up the spout again

What a fun weekend of gigs I've had. Last night, I got to play with the redoubtable Ken Slavin, a smooth-as-silk baritone in the tradition of Sinatra and Bennett, for the first time. He enjoyed my playing, I enjoyed his singing, and all was good. Better yet, Eddie Torres was on the gig. Eddie's an old-school drummer who learned — literally — from Gene Krupa. He and I had never gigged together, either, and I'd always thought he'd underestimated me. Sure enough, in the runup, he said a few things about me and about the Protagonists that let me think, "Aha; just wait." And sure enough, after a few tunes, he said, "I take it all back." Very nice.

The night before, I'd played with some homeless Katrina victims, fantastic jazz musicians from jazz's great city, displaced to San Antonio for who knows how long. The entire evening glowed. We matched musically quite well, and they were a good hang on top of that. I opened up the last set with a swingy, lopey G-major vamp, and they matched it; I started singing Itsy Bitsy Spider to it, and it turned into a several-minute long bluesy jazz tune with multilayered meaning for us and for the audience. At the end, the audience applauded appreciatively, and the string bass player did this lick on the final fermata, hammering with both hands down the neck of the bass, left hand inverted. Perfect.