After visiting with some of Clark's old friends from high-school we met up with our friend Dan Schwinnt, who was putting us up while we were in town. We unloaded our stuff and got ready to head out for the evening. Now, while we were in Denver for four days we hung out at a lot of the same music venues, so I am going to try to just hit the highlights at each venue, instead of taking you through a chronological monster blog of the whole thing. I need to be better at updating the blog daily, so that something like this does not happen!
Herbs: Kind of a dive bar, nice stage though! Clark is friends with the owner, and the first night we were there we saw a r&b band, AOA. Man, I thought they were excellent - we do not have any r&b or blues bands up here in Seattle. They were just playing James Brown, Earth Wind and Fire, some old hip-hop stuff, man I thought it was awesome. Great players too - the singer was this freakin buff military guy, who could play a good rhythm guitar also. (Another thing we do not have up here... rhythm guitar players!) The second night we were here, was after we played a gig at Dazzle's and we were partying. There was an organ trio playing, this guy Vlad was playing b3, and Laura the owner was playing tenor, and this guy Mark was playing drums. Met a lot of players at Herbs, everyone was nice. There was this guitar player - he was blonde, and his name was Andrew. I had seen him everyday in Denver at the same jam sessions and gigs we were at - he was super cool. Anyways, we were outside chatting on the patio and this older, sketchy blonde woman in her late fifties came up to us. She started hitting on us dudes hard core, you know, in a disturbing way. Then she busts out with - " Yea, I used coke and meth for years. " It was pretty obvious. Anyways, then Andrew says he is gonna go get another drink and straight up ditches me with this scary woman. I am too nice, because I just let her talk to me for a long time instead of just getting out of there! At one point she touched my arm and said "My friends are leaving hun, but I do not have to go with them....." as if to suggest something absolutely terrifying and disgusting. Anyways, Andrew, if by chance you read this ever, thanks dick.
El Chepultapec - Supposedly this was a super hot spot the whole time Clark was living in Denver. Apparently it was the shittiest bar ever, and Clark was severely disappointed to see that they had re-done the inside. Because it was not as crappy, supposedly it has lost its charm, and was now coincidentally even crappier! We came here basically every night we went out, it was right next to Herbs, and all the other hotspots in Denver. Each time it was what appeared to be a jam session, which was cool. There was usually a crowd in The Pec as it is called. They have some sort of terrible piano, just because it is a grand piano does not mean that it is any good! A lot of kids from CU would come jam at The Pec, there was an alto player that was killing, and a trumpet player or two that could blow great solos. The Pec is right in the middle of all the Denver hot spots - so every night there are a bunch of drunk assholes outside looking to get in a fight. I think they called it LODO, and it was like a combination of the U-district in seattle with pioneer square and belltown. I was pretty sure we were gonna get in a fight at some point, people are rough drunks down there. One guy tried to pick a fight with us by stealing our lighter! Hahaha, what a tool! He can have it.
Random Boulder Colorado Jam Session - This jam was at a hotel/blues bar. It sucked. The players were excellent, at least the house band was. Mark Simon on bass, and the drum instructor from CU and some hippie pianist named Andy something. The rest of the jam was filled out by a pretty terrible group of middle aged vocalists, singing jazz choir style, songs like fly me to the moon. They were not good. I do not have that much against jazz choirs, but this was pretty terrible. So sitting in I think I played some vocal standards that got all fucked up and beats were lost and shit got turned around. No fun, I felt bad the rest of the band were these high school kids and they had no idea what was happening, so I just dragged them through the mess and got out of there. Funny thing though, Richie Cole the famous alto player just happened to be at the jam session. What the hell was he doing there? We talked to him after wards and it turns out he just likes to come out to Boulder and hang some times. He sounded good when he played, and was happy to hear that we saw Phil Woods play in Chicago.
Dazzle - is a great club. It is similar to the Jazz Alley of Denver. Nice Yamaha grand piano in the dinner room, and a Kawaii in the bar. Music every night, beautiful room and stage! This is where we played our gig. The lineup was me on piano, Clark on saxophones, and then Dan Schwindt on guitar, Dwight something or other on Bass and Bill on drums. This was Clark's quartet from Denver + me for the gig. They are all excellent players, and they are cool guys to hang with. We played some heavy hitters at the gig - Joshua, the Miles tune kicked my ass. Who would have guessed that I was not going to see the little 3x that was written at the end of the section that switches from 3/4 to 4/4? Well, as you can guess, shit went down pretty hard! We managed to recover though on the next few tunes. Lots of Clark's originals and Dan's originals, we played Dear Old Stockholm which was bad ass because I had just learned it. I love that tune! Anyways, after our gig (which unfortunately was not as full as we had hoped) we meandered over to the bar on the other side of this wall. In the lounge section of the club, Dan who just played the gig with us, ran a Tuesday night jam session. I did not play at this session, I was just hanging out with the other guys from the band the whole time. This jam went on until midnight, and then we went over to Herbs for a jam session, and then onwards to some 4:00 am breakfast!
All in all, I had a great time and met a bunch of cats that all sounded good. That is a great thing to have music in common with people when you go to a new town, it can make you some good friends real fast. During the days in Denver it was hot as hell, which was nice. I hung out at the river a bunch, walked around downtown (which is about a third the size of downtown seattle) and went to an aquarium where I watched tigers. Think that does not make sense? It doesn't... but it really happened!
The drive home back to Washington sucked bad. About 22 hours straight. The worst parts were Wyoming and Utah. There is nothing there, except Salt Lake City.... which seemed pretty sucky from the truck!
Anyways, I have a lot more to write about, so peace out until the next blog! I think it will be about the Dudley Manlove Quartet 80's prom! What a bunch of trouble makers we are!
Cheers,
Mack
1. Swordfish at aquarium! What a weird animal.
2. Park that runs along the Platte river, downtown Denver. Park covers the entire bank of the river in city limits.
3. ......
4. Best friends on the ride home. 22 hrs of hell! Ahh!
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