Upright bass in Downtown Decatur + Chappa-palooza 5-0!

Thursday the 1st I was ready, willing, and able to join up with Jason, Guy, & Adrian for another round of trad & modern jazz on our little stage at Java Monkey.  You know the drill by now.  Adrian informed me that he had submitted the gig info to the local jazz radio station WCLK & that they announced it on the concert calendar.  Cool!  Adrian had mixes of the boys' studio venture, although I was not able to make that date.  It sounded great, naturally.  I still am hoping to one day dub my parts in, just for my own mix & to have a nice record of this band one day.  Played much of the usual - Cantaloupe Island, Back Track, Hottentot.  It seems that the crowd was a bit more forward with requesting tunes.  One guy wanted us to play "Misty" in C major.  Lemme see.  I don't think I've ever played it in any key besides Eb.  We finally ended up playing it (in Eb).  We asked him if he was wanting to sing it.  Why else would we request it in that key?  Well, I don't even know what he said, but we told him that we didn't have a vocal mic.  Guy & I play through amps, but Jason's sax is all on its own.  He can project with the best of them.  It's a patio area, we're outside, we have to be done by 11 due to a noise ordinance, no PA system.  Now, we have had singers sit in before, but I guess Adrian has made those arrangements in advance.  Another fellow wanted some classic rawk.  Hey, we do some classic rock.  We played In-a-Gadda-da-Vida & then Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) (it is the slight return version, & spelled with the e & not the d, although Guy's chart begs to differ).  Funny stuff, particularly since I was playing upright.  I think I got a better tone out of the upright than the night before.  Not sure why.  Very subjective.  I actaully boosted that low-mid frequency maybe a hair more.  I plucked a bit harder - this band gets loud sometimes.  The attitude was more heavy hittin'.  The amp was against the wall instead of at the foot of the stage facing me.  Lots of issues affecting it.  We had fun, and before you know it, it was time to pack it up.

Adrian's portrait of his bandmates is the winner in this set.

Saturday was during the big Labor Day weekend.  Sabina took us - Spencer, Jack, & myself up to Chattanooga to go visit Ruby Falls.  In a nutshell, the excursion is a guided tour (for a nominal fee) originating from a point about a third of the way up Lookout Mountain.  We ride down an elevator that takes us into a long cave blasted from limestone.  It's beautiful & wonderous.  At the end is a very high waterfall with coloured lights & music to complete the magical effect.  It was interesting.  Doing this kind of thing on a holiday weekend is perhaps not the wisest of moves, since everybody is doing it too.  We endured the masses & had a good time.  Here are a few pics, including the money shot of us - it's a money shot because the pic is taken when you first arrive off of the elevator into the cave, & is then made available for purchase in the gift shop upon the completion of the tour.

I usually don't get too personal, on these posts.  I was just setting up the course of events that led me down to   Northside Tavern for Randy Chapman's birthday bash "Chappa-palooza 5-0!"  So many great players & old friends from my days with Randy at Fat Matt's Rib Shack (where I first met Sabina 16 yars ago).  Rich Iannucci, Dan Seifert, Nick Longo, Kevin Thomas, Billy Burke, Rin Vincent, Jon Liebman, Matt "Pops" Sickles, Jim "And Tonic" Ransom...  Billy was a mentsh & let me play his P-bass knockoff through his rig (an old SWR Basic Black - too bad they discontinued it) for the whole 2nd set!  I was loving it.  MartaY joined in as well & got the people dancing.  Hadn't seen too much of Randy this year.  Need to change that.  Maybe now that I'm not busy with that band I was with, I can make time to do some things like this.  It was loosy goosy with sometimes 3 keyboards at once.  These guys are burners!  Steve Mays played bass in the last set, & then Charlie Wooten came up to close it down with a very cool arrangement of Fiyo on the Bayou (for the Dm vamp, he inserted something like a Dm7 --> Dm6 --> Dm+5 --> Dm6.  There may have been more convoluted harmony going  on there.  Remember, this was taking place at around 2:30 am & I'd already had a full day up in Tennessee.)  I took some pics from the mixing board area where I watched & grooved for part of the night.  Happy 5-0 Chappy!