Friday Night at the Cadillac Club

Met up with the gang from The Billy Batts Ensemble last night.   Astute readers know that I made a sly reference to the now classic Bob Berg blues/swing masterpiece.  Those readers have also put together the fact that this band primarily performs at the Capital City Club in downtown Atlanta.  They may start having us at the Brookhaven location as well.  Highlignts were a stellar Dear Prudence, the first run-thru of my chart for In Your Eyes, the old pre-Miles-Prestige-Quintet standard Yesterdays, Stormy Monday Blues, Beg Steal or Borrow, and Just Friends.  Walt enjoyed having access to the Steinway grand piano.  We sounded big with that beast.

As always, the hang was great.  Unfortunately, we took a long first break.  That meant we played an extra long 2nd set with no other break.  That's fine actually.  We are there to play and they serve us a lot of food - hard to get through that big meal in 20 minutes!  We had a couple of families with pre-toddler girls at the end of the night.  They really enjoyed it, especially the closing number Unchain My Heart, featuring terrific vocals from Walt.

My Fender Jazz bass had some rather dead strings.  What is better, fresh flatwounds or dead roundwounds.  I'm considering putting on some of those new (not really new, but they seem to be more prominently marketed) black tapewound strings on my Jazz bass.  It might be a nice look and tone.  Hard to be happy with my sound lately.  I got out some melodic, if not adventurous, solos.  I think I hesitated a bit and Walt wondered if I was even coming in on one the tunes.  I will make it a point to just jump in and go for it.  Walt and I hung out afterwards.  A great friend, he is.  Someone I don't share a whole lot with usually.  I learned that Brian's dog passed away the same day that Praline died.  Very sad to learn.  I will think of her a lot when I play music.