the Grand Canyon to the east, crossed the Colorado River somewhere around Antelope Canyon, and swung north into the legendary realm of Utah, a place I’d never been before.  The maps app said the trip was about five hours, but for us it was more like eight, because we kept stopping for scenic overlooks along the way and doing short hikes to the local vista.  It was amazing to see the way the landscape changed over the miles.  The Grand Staircase with its layers of all different colored rocks was particularly amazing. 

We got to Bryce in the late afternoon and had time for a hike around the rim to a place called Sunset Point. We dipped into the upper part of the canyon, then back up to the top to watch the sun go down.  (Fun fact: the sun doesn’t actually go up or down, or around the Earth at all. It’s the Earth spinning that creates the illusion of the sun traveling across the sky!)  We were staying at the lodge in the national park here to, and had drinks dinner at the restaurant there.  Very yummy.  There was no TV or wifi in the room.  Next morning we hiked into the canyon.  Bryce is much smaller than the Grand Canyon and you can reach the bottom in an hour or so.  But the rock formations are the most amazing to behold that I’ve ever seen!  So we spent at a few hours hiking around the canyon floor and eventually up the other side at Sunrise Point.

We had lunch there before we took off, then it was another drive across the mountains and desert to Zion.  This one was only two hours or so long.  Coming into Zion from the east, we had had to drive thru a long tunnel and down an intense series of switchbacks to get the main canyon.  We weren’t able to get a room in the park lodge here, so we stayed in a hotel a little ways outside the park gate.  We had dinner at a really good Mexican restaurant that from the outside had a vibe like From Dusk ‘Til Dawn before things turned weird.

Friday we hiked around inside Zion, which was really beautiful like everything else, and had looked alot like Sedona actually.  Walked along the river at the bottom then up a side canyon to a series of pools and waterfalls.  All of these hikes were pretty big – over five miles and 1,000 feet vertical.  We ended up at a saloon in the village right outside the park gate having a couple drinks and a late lunch.

Saturday we drove from Zion to Las Vegas, Nevada.  This was a short ride by this vacation’s standards, only a couple hours.  On the way we stopped at a dinosaur discovery in St. George, Utah.  The main attraction there was a giant slab of natural rock which had been cleaned up and had a roof put over it.  The rock reveal thousands of dinosaur footprints and told the story of how it was once a sandy beach and shore of a shallow lake. 

In Vegas the weather was hot for the first time since we’d arrived out west.  And unlike everywhere else we’d been, everything was very crowded and noisy.  Last time I was in Vegas was in the 1990’s, so it was interesting to see what has changed.  In the afternoon we walked along the strip and got as far as Caesar’s Palace, about halfway up.  In the evening we went out to dinner with Jeannie’s cousin Lynda and her husband Carl, who moved to Vegas some years back.  It was an Italian restaurant in the part of town off the strip where people actually live.  That gave a different perspective on the city.  Afterwards we went back to the strip, and starting at the Luxor worked our way back to our hotel at the other end, stopping occasionally to rest and have a drink and take in the sights.  The highlight was at the Parisian, where a Moulin Rouge style burlesque show appeared right at the bar where we happened to be lounging.  A troupe of cute dancing girls in corsets and fishnets shaking their thang, and a self-aware singer who broke the fourth wall to tell us all she thought the lyrics to Roxanne were really repetitive.  We looked for opportunities to play some blackjack or roulette, but the tables had all been replaced by machines that made it feel like self-checkout at the supermarket and didn’t look like very much fun.  Jeannie found an arcade of vintage slot machines and spent some money there but didn’t win anything.  At least people don’t smoke indoors anymore.

The last day was the drive back to Phoenix to catch our flight home.  We did this trip in the opposite direction thirty years ago.  Back then it was mostly a two-lane country road across the dessert.  I remember a sign in a small town in the middle of nowhere, Arizona saying “No gas next 150 miles.”  You couldn’t even tune in a radio station.  Well now that middle part of the trip is mostly a divided four-lane highway heavy with traffic, and the no-gas zone is more like 100 miles, and by the time you pass thru you’re in the sprawling exurbs of Phoenix.  Compared to the other drives on the trip, it was pretty flat, mainly desert with groves of Joshua trees and Saguaro cactuses.

Our rental car, a Nissan Rogue, kinda sucked BTW.  The flight home was uneventful, except that getting in an out of Kennedy Airport is a nightmare these days because of all the construction.

Way Out West, Part I

We just got back from a a great trip out west to Arizona and Utah.  Sedona, the Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, and 24 hours in Las Vegas.  Lots and lots of hiking.  A good deal of driving.  Epic scenic vistas galore.

Part of the purpose of this trip was for Jeannie and I to celebrate out thirtieth wedding anniversary, which was earlier this month.  (We had thought we might do some kind of party or dinner for family and friends, but as it happened we weren’t much in the party spirit in the late summer and early fall.  I ended up making a toast to Jeannie and thirty more years when we were visiting my parents a couple weeks ago.)  In any event, Jeannie and I had taken a trip to Arizona the year we got married.  It was our first vacation together, and my first time out west.  So we visited a couple places we’d been to before, and some new places too.  It was a good opportunity to reflect on our lives together so far and the way things change and stay the same across the grand passage of time.

The first stop on our itinerary was Sedona.  We flew out Saturday morning.  Our flight landed in Phoenix, and by the time we got our car and drove up there, it was late afternoon.  We took a sunset hike up a nearby mountain, the first of many.  It was only about two miles and maybe four or five hundred feet vertical, winding up from behind the local high school, which was across the street from our hotel, and took a little over an hour.  But the view was amazing, looking down into the valley and across to the mesas and rock formations all around. Went out to dinner for Mexican food.

Next morning we explored the town a little more and did a little shopping because I needed new hiking boots, and we got some groceries too.  Sedona has a vibe very much like a ski town because the main activity there is hiking.  It’s pretty small with just one main drag, full of shops and restaurants, quite nice.  If you leave town in any direction you’re five or ten minutes away from an epic hike.  We chose one called Fay Canyon, which had a side quest to a natural stone arch, and a good scramble up the cliffside at the trail’s end to some great views.  That one was maybe three or four miles and a thousand feet vertical.  We followed it up another shorter, steeper hike to the top of another mesa, called Boynton if I recall.

When we were up in Buffalo a couple weeks ago, Chris and Mark told us that our old friend Keith, the crazy talented guitarist for Event Horizon, was living in Sedona, and gave us the name of the band he was in.  We tried to find him but he didn’t have any gigs the weekend we were there.  Nevertheless, we had dinner at a bar where he was scheduled to play the following weekend, and left a message.  He was always a difficult one to get a hold of.  It would be amazing to hear from him.

Anyway, Monday morning we lit out for our next destination, the Grand Canyon.  On the way we stopped at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, after several hours of winding thru very scenic canyon and mountain roads. This is something we both had always wanted to see.  Percival Lowell of course was a famous astronomer who discovered the once and future planet Pluto, mapped the famous canals of Mars, and contributed in many other areas.  Other astronomers there mapped the moon in the 1960’s and discovered the cosmic redshift that led to the expanding universe model of cosmology.  The tour was fascinating; they showed us several working telescopes and explained about their history, construction, operation, and how astronomers use them in their research.  We would have liked to have been there at night to look thru the big telescope, but Flagstaff is very remote and we would have had to spend the night.  As it was, we got to look thru a few ‘scopes in the daytime. One was trained on the sun and had filter at the alpha red wavelength emitted by hydrogen. As a result it showed mainly the surface of the sun and not the white and yellow light blasting from within.  The sun actually looked like a ball and not just a disc, and was covered with the hairy fuzz of solar flares, each much larger than the earth.  Another ‘scope showed Venus, which is apparently visible in the daytime if you know where to look and can block out the light of the sun.

After several hours more of driving thru very scenic mountains we arrived at the Grand Canyon, shortly before sunset.  We were staying in a cabin at Bright Angel right in the park, at the very edge of the chasm.  This was something we’d done thirty years before, and was a special memory for us to revisit.  The room had a view looking right out over the canyon, and a fire place which was now gas but thirty years ago had been wood-burning.  That evening we had dinner at El Tovar, the fancy classy restaurant there.  When we were there the last time I declare the steak I ate that night the best I ever had, and over the years it has gained legendary status.  I ordered the steak again, and I must say it was a damn good steak.  But I supposed I’ve had plenty of great steaks over the last thirty years.  For dessert the chef spelled out Happy Anniversary in chocolate on the plate, which was quite nice.

Tuesday was the biggest hike of the trip, down into the canyon itself. It was a beautiful day for it, although they’d had snow just a couple of days earlier. (We had perfect weather the whole trip, although the air was very dry and the elevation made the sunshine extra strong.) The trip was three miles in, going down more than 2,000 feet in elevation. It was basically endless switchbacks scratched out of the cliffside. But you know, breathtakingly beautiful, and fascinating to see the shift in perspective that came with the descent.

A word about the colors. Everywhere we went out there the rocks were really red, to the point where it affected the way you other colors. Basically all the colors were really vivid and seemed to pop. You’ve never seen a more intense blue sky (maybe that was the elevation too) or greener scraggly desert shrubberies. The pants I was were appeared tan under normal circumstances turned green on the trail. And Jeannie’s hiking boots, which were normally grey, turned blue. Totally wild.

It took us a little over two hours to get to the three mile point, which was about halfway to the bottom in terms of both distance and elevation. After we paused for lunch, it was the long slow climb back out, relentlessly uphill for three miles. We were told to plan on taking twice as much time to climb out, but for us the total trip was right around six hours.

After a rest we decided to walk along the rim trail to a vista point to watch the sunset. It was a bit further than we expected, another two miles or so, so we ended up taking the bus back to the village.

A word about sunrises and sunsets. You can really appreciate the optical effects of the earth’s atmosphere at the tops of these cliffs cuz you can see for miles and miles and miles (oh yeah). It’s best to look to the horizon opposite the sun. You can see the shadows climbing up the rocks in the opposite side of the canyon, and really get a feel for the earth turning. You’ll see a blue zone in the sky that creeps up underneath the pink. After the sun set it continues to rise, as the pink begins to fade. This is actually the shadow of the earth itself, causing the night to fall.

At the end of the night we went out a dark place at the end of a parking lot to watch the starts. Amazing, clear skies, just tons and tons of stars. I don’t think I remember ever seeing the Milky Way like that in the fall.

Next up:  Utah!

On the Way Home

We finally got a weekend at home to relax. This week we passed a big deadline at work, the release of Permission Slip 3.0, delivered on time and without any major problems.  I also finished re-architecting and deploying the key generation and storage mechanism for OSIRAA, the API compliance test tool for the Data Rights Protocol, after a long and deep debugging adventure, thus unblocking the road forward to testing.  And, I submitted Plutonium Dirigible to get CDs made and put on streaming services, so that project is officially completed.

Last weekend we were traveling again, this time up to Buffalo.  It was good to see Mum and Dad and talk about things. They are doing basically okay, very stoic, which I guess is not too surprising.

I also saw old friends Mark C. and Chris S.  I hadn’t seen either of them in many years, although we used to be very close, so it was great to reconnect.  Mark and Chris were the drummer and piano/synth player in Event Horizon, our prog jazz fusion band that was together for a number of years and was the vehicle for alot of musical growth.  We were in several other bands together around that time, and both of them stood up at my wedding, which, by the way. was thirty years ago this week.  Chris has a new wife and baby.  Life has a way of moving in circles sometimes, and after many adventures they’re both back living in Kenmore, just a few blocks apart, in the neighborhood we all grew up in.

After that we went to visit Lizzy and Josh at their new apartment in North Buffalo, just a few block on the other side of Kenmore Avenue.  They have a very nice place, and the main decorating them is legos galore.  I always admired that neighborhood when was growing up, with it’s tree-lined avenues and well-kept Victorian houses; it’s good to see the neighborhood is still that way.  They’re right near Hertel Avenue, with a district of restaurants and shops.

Back home Michelle is home from school visiting.  The weather remains nice.  It’s been a super pleasant autumn so far, with mainly warm and sunny weather and beginning to get cool at night.  Haven’t really turned the heat on yet.  Much better than last fall, when it rained pretty much every day.  I’ve been continuing to do alot biking.  This weekend I went twenty miles on the local rail trial.  Hope to get a few more long rides in before it turns cold, and get up to thirty by the end of the season.

This week I’m trying to finish up some origami Flying Fish for OUSA’s holiday tree at American Museum of Natural History.  I also have some ideas for a couple new models that I hope to complete for a convention coming up in November.  So watch this space for that.

And the Wonder Will Set Me Free

This past weekend Jeannie and I went up to the greater Berne area, in the hills between Albany and the Catskills to visit Kathleen and the kids and participate in a benefit concert in Martin’s honor.  We had to get up early Saturday so I could be there for rehearsal.  I hadn’t used my rock keyboard setup in a while, so Friday night I plugged everything in and turned it all to make sure it still worked and sounded good, and if I still remembered my way around the controls of my synth.  Then I tore it all down, figured out what to pack, and pre-loaded the car.

The rehearsal was at the East Berne Band’s drummer John’s house.   He has a nice rehearsal space, set up a bit like mine in that you come in thru the garage and don’t have to go up or down any stairs.  I’d met the guys in the band briefly once before, and had been texting and emailing them, so I felt pretty good about the situation.  John sent me a list of tunes to learn a few weeks ago, then last week sent me a mostly different list.  One thing that was for sure was that we’d be doing two of Martin’s original songs.

The band consists of John on drums and vocals, Dan on bass and vocals, Chris on guitar and backing vocals, Jim on keyboards in the summertime, and sometime vocalist Lorissa, who wasn’t at the practice.  They’re all excellent musicians, who sound really good together, and the vibe was very relaxed and friendly.  They’re very versatile and can handle everything from the E Street Band to Brittany Spears.  We ran thru a good part of the setlist they’d given me, focusing alot of the time on Martin’s songs, which they asked me to sing.  Everyone said I sound just like Martin.  I guess that’s not far from the truth.  I’ve been going over some old recordings we did together and can’t always tell who is singing what part.  I was playing sax as well as keyboards and singing.  I’ve been playing more and more on Martin’s old sax, a Selmer Mark VI tenor from the late 1950’s and really growing to love it.

After that I went back to Kathleen’s house and hung out with her and the kids.  We’re trying to spend some time with them, be more of a presence and get to know them better individually.  This time it was mostly Charlie and Abbie I was talking with, with Match interjecting now and then.  I also seem to be their dog Gus’s new best friend, having played countless rounds of fetch with him.  I spent some time talking with Kathleen’s father Charlie too.  We went for a hike later in the afternoon in some nearby woods overlooking the escarpment and, at the furthest point out, offering a scenic view of Albany.  Apparently it was one of Martin’s favorite hikes.  Kathleen and Jeannie and I went out to dinner with John and his wife Linda, who had been raising alpacas for their wool.  Abbie and Ellie and their cousin Bailey came too.

Next morning we spent more time with the kids.  Jeannie taught Abbie how to fold Sonobe modules, a kind of geometric origami system that’s very popular.  I helped organize some stuff in Martin’s studio.  I found a notebook of some of his older songs.  He never seemed to write down his chord progressions, but sometimes there were hand drawn tabs in the margins.  He liked to explore patterns alot and figure out the names of the chords later.  The concert was out at a brewery about a half hour from the house.  I got there around 1:30 to set up.  The stage was out at the edge of a big lawn behind the brewery, bordered by wildflowers all around.  Out in front was a bunch of picnic tables and a shelter.  A very nice scene.  With four bands on the bill the stage was pretty full: two drum sets, three keyboard rigs, multiple guitar amps.  The bass player Dan was in all four bands, so we pretty much front and center the whole time.  The first two bands did a mixture of covers and originals, all very good.  The overall vibe was a cross between the Grateful Dead and the Barenaked Ladies.  I spent the time meeting and talking to alot of Martin’s friends.  He definitely made an impact on people.  Alot of people seemed to be part of extended family clans, like Martin and Kathleen.  Also a whole networked scene of musicians.  There was a food truck there that served dumplings.  Very yummy.

The East Berne Band went on third, and we started with Lorissa singing, doing a bunch of songs which we hadn’t rehearsed and I didn’t know about.  So they called out the key (sometimes) and I followed along by ear and watching the bass player’s fingers.  I sang Martin’s songs, One of These Days and Making Miles, and both went well.  I almost made it thru without breaking up, but then I looked out into the crowd and there was Jeannie and Kathleen crying.  Still, overall a fun and joyous occasion.  At the end of our set, a bunch of musicians from all the bands came on stage for an epic jam session to close out the day.  Tons of fun.  Lots of good feeling and healing energy.  I hope they do it again sometime.  Meanwhile we’ll be back up there to visit again before too long.

Making Miles for Martin

This coming weekend would have been Martin’s birthday. On Sunday afternoon his rock group, the East Berne Band, is putting on a benefit concert in his memory up at the Wayward Lane Brewery in the greater Berne area, in the hills between Albany and the Catskills Albany where he used to live. I might also be sitting with another one of the bands on the bill, One Wing Duck, which I as understand it is sort of a jam collective of which Martin was also a member. I haven’t played a rock show since before the pandemic, so I’ve been learning a bunch of new songs and practicing real hard. We’re doing a couple of Martin’s originals, including one I hadn’t heard until a few weeks ago. It should be a fun time with some great music.

The Brothers Zing

Martin and I have been making music together from the time we were little kids. I’d always dreamed of putting together a live band with him someday to perform our original songs. With the upcoming release of the fifth Buzzy Tonic album, now is a good time to look back the first Buzzy Tonic album, called The Brothers Zing, a collaboration between Martin and myself. Actually, the album was originally called Buzzy Tonic and the name of the group was The Brothers Zing. (I retconned it just like certain film directors add a subtitle like A New Hope to their movie after it’s been out in theaters a while, then years later try and play it off like the subtitle has always been the actual title. But I digress …) I should mention that Martin came up with the name Buzzy Tonic, meaning both a description of the sound, consonant yet distorted, and also some kind of intoxicating libation that staggers the mind.

Back in 2004 or so, twenty years ago now (wow!), I was in a sort of musical hiatus and looking to do something new when Martin approached me. The idea was to do a virtual collaboration, which was unusual at the time. We built matching ProTools based recording studio setups, and we’d send files back and forth, building up a song track by track, changing things around and refining them as we went. We wrote, arranged, preformed and produced eight original songs in a period of about a year.

For me it was a big step forward in many ways. It was the first time I’d really written rock songs with a lyric (I’d previously written mainly jazz instrumentals up to that point, and I’d done a whole lot of computer and electronic music) and focused on an actual album of songs, with the aim of producing a professional quality record. He gave me alot of confidence to step up with my writing and singing. He also wrote a computer program called Guitar George to help him figure out how to play guitar voicings for all the crazy jazz chords that appeared in my songs!

Obviously it was fun and successful, and I’ve kept on making records, getting better with each one. Martin had to drop out of the second record due to other commitments, and I sort of took it over as a a solo project. He remained very generous, contributing one song for every album (except the jazz instrumental one), and often adding vocal or guitar parts to my songs, and giving constructive critical feedback along the way. In fact, I kind of think of all the Buzzy Tonic records as being in a way by The Brothers Zing. And don’t worry, we’ve done other project before and after, so there’s more music from the two of us in the offing.

Meanwhile, you can hear the songs here:
https://zingman.com/music/#BeeZee

And learn all about the the songs and making of the record here:
https://zingman.com/music/beezee.php

Enjoy!