John Hancotte's Bass Desires: Last Week

It's like what my Grandpa John used to say: "It's just like Lemon-Pepper Chicken: Where does the thyme go?" Now I get it. Tuesday found me down at Smith's Old Bar with many other bands for a night of rotating musical mayham all for a worthy cause. It was billed as the Cotton Langston Family Benefit Show ft. Ledfoot Messiah. We were the Tone Brothers, which is Greg Hester & Doug McCombs along with a rhythm section or not. I was joined by the mighty Greg Baba, one of my favorite and most versitile of drummers. We flew by the seat of our pants and made the most of what felt like a 25 minute set. I played my P-bass with recently boiled strings and a neck tweak. It really went by fast. I saw my old MMS co-worker Fran Mann loading out his pedalboard. We said a few words but it has certainly been a while. Good to see a familiar face at any rate. A highlight would have been the opener of "Guilty", and old Randy Newman blues number they've added to their setlist.
The next night, Wednesday, was with Sweetwater Junction. This night featured Brian along with Walt & Ganesh Giri. We were playing for the owner of Canoe, who was celebrating his 60th birthday with an exclusive party including Ted Turner. Also present was Jeff Dauler, who I got to meet while we were waiting to start. It was a perfect night to be playing in the smaller tent down by the river. Very nice evening with awesome vegetarian cuisine for us and free beers, which were exotic to my taste. Musical highlights were the first song of "A Pirate Looks At 40" and "I Saw Her Standing There" since that got everybody dancing. Tequila shots followed and we probably lost a little integrity at that point.

Thursday I rejoined the elite few that get together as the Adrian Ash Group, a jazz quartet that plays at Java Monkey in Decatur for the bi-weekly wine tastings. The current quartet is made up of Jason Passmore and Guy Fenocchi as well as Adrian Ash, who usually plays drums, but also plays upright or even 6-string bass. Here's a link for the band that has some older sound clips: The Adrian Ash Group. We played through many of the other 3's originals. It hasn't been my forte to be composing. Adrian has tried to encourage me. We are slated to go into the studio in a few weeks so I really do need to get it together. I have started but it is not going so well. I shall try in earnest tomorrow. We sounded good on much of the stuff, including "Seven Steps to Heaven", "Recordame", "Stella By Starlight", and "Cold Duck Time". Plus, Guy has some newly constructed memorable charts: Frankenstein as well as In-a-gadda-da-vida! Classic rawk!

Friday I was with Martay & the Partay at Padriac's in Vinings. Luckily Cliff showed up for some good energy to bestow upon us. We had fun but the crowd was quite thin - none of Martay's usual posse was there - perhaps due to the Eagles' concert in Piedmont Park. Here's a pic from the end of the night:

Alright, now here's where life gets squirrly, time to hit the road with the members of Platinum for a gig in Hilton Head. Thanks to David Winterhalter I was able to carpool along with Derek and Glen in his Town & Country. We listened to a fair amount of jazz on his satellite radio including a Wynton workshop interview which I found to be good jazz journalism. The time flew by and we made it there with plenty of time to spare. The gig was at the Westin Hotel for a most swanky wedding reception. Two wonderful families coming together, one African-American and the other Scottist. The groom wore a kilt and there was a bagpipe player, but we never really saw him, or heard him too much.

Just above is Anthony Baker, who filled in for Gus and is my old rhythm section partner from Wild Rice back in the early 2000's. I heard he is planning to move to Maryland so I need to make sure to keep in touch over the years. He did a great job and had some crazy energy in just the right places. Also, some of the tunes were at the perfect tempo at which I wish we always played them. We got very little sleep that night and were up at 6ish to head back for a Sunday gig we had at the Primrose Cottage in Roswell. It was good that we got up early as Virginia, Lexxi, & Kevin were all stuck in some awful traffic backup that kept them from making soundcheck. It was another wedding reception with another amazing set of families. The crowd really seemed to enjoy the night and our performances. They even tipped us extra! Nice touch. The first dance was The Nearness of You by Norah Jones and we all learned her version at the last minute. I flubbed the chorus to "December 1963" by playing an A instead of the Dm - hey, at least it was the V of the chord! My only decent shot of the night was of Gus, so it will have to do: