tinpanband.com

Hi Again,
These spots are rolling in right now and we’re happy as heck about it. Here’s the next installment from Murphy’s Saloon Blues Podcast. We’re the towards the top of the show and Murphy had some nice things to say about the group:

I really what Tin Pan do and how they do it because their grove draws very strongly from the pre-world-war-two era when blues and jazz and R&B were all part of the same rich musical stew. Tin Pan is a self described street band that often plays in Central Park and the New York Subway system as well as indoor club dates. Having now heard their 2008 CD entitled, “Hound’s Tooth” I have to say I can’t improve on how they describe their sound: As Ray Charles and Tom Waits hanging out on Bourbon Street.

Here’s the link to hear the podcast.

A note of personal satisfaction: this is the first time I’ve ever heard myself play guitar on the radio!!! Murphy decided to put on “Please don’t let me go!” which features me doing my thing on the guitar. Dave Yantorno would be proud. HaHaHAHAHA I feel awesome about it!

Our new friend Holly caught us in the act…

We were featured on the Weather Channel the other day! They gave us the ending…

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.

So much to do and say. I’ll err on the side of Brevity.

Hattiesburg: Played at Bennie’s Boom Boom Room which was a trip. Bennie himself was on hand. What a cool cat. The show was even recorded so hopefully there will be some useable stuff there to listen too later. I will keep you posted. We did a hit up at Southern Miss during the day to try to generate some interest in the evening time hit and around 11pm it started to work. Over 40 Southerns came down to the show. It seemed like the real party was out on the street in front of the club. Everyone could hang out and smoke and the air was perfect. For our second set we started out on the street and then paraded everyone in to the club On our third set, we just stayed out in the street. 1am Downtown Hattiesburg with blaring trumpets and honking saxes out on the street. Grindy dancing, shouting frat boys, beer in a cup. etc… The cops didn’t seem to care – or rather they seemed pre-occupied. A high speed chase went by at some point. It was wild.

New Orleans: Played out at Jackson Square where we made friends with the artists there and the restaurant across from where we were playing. A good sign, when the local business approve. They protect you in a way. When the cops come by and in New Orleans this seems to happen a bit, they look and listen but they also look to the business people around us to see if we have the thumbs up or not. In this case we did. Bourbon street itself was fully spring-breakified and not fertile ground for doing anything constructive. We wound up heading over to Frenchman Street where we would have had luck. Instead, we opted to eat Japanese food and drink beers. Tired. Sousaphones are very prominent in New Orleans These funky, one-chord, drum / tuba driven bands. Honestly, there were only a few that were bringing it. Most were just noisy and weren’t getting much response. A fun town though. I would love to hang out there more and know what it feels like to be a local.

Lafayette, LA: Did a swamp tour during the day. Large carp jumping out of the water and flopping in the air before splashing back down. Beautiful herons with HUGE wingspans covering the silent mirror of the bayou. Later, we drove and picked up some Boudin and Cracklins from a local spot. Dang, that was one good meal. All this courtesy of Drew Landry. A great musician and the guy behind the Bourque Social Club. A hall made of cypress and sweat on the outskirts of Lafayette. This was one of my favorite shows of the whole tour. Drew himself had a gig elsewhere so he just left us the keys to the joint and split. We had about three hours to hang out and get used to the place. Set up the sound, eat more boudin, read, nap etc… Eventually the peoples started to show up and it all turned out more than alright.

At one point I had to go around to local business to get some small bills so folks could get change when they paid the $5 cover. (no bar, no cash register at the bourque) One of my stops was the bar next door. The bartender gave me smalls for forty bucks but she apparently told her boss about it. This guy was a true ragin’ cajun. He was an older dude and after the second song of the night he showed up and just starts getting into the band. First he comes up and just throws a fistful of bills at the band. Stefan was jumping all crazy doing the Stefan thing and he just stuffs more bills down his horn. At one point point he tries to make fun of me and asks if I have enough change now! He asks us what we’re drinking and Clifton yells “gin.” He leaves and comes back with a bottle of Tanqueray and a bottle of tonic, 12 beers and a bucket of ice and some cups and HIS BARTENDER. Apparently everyone from his spot had come over so he figured he’d just shut down for a while and get everyone over to our show. At one point I was singing “Comes Love” and he takes out a twenty and shows it to me and then he folds in half length-wise, comes right over to me and while I’m singing on the mic he UNZIPS MY FLY and sticks Andrew Jackson halfway in there. What could I do but smile and keep singing.

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There’s a lot of things we learned on this trip. Maybe with a little more reflection and some time I’ll write them up here on the blog. And now we’re back. At some point my horn got a little busted up and I went to Josh Landress‘ repair shop over on 48th and had him do some work on it. I’ve said it before but I will say it again: Josh is always ready willing and able to give great advice about technical stuff. A real resource. Thanks Josh!

So yes, back. Back to the lovely Central Park for about 5 more weeks of the season. Back for many weddings and private parties. We have at least 5 this month! Rumors about a trip to Italy in November. Stay tuned.

Been having that problem again where I’d rather be living my life than writing about it. As such, I’ve fallen a bit behind in the blogging. So much has happened. I haven’t even posted last week’s Pete’s Candy Store show and here it is Monday already. Here, then, are some highlights of our little world:

Saturday was Stefan’s birthday. He shows up to park wearing a hat shaped like a cake. He says he will wear it only once a year. He seemed genuinely excited and went on to go out to the WFMU radio station in Jersey to record and transmit his very own birthday broadcast with his band Gato Loco de Bajo.

We played an ultra deluxe country club party in the garden of a 150 old building. This was the club where the expression “Get your goat” was coined. I haven’t had lobsters in a really long time. So good. Soft shell crab. Man.

We’ve been having some really amazingly beautiful days in the park performing for literally thousands of people a day. Life is good. This is what I live for. Joyous.

We performed at an underground private club where you need a password to get in and also be on a special guest list. The bartenders name was exotic, Kabahl. That’s got to be made up, right? Anyway it was a smash. We’re gonna do it again next week. Lemme know if you want to get involved.

And here it is Monday again – We’re playing at Pete’s again in a few hours with special guest, “Alabama” Steve Lewis on trombone. (In Alabama, he’s just called Steve, it turns out.) The theme of the night is “smell the brass.” See you soon.

Jesse

You can tell there have been some big changes over in Central Park because the natural order of things has changed. In the mornings, the scene is generally calm; the dogs are politely engaging, certain mammals dressed in bright spandex and other colored displays trot pleasantly through. When the heat of the day descends, however, musicians begin to grapple for territory and the law of the jungle exposes certain lives to be nasty, brutish and short. It is in these chaotic conditions that the zombie squirrel terrorized the promenade.

We learned that Bathesda Fountain had been made a quiet zone. Indeed this sent certain long time denizens out of their warrens. They were angry, confused, and forced to scrape the earth for another place to dig in. Two colorful creatures, Thoth and Pink Angel, even chose to get arrested in protest of this climactic shift. Then squirrels began dropping out of trees and days later the zombie squirrel reared it’s ugly, over-sized and maggot-ridden head.

I have never seen a squirrel miss a branch and yet high over-head in the middle of a well attended Tin Pan performance, a conspicuously non-flying specimen jumped for a branch and missed. Accelerating rapidly until the very moment of impact, he fell forty feet directly into the middle of the promenade. The kinetic energy was transformed into a painfully high screech of terror. Adrenelized, the failed branch dancer ran in dazzlingly tight circles until he spilled off the main walkway under the benches at peoples feet into the ground covering plants. As startling as this scene presented, it wasn’t even close to the terror and fear caused by the zombie squirrel.

Perhaps it was just a harbinger. Perhaps the zombie squirrel was the very same unbalanced soul to fall so far from his leafy perch. In any case, the zombie squirrel first stalked the promenade under the cloak of pity. It played dead. Cunning zombie. Let them come close to examine you, see your mangy coat, your mal-formed, scabrous, bulbous head, poke at you with tentative sneakers. Caring urban naturalists cooed over you, mourned over you, cupping their hands over their mouths. When you rose in a stupor and plodded forth on your zombie paws you reminded onlookers of the plague. No squirrel should move that slowly. Gradually you regained the very populated promenade where you or your zombie kin had fallen merely days ago. You stumbled deliberately and apparently blindly into a young child’s trike inspiring a different andrellnelized scream. Horror ensued.

Eventually a parks ranger was summoned to dispell you but managed only to chase you up a tree. We were all quite suprised that you had the fortitude or the muscle memory of your previous form to manage such a bold escape. Surely you would fall again. You did – with a thud into the low bushes behind the band. When you climbed up again, you were thwarted by a noble squirrel warrior who fearlessly protected his tree house. Did he touch you? Is he now contaminated? How many more zombie squirrels shall fall?

Nature will assuredly balance itself again. Until then, we must be ever-vigilant, courageous, innoculated against fear and disciplined in our approach to the elements. Regardless how rabid our fans become, despite seismic shifts in the landscape, disproving mockingbirds, fighting off animals, and impervious to our own fears, Tin Pan shall prevail.

These questions answered in our next episode: “Did the zombie squirrel touch Stefan’s Saxophone?” And the ensuing, “Will Stefan’s Saxophone acquire even more undead powers?”

If you live in New York you’ll know that we’ve had an astonishing number of days in a row with precipitation. It’s getting like Seattle East over here. For the street musician these are hard times. On Monday we went out to the park even though the weather was truly on the edge. Luckily we were the only band out there that day and did very well. Yesterday, however, there was only a 30% of rain and it seemed like everyone was out and about. And looking desperate!

It seems the Central Park Conservancy has noticed how many more bands there are this year and is attempting to corral us all unto the poet’s walk, fountain, and band shell areas. We’ve been asked twice to leave our Columbus Statue spot and move closer to the Bandshell. Yesterday, I decided to set up on the promenade but there was a chamber orchestra in the band shell. No problem, I moved down to the fountain and set up where the blue vipers were playing a few years back. Over the course of three hours, five different bands asked us to move from our spot even though we were clearly set up and established before anyone else got there. I tried to be as courteous as possible and even moved the band to point in a different direction for a while so as to accommodate more different musicians. Ultimately, there were too many of us to not get in each other’s way.

Cooler heads and compromises did prevail. I also think these things go in waves. Perhaps the economy is so poor that regular gigs are drying up and more are taking to the streets. Eventually, only the most persistent and those that can generate the most income will be left and things will settle down a little bit.

On Tuesday of this week we performed at the Guggenheim for the second time. It was a wonderful experience. They were celebrating their 50th anniversary and were hosting the 5th Avenue Museum Mile Festival. They had us set up just outside the museum underneath that big overhang above the gift shop. The acoustics were great. It was our own little amphitheater. I didn’t expect we’d have much of a crowd. They had said that we’d be right in front of the area where people would be exiting the museum and I had expected that it would just be flow through. Regardless, we consistently magnetized about a hundred people at a time right in front of the museum.

Clifton came up for the beginning of the show but then he had to scram to go do his Blue Man Group gig. Rob is away on vacation until our Joe’s Pub show as well so we had two of our favorites fill-ins to help out. “Alabama” Steve Lewis on guitar, harmonica, and back-up vocals and Cassidy Holden on the Bass. We’ve been working with both of these guys for such a long time now and they are really, really solid.

One of my favorite things happened on this show which tells me we are headed in the right direction. A very lovely, upper-east side kind of woman, obviously very cultured, asked one of my favorite questions, “What do you call this kind of music?” Right away I smiled because it means that we are doing something original for her. She was unable to pigeon-hole us into any category she had already established. We are not jazz, folk, dixie-land, trad jazz, country, rock, blues or any other label. I said that we are roots american music and she said something charming like, “Yes, I can definitely hear the roots in it.”

There were plenty of press folks shooting video and photos but so far only one of these people was kind enough to get in touch with us. Olia Saunders took some really bizarre and delicious photos that make our band seem so dreamy and psychedelic – in a very playful colorful way. I think Stefan will be really pleased with these pictures. And Olia, I think you should certainly be in contact with Stefan to work with the Gato Loco Coconino project as I think its a good fit! I like this picture of Steve’s shoes! Good eye!

Such madness! All the stars aligned to make this a perfect day: the first beautiful day after many days of rain, the first Sunday in April. My family was in town and I had my sisters, brother and little nephews to share the day. This tune is called “San” and its about as fast an silly as we get. Props to Eve Polich at Avalon Jazz for the clip! Featured here: Stefan Zeniuk – leaping clarineto!, Jesse Selengut – screaming trumpet blat, Clifton Hyde – machine gun fire, Dr. Cassidy Holdin’ it down – thank goodness.