Spring continues to arrive. Everything is turning green, sprouting and blooming. Today we had our first actually hot day. And it’s about time. Did a ton of yardwork over the weekend. Mowed the lawn for the first time, plus weeding and edging to get everything looking nice for hanging out outside. Next step is put down the mulch under the hedges and trim a couple trees.
Been getting on my bike the last couple of weeks, five or six times now. Nice to get back into that. I still have yet to do a big long ride on the rail trail near my house, but that will come soon enough.
The big fun this weekend was I went into the city to see my old friend Jim Wynne from Buffalo, playing bass with the band Tripi and the Mother Truckers, who are touring around the northeast these days. Tony Tripi is a singer-songwriter with songs that are fun and earnest, and the group is a power trio with a backup singer for high harmony. Great sound and energy.
I haven’t seen Jim in many years, so it was great to catch up. It brought back a bunch of memories. We were in a bunch of bands together back in the day, including Automatic Man and The Purple Connection, and he was the bassist for the last incarnation of my jazz fusion group Event Horizon. Jim is a phenomenal talent on bass, with an imaginative and adventurous technique that he developed after someone lent him a chapman stick for a few months, but then he had to give it back, equally at home in jazz, rock, funk or dance music. I’d compare him to Les Claypool, Billy Sheehan, or Tony Levin, with a bit of Joco thrown in, but he really has his own thing going.
Automatic Man used to play every Monday night at Broadway Joe’s for a year or two, except when the Bills were on Monday night football. The group featured Jim on bass, Pete D. on guitar, Pat O. on drums and me on sax. We did alot of Jeff Beck and Mike Stern, and adaptation of rock songs. We used to end the set with the Beatle’s Abbey Road medley, with Pete and I playing most of the vocal parts on our instruments and Jim covering pretty much everything else in the arrangement on bass. It was a great crowd pleaser, and people used to sing along to Carry that Weight and The End.
The Purple Connection also featured Jim and Pat and myself, and Craig H. on guitar. We had a Sunday afternoon gig at a place called The Inn on the River, a bar where people would pull up to a dock in their boats. The set leaned more toward smooth jazz, with things like George Benson and Steely in our repertoire.
Around that time I was in a different group making an album and the studio we used had a summer picnic with a raffle, and Jeannie won 10 hours of studio time. I thought I could make a record in ten hours, so re-formed my group Event Horizon, with Jim on bass, and we went in and recorded an hour of music – four songs – after just one rehearsal.
So like I said, I haven’t seen my friend in many years. Amazing props that he’s been making his living doing music this whole time and found success at it. He told me I inspired him to get into digital audio production, and he also teaches now, and even tunes pianos! His style of playing has evolved too. A little less flamboyant but better integrated. Jim now has a seven-string bass guitar, believe it or not, with a really broad neck and lots of room for higher and denser chord voicings and bigger excursions into the treble range. And he plays it like a mother trucker!