For 86 years the Sigmund Stern Grove in San Francisco has hosted a free music festival on Sundays throughout the summer. For some reason, I never really paid attention to it. I did go once back in 1982 or so, but I never did again.

Then, in the spring of 2023, when they announced the line up for the coming summer, I realized three of my favorite artists were going to be playing: Lyle Lovett and His Large Band, Snarky Puppy, and Lettuce. So I resolved to get tickets. (I know, I know, I said the concerts are free. But you do need to get tickets so that the size of the crowd can be controlled. They go on “sale” one month before the show and “sell” out quickly.)

So I did!

The shows are something of an ordeal for an old fart like me — to get a decent seat you need to get there early and wait on a long line in the usually-chilly-and-foggy San Francisco morning. Hours later, there you sit in a large crowd in a small canyon lined with eucalyptus trees. Fortunately, since it’s a festival, the atmosphere is festive. There are food and drink concessions, but we brought our own picnic lunch. The show starts at 2pm. The sound system is top-notch.

All three shows we attended were excellent. (Here’s a video I took of one of the numbers Lettuce performed with the San Francisco Symphony.)

So I resolved to pay attention and come back in 2024.

It turned out there was only one show this year that I was really interested in, and again I managed to secure tickets for it. So we enjoyed Herbie Hancock and his killer band.

You can bet my radar is going to be up when the 2025 shows get announced!

Wow, I’ve been (once again) rather remiss about this site of mine… but it’s not surprising. I’ve been in a bit of a holding pattern for many months since Tom and I first started to try to reignite our interest in our remote recording collaboration. Similarly, I have been treading water in the learning/practicing department, sometimes going back over stuff I’ve worked on in my Mark Lettieri JamPlay course but not moving forward, and similarly with a couple of books I’ve been trying to work through for a couple of years now. I also have gotten mired in my Rick Beato ear training courseware. For some reason I have been having an inordinate amount of difficulty telling major and minor third harmonic intervals from each other; similarly, perfect fourths and fifths. With all of these things I often neglect them for weeks at a time and have to pick them up and start over from near the beginning, more or less.

The good news in all of this is I’ve been gradually getting better and better at navigating through chord changes in my improvisation. I’ve been working on some fundamental fretboard knowledge stuff, like working on all inversions of all triads across and up and down the neck, and on locating the thirds and sevenths in chord progressions, and scales played in thirds, fourths, etc. I’m also trying to force myself to play over backing tracks more often and to transcribe solos that I like.

Then there’s the band, No Static. We weren’t terribly aggressive about lining up gigs after the New Year, and our first didn’t happen until late April. We’ve added a couple of tunes to the repertoire and had some rehearsals, about once a month. I’ve been trying t identify the parts I struggle with and focus on those more, and it’s been paying off – I seen to be getting more comfortable and supple overall. At this point (mid-May) we have about 7 gigs on the calendar from now until early September, and a couple of others in the works that I expect to firm up.

I don’t really know why, but the second of the two remote recording projects I kicked off in 2020 sort of fizzled out about a year ago. (This is the project with Tom DeFiglio on drums and Pat T on bass and yours truly on guitars and sundry.) Recently we’ve talked about reviving it and finally some motion has started. Tom decided to start off with tweaking two of the tunes we had already posted, and he’s working on picking up two tunes that were partly completed and finishing them off. Then we have a list of several others we have wanted to tackle that we’ll start mucking through in the early part of 2023…

No Static has continued to play gigs since things started opening up a bit more in mid-2021, mostly on the coast. We have been in pretty regular rotation at the American Legion Coastside Post 474 in Half Moon Bay and have two upcoming dates there, September 24 and October 29. We just played this past weekend for the first time at Steel Bonnet Brewing Company in Scotts Valley, and we will back there again on September 3. We will also be returning to the Highway 1 Brewing Company in Pescadero on August 13.

Scott and I have also been playing a few gigs as a duo. We’ll be returning to the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company on August 27.

Wow, almost a year since my last post, I’ve really been slacking.

Tomorrow is Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game, and traditionally I sit down on the couch in front of the TV with some lager, peanuts in the shell, and maybe a hot dog and cheer on the American League squad.

My favorite team is still the New York Yankees, despite not having lived in New York for nearly 44 years now. They are having a historically good year, with a record of 64-28 (.696)… Aaron Judge has 33 homers so far… new addition Matt Carpenter has hit .354 with 13 homers, 34 RBIs and a 1.380 OPS in 31 games (21 starts), appearing at first base, third base, and designated hitter, as well as in left field and right field… and the Yankees have “Nasty” Nestor Cortez in the starting lineup, who, like Carpenter, has blossomed since joining the team. The Yankees are sending six players to the All-Star Game – Aaron Judge (the biggest vote getter this year), Giancarlo Stanton, pitchers Gerrit Cole, Nestor Cortez, and Clay Holmes, and catcher Jose Trevino. Both Judge and Stanton will be in the starting lineup.

Looking forward to watching!

The autumnal equinox has passed so summer is behind us.

I have two upcoming gigs on the calendar with No Static: another at the American Legion Coastside Post 474 on October 30th, and a private party in Moss Beach on November 6th.

No Static will be playing Sunday, August 22 at the American Legion Coastside Post 474 in Half Moon Bay, one of out favorite places to play. We’ll be there again in early Autumn, on Saturday, September 25, and Saturday, October 30. These are all outdoor afternoon shows, 2-5pm.

The Scott Goldstone/Alan Oehler duo will be playing at the Highway 1 Brewing Company in Pescadero on Sunday, September 5, also an outdoor afternoon show, starting at 3pm. This is a super fun and friendly venue with great food and, of course, beer! Bring a growler to fill. Labor Day weekend is often blue and sunny on the coast, so this is a perfect place to spend a coupla-few hours rocking out and dancing.

We will also be returning to the St. Robert’s Festival in San Bruno on Saturday, September 18, at 4pm. This is a fundraiser for St. Robert Catholic Church and school, and is always a great end-of-summer blast of fun for kids of all ages. Games, rides, food & drink, live music, and a car show!

Update: The St. Robert’s Festival has been cancelled due to county guidelines around the current COVID-19 surge.

Well, the summer of 2021 is about halfway through, and things have been loosening up a bit around here lately. I played a couple of recent gigs with No Static (an outdoor private party in June and an outdoor gig at the American Legion Coastside Post 474), with a couple more on the horizon, and my duo with Scott Goldstone played indoors at The Coastal Vine in Moss Beach (formerly The Wine Room). A couple of the local jam sessions have restarted, though I have yet to attend any of them. My shelter-in-place recording project, alas, has not borne any new fruit since March, but I hope to have a few more of those completed soon.

My remote recording projects (see Project 1 and Project 2) continued into the new year but have hit something of a snag since March. Here’s what I’ve posted:

• “Affirmation” – an instrumental written by José Feliciano and recorded on his 1975 album Just Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll, though a more well-known version of it was recorded by George Benson on his hit album Breezin’ from 1976. I posted this on 3 January 2021.

• “Povo” – an instrumental written by Freddie Hubbard that appeared originally on his Sky Dive album from 1972. Tom pointed us to a version performed by Lee Ritenour on his 2006 album Smoke ‘n’ Mirrors. We used that as our model, but ended up playing it at tempo closer to the original. I posted this on 4 February 2021.

• “Use Me” – You might think this is strictly an instrumental project, but every so often I open my yap and attempt to sing. Here’s us taking a hack at the classic Bill Withers hit song “Use Me” from his 1972 album Still Bill. Jeffrey Kamil on guitar (second solo), me (vocals and first guitar solo), C. Quenser on clavinet, Tom DeFiglio on drums, and Pat T on bass. Mix by Tom DeFiglio. Posted 16 February 2021.

• “Riviera Paradise” – an instrumental tune by Stevie Ray Vaughan from his 1989 album In Step. I played a “piano” solo using my guitar into the Jam Origin MIDI Guitar 2 plugin. Mix by Tom DeFiglio. I posted this on 27 April 2021.

• “Strange Brew” – this is not one of our remote collaborations, it was (mostly) recorded live at one of our masked get-togethers in Tom’s back yard in September of 2020. The vocal was too low in the mix and had lots of bad notes, so I decided to record a clean vocal track, which Tom mixed in with the live recording. It’s an old Cream song from their 1967 album Disraeli Gears. I posted this on 25 April 2021

My artists in residence buds and I have just posted another recording, our take on Kenny Burrell’s classic blues “Chitlins con Carne.“