tinpanband.com

We just created a new You Tube Channel. So far there’s a sexy video we made with a burlesque dancer, Veronica Varlow. There’s a clip of a dance event in Amsterdam where DJ Shorty George is playing one of our tracks! There’s also a whole mess of captures from live performances that people from all over the country and from all over the world have been moved to share.

This channel will be growing steadily. Do drop by from time to time:

Your trusty link: Tin Pan Video Network.

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Oh my! That’s some serious business right there. Veronica Varlow!

One time I was out at dinner. This is when my Grandpa was still with us. A tall, Jayne Mansfield looking waitress ambled by with a tray held up over her head. My good old grandpa followed her with his eyes.

My dear grandmother sees this and starts right in on him. “Manny, you like that, huh? What do you like about that?”

He demurred, “Well . . . she has a nice, hmm, posterior. And a fine, rather, uhm, a fine buxom area.”

“Manny, put out your hand.”

And ever-polite, he stretched out his hand, fully expecting to get slapped on his wrist. “Congratulations. You’re still alive!”

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In a word, new year’s was a total blast. The evening started at home where my darling Rachel was busying herself getting all dolled up and making sure that her and her whole crew would be arriving in time to secure a table. Arriving at Galapagos, we realized she had made the right decision. By the time the doors opened at 8pm there was a line at the door and folks didn’t stop coming until the place was more than full. I believe that Shanghai Mermaid had sold out over 200 tickets in the first few days that they went on sale.

I think the pictures will tell the story of the evening more succinctly and you can see them at the bottom of the post. But I will add a few scenes that helped make the evening a one-of-a-kind memory.

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The Man in The White Fedora
Stefan and I were hanging out people watching between sets and we noticed a cat with a dark pin-stripe suit and a white wide-brimmed fedora cutting a line through the crowd with a petite chocolate curly haired cutie on his arm. “Dang. That guy has got a style.” “Generally, that’s a really wide hat – but that cat pulls it off.” “Yep.”

He get’s closer and it’s Dave Jay! Wow, I played trumpet on his record this fall. Dave had called me about a week before the event asking me if I thought Shanghai Mermaid would be a good place to bring a date. “Well, yeah it is!” About 15 minutes later he calls me up and asks me where he can take some swing dance lessons! “Dave, you’re really going for it” “Well, this girl is really special and you know… I want to impress her.”

So now I’m standing next to Dave and this lovely lady and they are smiling and grinning ear to ear. Dave tells me that he rented a Packard and a chauffeur so he and his girl can travel in style and arrive on the scene with some class! You go Dave Jay!!

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The Hunch
The Blue Vipers of Brooklyn were also on the bill with us. I was really impressed with their trumpet player Sam Hoyt. I have heard him on their albums but I never got a chance to really enjoy hearing live for whole sets at a time. Now, Sam is character. Billy Nemec is character too and the two of them together are just silly mischief waiting to happen.

Back stage, Billy was smiling through his teeth and telling us about, “the next best dance craze. It’s called the Huh-huh-huh. Huh-huh-huh. The Hunch.” Some rockabilly tune he dug up that reminded me of Buddy Holly or Bill Haley and The Comets. Up on stage he introduces the tune and launches into “The Hunch.” Sam starts doing this awesome, stooped-over, storky, hunchy dance. It was great. It was even inspiring. It inspired Stefan and I to run onto the wings and then to do the hunch all the way across the stage behind the band. It was all asses and elbows. Billy was surprised but he couldn’t help laughing at us!

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Counting In The New Year
The highlight for me personally was the fact that I got to be the guy that counted in the New Year for over 300 people! I had a clock on the floor and after Juliette – our gorgeous and wonderful host – thanked and toasted everyone, I counted down the final 10 seconds. We all sang “Auld Lang Syne” together and the whole thing felt so joyous like a blessing. I told this story to Eve Polich the other day and she said, “Jesse, you are the perfect guy for that job.” I think I will agree with her. I am the perfect guy for that job. There are times where it is right and good to reflect and amplify everyone’s hopes, blessings and good wishes. I was a walking, talking, singing smile. I’m kinda still smiling from the experience. Happy New Year everyone! And to the borrow the words of Billy Nemec as he’s counting off another tune: “It’s gonna be great. You’re gonna love it!”

Hi all,
Sorry for not writing in so long. Some quote by Rilke is appropriate here.

Poetry is better lived than admired.

In sum, doing a lot of living and not much desire to write about it. Sorry. Winter is coming soon so I’m sure I’ll be back at it.

In the meantime: here is a video that we shot a while back featuring the lovely Veronica Varlow and the great editing and animation skills of our own Stefan Zeniuk.

Another Shanghai Mermaid has come and gone. A doosey. This time at the Brooklyn Lyceum which was decked out and reminded me of an old USO show, maybe. A big space with finally enough room for everyone so it wasn’t so body – to – body. Still about 400 people there!

The highlights: We got to perform with Veronica Varlow. We did the piece that we did in her video. (FYI, the video nears completion and looks great) This is actually the first time we’ve been able to perform it live. The last time we tried we got shut down by the cops in flagrante delicto. This time was great. V.V. loves us and wants to create more oevre.

Stefan in his own delicto, inadvertently kicked his metal clarinet off the stage THREE TIMES in the very first set of the night! That thing is clearly Stefan proof. It works just fine. Stefan did the wonderful, party-stopping, breath-taking hysterics that include barging through all the table with his tenor, dancing and humping his tenor in front of / along / against a dancing girl.

Tuba Joe had a huge show. Man, that guy can play the TUBA. Dude.

Fun for all it would seem. Shout out to our favorite bartender CHAD PARKS. You rock, my man.

Central Park – 4/10/08 – Poet’s Walk – Dennis Lichtman, Banjo – Jesse Selengut, trumpet – Stefan Zeniuk, reeds – Cassidy Holden, Bass

A very good hit. A truly beautiful Thursday. We did well. Big crowds. Great to hear Dennis on the Tenor banjo. He’s an excellent musician with great precision and an affinity for playing all kinds of quotes inside his solos. I had only heard play clarinet every Tuesday at Mona’s but I knew that his mandolin skills would carry over onto banjo. He had a great time too.

Fun to be outdoors. I brought 50spf sunscreen and Stefan still got burnt!

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Next stop the old Shanghai Mermaid theater where we were performing in Veronica Varlow’s music video. Definitely a fun scene… Like all things film there is a hurry-up and wait element and for a large part of the time the main Tin Pan cats (Joe, Clifton, Stefan, and myself) were just hanging out and cracking jokes. At one point we were asked to sit in chairs and watch Veronica dance as extras. Clifton needed to know what his “motivation” was. It was all very funny. At one point I caught her bra that she tossed into the crowd.

When the time comes I will post the video that came out of this shoot. My hope is to make a full music video of it to post here and add to our press kit etc…

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Final stop of the night was over at Barbes with Baby Soda. It was my first time playing there and I enjoyed it a bit. It was a very small room but it was full with avid listeners. Having been playing so much on the street it is a thrill to play for a listening room that doesn’t leave after just a few tunes. Also, acoustically we didn’t have to push as hard. A nice tin ceiling in their made the sound kind of great. Peter Ford on box-bass, Jared Engle on banjo, David Langlois on dishes, Adrian Cunningham on reeds, and yours truly on the horn and vocals.

Clifton and Cassidya happened to be in the audience and that was a treat too. I have no poker face when I’m on stage. If something moves me, I show it. If something is lame I make a surly face. Anyway, it was fun seeing Clifton and Cass who both know the music so well and their reactions. For the most part the exactly amplified and mirrored mine. It’s good to know, sometimes that the relative value I place on things has some kind of corroboration from my peers.

Mostly we are all moved Adrian. Adrian can play some clarinet. Turns out that that was his main horn for a long time. It shows. He’s got a great sound.

On the second set, Clifton sat in on guitar. It was weird for a little while. His time feel is so different than Jared and David. It took him a few tunes to figure out how to play with them. Eventually he moved the crowd with his great slide guitar playing on “Old Rugged Cross” The fast tunes are fun but its the slow, pretty ones that real grab folks.

At the end of the nigh I wound up back in my neighborhood, hanging with Clifton at Spike Hill drinking Magner’s and telling stories.

Hi.

Tin Pan took a trip down to Phili on Monday to do a recording session for the blues artist known as Wharton Tract. You can hear Wharton playing harmonica on our version of “Careless Love” from the new CD. It was 12 hours of fun and games, basically. Clifton had us do horn section stuff and a few solos to flesh out Wharton’s Album. The sound du jour was using Bass Sax and Tuba to play unison bass lines. Timbre is everything.

Towards the end of the day we built three songs from scratch. The first was a very broken and harrowing “St. James Infirmary.” Darren Morze played a drum kit that Clifton devised that included a refrigerator door, a plate of metal, and an enormous artillery shell. Wharton is the real deal. He is the blues. The second tune was called “Rebuild This City” I think and was a gospel-ly happy up thing. So much fun and again I was just so impressed with Wharton’s energy. He was really bringing a huge intensity to the song. Finally we did a tune called “Broken American Dream” (I think) and I wound up playing Fender Rhodes on it!! It was a blast.

Now that our work was done we recorded a track for Veronica Varlow to use as a music track for part of her promo-real. It was the sleazy riff that Stefan came up with in our rehearsal for our ill-fated Shanghai Mermaid number. (Does anyone have a photo of the cops busting us??!!) We ran down a 4m30s version of it that really articulates exactly what you need to hear when a beautiful woman is taking her corset off.

Veronicas-dance

After a few shots of Bushmills I wound up on the drum kit trying to impersonate John Bonham while Clifton took me on a tour through all the killer odd-meter Zeppelin tunes like “The Ocean” (kinda nailed it) “Black Dog” – (took me a minute to just play in four) and “The Crunge” (no way). We were like kids in a candy store, essentially.

We’ll be back again… Here’s a photo of Stefan rocking a bass sax and a tenor at the same time and one of our intrepid and awesome engineer / drummer Darren Morze