Lots going on this year so far…

First off, I’m still accompanying vocalist Sharon Lea, but the Sharon Lea Duo has morphed into Lea & Co. with the addition of bassist Jeff Moles. We’re folding Jeff in to our repertoire and it’s going very nicely. The cool thing for me is that when I do my instrumental improv sections in the tunes, I don’t have to keep the whole ball of wax in the air – I can rely on the rhythm and the bass line being there and I can play more freely, which is both more fun for me and sounds better. Our website will soon be available and there will be a few demo recordings, which we laid down about a week and a half ago and which I am currently mixing. I’m looking forward to getting out there and playing with this ensemble.

Secondly, the Scott Goldstone Band has been in a little bit of a hovering state, as several of us have had summer vacations that have interrupted our usual rehearsal schedule a bit. But we’ve continued to learn some new material, and it looks like we have found a sax player to augment the band. Last week we recorded some raw demos and we’re going to clean them up and get them mixed after Scott returns from his overseas vacation. We also hope to settle on a name and get a website together by the end of August, get back on track, and take it to the street. I’m very excited about this group and I look forward to the autumn.

The guitar duo with Jeff Kamil has had two gigs so far this year, with another couple likely coming up at the Madrigal Family Sausalito Wine Tasting Salon & Gallery. We haven’t attempted to find other places to play, and with the other projects I have going on there’s very little opportunity for us to rehearse at all or think about it much. But we’ll see… there’s definitely potential there.

Finally, I have played a couple of Bread 𝄞 Roses gigs with acoustic finger-style guitarist Jon Rubin. He’s also invited me to two gigs coming up soon, which are on my calendar at my website.

One thing that I’ve learned for sure over the last couple of months – when you have a full-time day job and then you add not one band but three or four, the paucity of time you can devote to the music becomes jarringly obvious! But I’m not complaining! (Yet…)