Playing the Ballard Jazz Walk the other night was an absolute blast. I was playing with the Jacob Stickney quartet, we have been playing gigs together for about a year now, and the band includes Devin Lowe, Adam Kessler, Jacob Stickney and myself. The music is mostly Jacob's original material, which is fun to play. You get really weird, strange chords for a couple bars, then other really strange chords for a couple bars, and in the end I am always amazed that it sounds so good! It is teaching me a lot about harmony...
Other bands I saw at the Jazz Walk :
Pete Christlieb and Hadley Caliman - Awesome. The New York fashion school is not a music venue however... how come the Tractor Tavern, or the Sunset was not on board with this..?! I could not believe it. Bill Anschell was on keys, and Chuck Deardorf on bass, Jon Bishop on drums.
Jason Parker Quartet - Super fun, most entertaining group of the evening. Jason is sounding really great, and he was playing with Cynthia Mullis, who played on his cd. The Teaching was backing him up (Evan Flory-Barnes, Jeremy Jones, Josh Rawlings) and they sounded good. Those guys have gotten super tight together over the years.
Jason was playing tracks off of his new cd, my favorite being "Mance's Dance" a Tatum Greenblat tune, and then "Love for Sale" a Jason Parker original arrangement that totally kicked ass. It was nice to see these guys because they had some stuff worked out, a lot of the groups were just calling tunes... which is a jazz tradition, but it tends to bore me sometimes now.
McTuff - Energy seemed great, but the balance was horrible. Joe Doria was playing organ, and I could not hear it. REPEAT, I COUULD NOT HEAR THE ORGAN.... wow, that never happens!
Anyways, there were tons of other bands also and it really was fun walking around checking out all the bands. It reminded me of what it must have been like being on Jackson street in the mid 1900's with all the jazz clubs.
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