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I both gave and received that Strange Brew in the past few months, but as I track the Bob and Doug version of the 12 Days, I'll tie in to their gifts for at least some of the Days. Day One's gift connected me with other crafty-beery things at a bunch of places, for today I review a year filled with music, seen in many new or re-newed venues and with old friends and new finds.
January. We met Tyler Westcott opening for a Buffalo Folk act a few years ago, and I've now seen him, solo or with one or the other of the 349 groups he's in, all over the Buffalo area. But in January 2019, he was granted Artist in Residence status at the Little Theatre cafe in Rochester, where for each of several weeks he performed in a different incarnation of his talent. I got to stay late there one weeknight in January, and saw him with his Americana friends in The Observers. There were unique instruments-
- and well-crafted espresso to go along with the Little's famed brownies-
----
May. Somehow after that, my concert-goings took a long hiatus. February through April, nothing musical of note. Looking back, I'm now remembering how crazy-busy work was in that time. Ah, but the months since have made up for it. Beginning with finally seeing Hamilton, May then led into an unexpected chance to Dig The Who one last time in downtown Buffalo.
Yeah, nosebleedy, but the sound was good, the boys did almost complete run-thrus of Tommy AND Quadrophenia, with orchestral accompaniment and some acoustic-duos mixed in.
June. The start of summer brought the newly-sponsored Rochester Jazz Festival. I missed seeing a free outdoor gig by a Blues Brother, but the following week got me indoors for a beloved Toronto vocalist named Heather Bambrick-
(No show photography allowed, but that's her then-just-released CD that she graciously signed.) Then it was down the street to Geva for a bigger crowd, hearing old friend John Pizzarelli's trio doing Nat King Cole covers. Again, no pictures allowed, but I took notes on the stories:
----
July brought a new program to a recently discovered Rochester venue. The owner of Abilene, where I enjoyed the most intimate show of my life a year before, rolled out a charity series of shows supporting a local crisis nursery. Our donation (me and Eleanor's brother) got admission to four shows, of which the first was by this remarkable performer, Eilen (EE-lin) Jewell:
August then brought me closer to the old homestead, and a ska-jazz performer I've known since before we both started on clarinet at Prospect Elementary. Freddie's mostly on sax now, with the occasional flute break:
And here we are pre-show, the last recorded image of me in those glasses before losing them on the 1 train:
This was also the show, at Les Paul's Irridium club in Manhattan, where I met the original Beth and Bill, who've become emblematic of the happy couples I've met at all the subsequent shows:
In September, at my first Nick Lowe show, it was the couple sitting in front of me at the Tralf. In October, at the Dar Williams/Antje Dukvot performance we saw in Toronto, it was us our own selves. A week later, when I attended Lake Street Dive downtown with a coworker, it was one of her other officemates and Julianne's fiancee who fit the (Beth and) Bill (the two furthest to my left):
And in November, when I went Paging Mr. Page, Mr. STEVEN Page, it was the couple who invited me (seen here with opening act Dean Friedman, whose One Hit they named their daughter after):
Counting Hamilton, that adds up to eleven different venues for almost as many different styles of song. Not counted is Sportsmen's, which I got to twice this fall for a local performer friend Davey O and for some Flying Burrito Brothers; and most recently in this very December, I returned to the scene of the Dive to see both members of Hot Tuna as well as a couple of adored folk performers.
We've also been blessed with all make and manner of film about musicians- from the Linda Ronstadt documentary, to Not Fade Away, David Chase's filmed sort-of memoir about how the Beatles and Stones changed so many 60s lives. At one point in the special features, someone likens music to religion. For a guy who didn't give up on his church so much as it gave up on him, I can relate to that completely:)
I both gave and received that Strange Brew in the past few months, but as I track the Bob and Doug version of the 12 Days, I'll tie in to their gifts for at least some of the Days. Day One's gift connected me with other crafty-beery things at a bunch of places, for today I review a year filled with music, seen in many new or re-newed venues and with old friends and new finds.
January. We met Tyler Westcott opening for a Buffalo Folk act a few years ago, and I've now seen him, solo or with one or the other of the 349 groups he's in, all over the Buffalo area. But in January 2019, he was granted Artist in Residence status at the Little Theatre cafe in Rochester, where for each of several weeks he performed in a different incarnation of his talent. I got to stay late there one weeknight in January, and saw him with his Americana friends in The Observers. There were unique instruments-
- and well-crafted espresso to go along with the Little's famed brownies-
----
May. Somehow after that, my concert-goings took a long hiatus. February through April, nothing musical of note. Looking back, I'm now remembering how crazy-busy work was in that time. Ah, but the months since have made up for it. Beginning with finally seeing Hamilton, May then led into an unexpected chance to Dig The Who one last time in downtown Buffalo.
Yeah, nosebleedy, but the sound was good, the boys did almost complete run-thrus of Tommy AND Quadrophenia, with orchestral accompaniment and some acoustic-duos mixed in.
June. The start of summer brought the newly-sponsored Rochester Jazz Festival. I missed seeing a free outdoor gig by a Blues Brother, but the following week got me indoors for a beloved Toronto vocalist named Heather Bambrick-
(No show photography allowed, but that's her then-just-released CD that she graciously signed.) Then it was down the street to Geva for a bigger crowd, hearing old friend John Pizzarelli's trio doing Nat King Cole covers. Again, no pictures allowed, but I took notes on the stories:
John explained his long-standing love of that music dating back to when he first played a cover of "Straighten Up and Fly Right" for his jazz legend dad Bucky back in 1980. Bucky dispatched him to a record shop to discover the real thing, and one trip to Sam Goody's later, his first real Nat Cole sounds hit the bottom of dad's classic Garrard turntable: "It had four speeds," and his room full of old fogies counted out all four with him: "16, 33 1/3, 45 and 78- which, coincidentally, were my SAT scores.”
----
July brought a new program to a recently discovered Rochester venue. The owner of Abilene, where I enjoyed the most intimate show of my life a year before, rolled out a charity series of shows supporting a local crisis nursery. Our donation (me and Eleanor's brother) got admission to four shows, of which the first was by this remarkable performer, Eilen (EE-lin) Jewell:
August then brought me closer to the old homestead, and a ska-jazz performer I've known since before we both started on clarinet at Prospect Elementary. Freddie's mostly on sax now, with the occasional flute break:
And here we are pre-show, the last recorded image of me in those glasses before losing them on the 1 train:
This was also the show, at Les Paul's Irridium club in Manhattan, where I met the original Beth and Bill, who've become emblematic of the happy couples I've met at all the subsequent shows:
In September, at my first Nick Lowe show, it was the couple sitting in front of me at the Tralf. In October, at the Dar Williams/Antje Dukvot performance we saw in Toronto, it was us our own selves. A week later, when I attended Lake Street Dive downtown with a coworker, it was one of her other officemates and Julianne's fiancee who fit the (Beth and) Bill (the two furthest to my left):
And in November, when I went Paging Mr. Page, Mr. STEVEN Page, it was the couple who invited me (seen here with opening act Dean Friedman, whose One Hit they named their daughter after):
Counting Hamilton, that adds up to eleven different venues for almost as many different styles of song. Not counted is Sportsmen's, which I got to twice this fall for a local performer friend Davey O and for some Flying Burrito Brothers; and most recently in this very December, I returned to the scene of the Dive to see both members of Hot Tuna as well as a couple of adored folk performers.
We've also been blessed with all make and manner of film about musicians- from the Linda Ronstadt documentary, to Not Fade Away, David Chase's filmed sort-of memoir about how the Beatles and Stones changed so many 60s lives. At one point in the special features, someone likens music to religion. For a guy who didn't give up on his church so much as it gave up on him, I can relate to that completely:)