The Sequel in Review
Tonight was Gig #2 at Ke Davi, and I think everything went well. The audience was huge at the beginning, even if it trailed off later to about the levels of last time (we still have to figure out how to cultivate the later "wave" of audience members who can fill in the chairs left by the students and family members who have to leave early, but that'll happen over time).We didn't get to debut all of the new tunes we've been working on, but we did trot out Bud Powell, Cedar's Blues, A Child is Born and Goodbye Pork Pie Hat. We also did Maiden Voyage as an "audible" in the last set, and that's likely to be a part of the regular repertoire. (One of the things we're going to do in the near future is organize the book into our signature specialty tunes and originals one one side, and cool standards we can call up on short notice on the other. We're definitely increasing the amount of stuff we can play on a gig, and once a few key new tunes get totally learned, it'll be even better.)
The good news is that, after closing the gig by saying "see ya next time," the Ke Davi guys wanted to know right away when "next time" would be. With our weird individual schedules the way they are in October, the only week we can really do it is on the 9th, which is two weeks away....so that's what we'll do. Our goal is to trot out a couple more of those big new tunes by then.
Well, I beat everyone else to posting again, but as always, Halfling and Dingus may chime in as well...and we'll have more updates as we go along.
Dingus chimes in: Last night definitely was an approvement from the last show. The endings went better, and not to mention Ke Davi did better business, which works out better for us. Plus, we had to call about 3 audibles, and those tunes went about as well as they could have, which is awesome. We pulled out Maiden Voyage in the last set and as the intention, it made me think of a newly christened boat. When I came in, it sounded like a storm was ravaging the vessel, so it really created a nice effect for me. I know there actually is a song dedicated to a storm on that album, so hopefully we can bust that out eventually(hint).
The new tunes went really well too. Bud Powell sounds like a soft shoe piece with 6 bars of latin thrown in. Given that the whole band just got the music that night, we pulled it off really well. Also it's really nice how the head is divided up between the 3 horns. Goodbye Pork-Pie Hat literally moved the audience. I saw people gently swaying. Given that the piece is in remembrance of Lester Young, I think the solos by Kev and myself did it justice. Kudos to Kev(there's a tune in that) for transposing it into the real key.
My feature on A Child is Born went fairly well. Unfortunately, all the hours of rehearsal beforehand started to show itself, as some notes started to have this nervous vibrato that I wasn't trying to do. The solo went alright, but the peak of it wasn't as high as I wanted, so I'm going to do the piece again...plus it's just an awesome song.
I played about...3 hours before the gig(there was about 6 hours of rehearsal time, but I don't play every second of every minute obviously). My chops maintained themselves really well, and I actually surprised myself with my endurance. I'm now able to maintain the range I want throughout the show.
And as always, great jobs from Kev, Matt, Mooney, Gordon, and Alex. TD/D did great because of ya'll.
-Dingus
