Michael Daves in the Times

For those who, like me, know and love guitarist Michael Daves:

Check out this article from the Friday New York Times about bluegrass in NYC. After being profiled in one section of the article, Michael pops up later at someone else's jam session, at which, "Mr. Daves appeared to be the most proficient player in the room, by a comfortable margin."

Long time no post

I got in the habit of only posting when I had a new audio sample for you to listen to- and I guess I haven't had anything new in the last month. But it's been so long, I thought I'd let you know what I've been up to.

At work, we did the burlesque musical "Sugar Babies" for a community theater in Pennsylvania, and we just finished "Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat" for a children's theater in Fresno. Productiontrax and Spiritrax are rolling right along. Still teaching a few lessons after work, but not a lot, which is nice.

I've been practicing trombone a little, going to jam sessions, having some fun. Delphine Cortez and Dennis Rowland (both well-established singers in Phoenix) have been kind enough to let me sit in with their bands, and both of them inspire me to keep practicing. But no new gigs yet.

I've started working on some big band arrangements of my vocal tunes.

I've been spending a lot of free time reading about musicians, too. I'm almost done with The Gentle Giant, Yusef Lateef's autobiography, and also almost done with Jazzwomen, a book of interviews with women jazz musicians. I hope that my life makes as much sense looking back on it as theirs do.

I finally went to a meeting of local indie filmmakers and announced myself as a composer, and I'm sure if I pursued some of the filmmakers they'd be happy to have me score their films, but I haven't. I guess I'm afraid to commit to another big project, though I know I want to get into scoring sooner or later.

Guess that's it. Hopefully I'll actually have something for y'all to listen to soon.

No Dragonfly for now

I guess we'll be back at Dragonfly sometime soon- but for now I have Fridays free. Anybody know of a good Friday jam session?

New Vocals at Spiritrax

Vocals have been recorded for two more Spiritrax ditties:

Do You Hear What I Hear
In case you're missing Christmas as much as I am.

Were You There
Blatantly gory lyrics like this make me see Christianity as a superstitious cult that tells horror stories to children. But it was fun doing all the rain and thunder.

More Gigs!

I guess we've been a hit at the Dragonfly. The owner wants us to start playing Thursdays as well- I don't know if Thursday will be another night at the Tempe location, or if it'll be at their Mesa location. And we got a visit the other day from Bart Salzman from Jazz in AZ, who said he liked us and wanted to book us at the Chandler Jazz Festival! I'm looking forward to being busier.

[PS Looks like Thursdays will be in Mesa, and not starting just yet. Until then I'll probably be playing with Dennis Rowland's band on Thursdays at the Kazimierz in Scottsdale.]

The New Privas

Privas' regular keyboardist, Dave Henning, coaches lacrosse in the spring, and has a game every Friday night, and our regular bassist, Harald Weinkum, is on tour for the next six weeks, so our drummer Nick found another bass player, a recent Phoenix transplant named Toby Curtright, I've been playing keyboard, and that's the trio. We're at Dragonfly on Mill Ave. and 4th every Friday night, 7:00-11:00 PM.

Is Christmas finally over, forever?

I spent most of the last three months filling up Spiritrax with Christmas carols, and I'm SO GLAD "the holidays" are finally behind me for a little while at least. Most of them don't have guide vocals yet, but I thought I'd mention them anyway, since a lot of people would know them. You can now see all my tracks at Spiritrax by clicking the Spiritrax link in the "Recordings" box on the left.