Monday, April 18, 2011

Cherry, Blue and I played at Cherry's sister's wedding at the "Old School' on Kingland, GA. It's a historic one room school house build for black students in 1921. With unbelievably great acoustics! We played a few originals and a few songs that would have been "hot" back then, St. Louis Blues, Ballin' the Jack, etc. Long trip, but very satisfying show & congrats to the bride and groom!

Read about the old school here
http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/022503/met_11838614.shtml

they were historic... well NOW they're historic, but there aren't many examples of this particular type of school-building left, so it's cool to be in it.

We're working up for two or three gigs here, plus we're going to be the band that kick off "North City Farmer's Market" on June 4. Should be a fun event, with a cook-off, local vendors, and of course... us! I'm working on writing some new originals, and getting the band up on four old WC Handy Songs... we have three in the hopper—St. Louis Blues, Memphis Blues, and Yellow Dog Blues—and Beale Street Blues will round out the quartet.

Folks at the wedding of all ages really got into some of the old tunes.

Friday, April 8, 2011

We've got everyone on the recordings now, but a couple vocal parts, so we're on our way. Sounds pretty good!

I've been fortunate over my life to be able to absorb and squeeze out several styles of music, so come to one of our shows and you're likely to hear jazz, blues, country, rock, ragtime, ballads, showtunes, with classical and Bollywood influences. Our players come from all different backgrounds too, people have played in the St. Louis Philharmonic, various jazz, dance and show bands, punk rock, neo-soul, so we can put a lot of cool stuff together.

I love learning new songs, writing new songs, and when you do all that you want to get them "out" as soon as possible, but you do run the risk of too much too soon. So I've declared May "backup vocal month." We're going to take all our songs and put in the backup vocals we've been saving for "later," and bolster up everything we have.

As a friend of mine just said "It's amazing how many people think they can do a show without have to rehearse." Even the symphony has to put in some practice.

One song that's taken a lot of practice is "Miss Brown To You," it's a song from the 30s sung originally, I think, by Billie Holliday. It's got bizarre jazz chords aplenty, and a melody that doesn't have a lot to do with the music underneath it. So it's taken awhile, but it's songs like these that are often most rewarding when you have them good to go, because you know what you did to get there.

We're off to play an out-of-state wedding soon. Then back here for Jake's Steaks and Blue Agave.
want more info? drop me a line at jerryrabushka@gmail.com.