Friday Night at Buckhead Pizza Company with The Flycats

Dave Zibman contacted me to cover for his vacation.  This menas hauling out the upright for an evening of jazz standards The Flycats way.  It was trio format, with Glenn "Big Lou" Tocci on guitar and vocals, Reece Harris on drums, and myself on the bass.  We began the evening in a nice patch of sun, warm but not too hot.  Lots of standards: All of Me;  The Girl From Ipanema;  Take Five;  Bésame Mucho;  a breakneck tempo on that "rhythm changes" ditty The Flintstones Theme;  oh, the list does indeed go on and on.  Glenn calls the shots and sometimes I don't catch whether I'm part of the "trading fours" or not.  He dials up his intelligent vocal harmonizer to sound like a male version of Mary Ford with full parallel harmonies in key with himself.  Reece is all over the procedings like, well, fly paper!  He is a verbose player who takes many rhythmic subdivision liberties and runs away with them.  For my part, I hung in there with some nice pocket playing and rather decent intonation.  Solos were hit or miss, but generally melodic and succinct.  It was a good time, capped off by dinner with the three of us braving the cooler temps.  I get to repeat my chances for Flycat autograph sessions again this Friday.