This post is being written just a couple of days into fall, the last Friday of September. This time I took a line from Emily Brontë to keep the title from once more being “autumn update.” Here’s some of the things I have to look forward to in the coming days.
Today, Friday, September 27, a new collaborative CD from Mike Stern and Jeff Lorber, Eleven, is released, as is another unearthed recording by John Coltrane, Blue World.
Looks like Stern and Lorber are going to tour, and they’ll be at Yoshi’s on December 9 and 10th with Jimmy Haslip & Dave Weckl in the wheelhouse.
Scott Goldstone and I are doing a “duo” show at The Wine Room Moss Beach tomorrow, Saturday, September 28. By “duo,” I actually mean Scott will play a solo set, then I will play a solo set, and finally we’ll play a set together. I’m trying to drum up the courage to attempt at least a little bit of live looping in my performance, using my Digitech SDRUM for rhythm and laying down a bass line with my Electro-Harmonix BASS9 Bass Machine into my Digitech JamMan Solo XT looper.
On Wednesday, October 9, I’m going to go see The Who at the new Chase Center in San Francisco. I have been a fan since I was a teen and first heard Live at Leeds and Tommy, but I have never seen them perform except on film.
That’s a quote from the poet Wallace Stevens… thought something different would be better than the usual “Summer Update” that I usually do…
Snarky Puppy at the Paramount in Oakland was fantastic! What a great theater. Amazing that there are two venues like this just a couple of blocks from each other (the Paramount and the Fox Theater).
I did not get to see Bela Fleck & the Flecktones nor Adrian Belew, alas.
No Static had a pretty good summer season – gigs at the Highway 1 Brewing Company in Pescadero, The Wine Room in Moss Beach, a couple at the American Legion Coastal Post 474 in Half Moon Bay, the Burlingame on the Avenue street fair, and the St. Robert’s Festival at St. Robert Catholic Elementary School in San Bruno (the latter exemplified the Stevens quote I used for the post title).
I got a new guitar! After wanting one for most of my life, I finally became the happy owner of a Gibson Les Paul. It’s a beautiful guitar and plays and sounds like a dream.
I also revamped my Telecaster with Chiltone pickups. It sounds particularly good now.
Today is the first day of autumn, so I thought I should quickly summarize the last three months.
No Static had a nice run of gigs… we played the Wine Room in Moss Beach twice, once in June and again in August; had a nice afternoon performance at this year’s Burlingame on the Avenue street fair, returned to the American Legion Coastside Post 474 in Half Moon Bay, and played another nice festival gig just the other day at St. Robert’s Catholic Elementary School in San Bruno. We played a couple of newer additions to our repertoire (one probably prematurely).
No Static after performing at Burlingame on the Avenue on August 17, 2019
After the Burlingame on the Avenue performance we had a photo shoot, first one in quite a while. Check out the Gallery page on the No Static site. There’s also a few shots from the show itself, and a couple of video clips are on the Music page.
Scott and I have booked another duo show, at The Wine Room Moss Beach. It’ll be shorter, only two sets as opposed to three, and hopefully my solo section will not fall apart with equipment failures and general ineptitude with the looper pedal. You would think that after the spring fiasco at Highway 1 Brewing, I would have been a bit more diligent about getting comfortable with looping, but you would be wrong. This time instead of using my guitar synthesizer, I’ll be using my new Electro-Harmonix BASS9 pedal to get a bassline going. I also traded in the looper I used to have, the Digitech JamMan Stereo, for a simpler model, the JamMan Solo XT, mainly because it has the JamSync capability that allows you to synchronize it with another JamMan Solo XT or their SDRUM drum pedal, which I got last year. However, I have yet to even connect the two and try to do anything with the combination. I’ll try it tonight when I get home and see if I feel that I can pull it off for a song or two.
Meanwhile it’s the last week of the regular baseball season, and to my great delight, the New York Yankees have managed to stay within a few points of .650 all summer long, reached 102 wins yesterday, have clinched the American League East championship, and are trying to win as many of the remaining five games to secure home field advantage for the World Series should they make it that far. This despite continued heartbreaking injuries as the “second-tier” players managed step up and keep the team firing on all cylinders. It’s been especially gratifying to see Brett Gardner have the season that he’s been having. I’m looking forward to consuming mass quantities of hot dogs, peanuts, and beer, and maybe some Cracker Jacks. But first I have to figure out how to watch the division and league championship games being broadcast on FS1, ESPN, TBS, and MLB TV without having any of those on my cable plan… Is it worth the $46/month cost of YouTube TV? (By the way, I did subscribe to MLB.TV during the All Star promotion and watched many games in July, August, and September.)
