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A small glimpse of a wonderful experience. The staff and the audience treated us so well. If our lives revolved around performing at receptive, enthusiastic, encouraging venues with audiences to match, it would be a paradise for us. May our future contain more and more wonderful days like this.

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We took the tour!

Alright … Week Seven. I often think about promotions and how it actually works. At first I started posting listings on facebook about the Pete’s gigs and I don’t think it made any difference. Our first show was ok attenended. Luckily its a pretty small room back there and having even 15 people makes the room feel populated. But each show has grown and grown… more than I though possible. Each week gets better and better from the perspective of crowd.

Another thing that keeps improving from show to show is the rapport and story telling we’re able to convey and share with the crowd there. It is getting more and more natural and relaxed. This is exactly how I’d hoped it would proceed and what I felt I, personally, would benefit greatly from. Witness us in process. Every week, for me, at any rate, the subtext has been, “learn how to relax on stage and stay consistent and fun with a character.” This last week was the best. I felt as if it was a peak in happiness, and communicating that happiness. When I’m just with my friends, especially back in the BUTZ days, we would just make up some pretty out concepts that were funny to us. We were all more or less on the same page so we could get out there together and really make each other laugh with some crazy nonsense. Well, finally that is starting to happen with a group of strangers over the course of an hour. We are becoming more and more able to take them on a journey into whatever is making us smile in that moment. As weird as it may be. (In this case we got as far as imagining eating cappuccino gelato with Glenn Close.)

The themes thing is proven fun too as at least a handful people have become regulars to see what the theme will be each week. This last week the theme was mostly determined by the fact that Stefan could not make it to the show do some unavoidable conflict. “Alabama” Steve Lewis lent a hand on harmonica but especially on trombone and the theme became “Smell the Brass” We just picked some tunes from the repertoire that we knew Steve would sound good on. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before but Steve is a wonderfully musical guy who can play guitar, trombone, harmonica, bass and also sing really well. Good guy to have on your team. No matter which us core members needs a sub we can call Steve.

Earlier in the morning, on this particular Monday, we had Steve out in the park with us as well playing trombone. He was lamenting that he hadn’t played since the last time we had asked him too a month ago. It didn’t matter. The fact that his musicality and sense of pitch are so more developed than his actual trombone technique make it just a super fun, nasty mess of trombone sound with all the grind-y, slid-y, slippery, event that make a trombone fun to play and listen to. Smell the brass.

Actually so many great tracks from this weeks show that it was hard to pick just one. I decided on Careless Love. It just got real groovy . . .

If you are reading this in syndication you can listen here.

I know. Better late than never. Here’s the clip from our 6th installment at Pete’s Candy Store. The theme for the night was to feature good friend and fellow member of the Cangelosi Cards back in the day, Miguel Wiseman on harmonicas. This tune, sadly, is not necessarily representative of night which did feature a lot of Miguel’s excellent harpisms. But is representative of general snarly awesomeness. This is Tin Pan at our most avant-sound-scapey wilst keeping the grooves on the down and dirty. Country Preacher #1 shows up for a brief period in this song which features the excellent in the pocket sub-stantial Rob Adkins on the Bass. Enjoy. Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down

If you are reading this in syndication you can listen here.

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

Some things work and some things don’t. Let’s get to the stuff that didn’t work first.

The Recording was kind of a disaster this week. I must have set it up improperly cause almost every song clipped out in a real ugly way. The song of the week this week, see below, is by default as it was our softest tune and the only one that was red-lining it almost the whole way through.

The Theme of the Week was “slow / fast” and it turned out to be fun but ultimately untenable as a way to make a whole set of music. After about three tunes in we knew that doing another real real slow one or a complete barn burner was contrived at best and just plain unmusical at worst. It’s alright, though. We adjusted quickly and dropped the theme to make for a good show.

Luckily, there were way more things that did work at this performance:

I asked Clifton to be the MC for the night. This proved to be an excellent choice. Generally, I’m the guy that addresses the crowd and welcomes people and talks about the tip bucket and announces the songs and all that, but on Monday I wanted a change of pace and asked Clifton to do it. He was great!! He got the audience involved right away and was funny and warm and silly and creative in that role. The other good outcome of this is that I let go of my need to “present” the music. Instead, I just felt myself getting more and more naked and vulnerable to the moment and let the audience come to me. I felt I was ok to do that as Clifton was doing such a great job framing it for the crowd. The result was that I played and sang much more adventurously and passionately than I have in a while. It felt great. Ultimately, I’ll need to find a middle ground where I can be present and talking to the crowd and also be present completely to my own expression within the music. One member of the audience commented that it was unusual in a very good and surprising way that the guy addressing the band wasn’t the one singing the songs. It made the whole evening I kind of developing adventure for her. Cool.

Anytime you get the crowd singing and clapping is good thing. The sillier the better. On “Lord, Lord, Lord” a guy started dancing with a broom and we got everyone to sing: “Sweep, sweep, sweep. Gonna sweep my troubles away.” Golden.

Ok, but here’s the real scoop that was super fun. Do you remember watching Obama’s inauguration. There was that moment of music with Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman and a wonderful clarinetist. So I thought I saw the clarinetist on stage at Pete’s with the band that was on right before us. He looked like that guy, but I couldn’t imagine someone like that playing singer-songwriter pop at Pete’s Candy Store. So, I just dismissed the idea. After the show he comes up and introduces himself and he’s just got to talk to Stefan about his clarinet playing. Sadly, Stefan had already gone cause it turned out to be him, Anthony McGill. Wild. He was blown away by Tin Pan. Awesome. In fact, two other cats in that band are also in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and they were spell bound by our set. Clifton was able to impress them with his deep knowledge of classical music and we all bonded very quickly.

It was McGill’s first time EVER playing in a club! His first public performance doing anything but classical music. So, we had a lot to talk about. Jeremy Turner, a cellist for the Met and the leader of this band, lives here in my hood and he invited us to come hang out and drink beers in his back yard after the show. And that’s where Clifton and I got to play Summertime with Anthony McGill. He was so excited to be improvising. I love that. Great tone, great technique, great ideas and no concept about phrasing or form. It was so much fun watching him explore the music. If we can, we’re going to get him to come out to Central Park and jam with us out there a bit. All those guys were super friendly, interesting people and it was a wonderful evening.

Back to Pete’s. We have started acquiring regulars there. A few people have come more than once and one guy has been there for almost all of our shows. I love that. The themes are working as he said that he never knew what to expect and that he was looking forward to each new week.

The song of the week as mentioned earlier is “Lazy Bones” which I believe was written by Hoagy Carmichael but I transcribed a version by Skip James. It is one of our slowest recorded tunes. Enjoy:

If you are reading this in syndication you can listen here.