The summer’s been buzzing along nicely. I took some time off after OUSA and did some traveling, lots of seeing family and friends. Today we went to the beach, which was nice even though the sun never came out and eventually is started raining. Still we got a good swim in the ocean. All back home now. Tomorrow it’s back to work for the first full week in a while. Still lots of other fun stuff coming up this summer.
In origamiland I’ve gotten back all the models from my various exhibits, and am preparing a new round of exhibits. These will both be sent out by mail. One is Centerfold in Ohio, at the end of July, It’s the biggest origami convention in the Midwest. I wish I could go this year, but the logistics are too much. The other is for a bookstore in Lake Placid. They contacted my asking if I could do an event there. It doesn’t look like I’ll be able to make the trip this summer, but I figure since they were nice enough to reach out to me, and several of the chapters of my book are Adirondack themed, it might be a fun idea to send them a box of models to display and promote the book.
The third thing is I’m now starting work on the ebook version of my book for Tuttle. This ought to be fairly straightforward. They’re doing the actual production. I’m providing guidance and approval on the layout and format as necessary, and re-rendering any art assets that need t be scaled. Lastly, updating all the photo galleries on my website to use lightbox for slideshows has been in the offing for a long time and is inching closer to reality.
But this blog post is about how things are going with my bands. I’m happy to say it’s all going great. My jazz band seems to have solidified around the time I became a regular member, with a new bass player and piano player too. Things are now getting really smoking, with an ever-expanding set of material, played at a higher level of musicianship. One night when I came in I warmed up on the intro to Liberty City. The bass player Ken jumped right in, and so I found out he’s a big Joco Pastorius head. Now we’re doing The Chicken with Joco’s Soul Intro, and I get to do all the wailin’ Michael Brecker tenor parts, which is tons of fun. Last week we had another really amazing cat sit on alto, and I feel like my playing rose up a to meet him.
In the rock’n’roll realm it looks like the new group is going to work out, and sound better than the old group. The two guys that came in are Jeff on guitar and Mike on Vocals. At this point we’ve rehearsed three times and have about thirty songs. We’ve pretty much combined the best of our set list with the best of theirs, and started adding new material. Among the new songs I’ve learned are: We’re an American Band, Them Changes, (Ain’t Nothin’ But a) House Party, I Got You (I Feel Good), Dancing Days, Godzilla, Love Me Two Times, Can’t You Hear me Knocking, Brown Sugar, Honky Tonk Woman, Come Together, Miami 2017 and Dear Mr. Fantasy.
I’m singing lead on the Stones songs. Mike says he’s sick to death of singing these songs, but they’re a lot of fun for me. You don’t need a lot of range, you just belt it out. These are all saxophone songs too, so I need to manage switching between singing and playing the horn. We’ve also jammed a few others like The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys, Money and some other Pink Floyd, but these seem a bit sprawling for a bar set. The consensus is we need forty songs before we’re ready to gig out. And of course we need to get the ones we have tight, but that’ll come naturally.
The big thing now is we need to come up with a name for the band before we can start booking gigs. We’ve been brainstorming and tossing around ideas. So far the one to beat is The Strolling Jones.
