Howdy world of the internets! I’ve got a few pieces of news-worthy reporting in my musical life, so check it out… Firstly, my Euge Organ Trio with Teddy Presberg on guitar and Dave Fleschner on keys is going into the studio next week! I’m super excited to start putting to tape (figuratively these days, of course) the originals we’ve been working on for a few months now, and eventually we’ll have an album! It’s fun for a number of reasons but one is that I find myself being super analytic/scientific about drum sounds and overall mix sounds when listening to different groove-jazz oriented projects these days. A couple that come to mind as sounding fantastic are The New Master Sounds’ “102%” album and Stanton Moore’s “Emphasis!” Check those out if you haven’t already and listen to, among the overall great sound, the superb sounding yet rather natural and raw drum sounds. Anyway, wish us luck in the studio!
Second, I’m very excited to reunite yet again the Under the Streetlamp folks for a few New Years gigs down in Laughlin, NV, which for those of you who, like me, have no idea where that is, it’s close to Vegas. It’s always such a pleasure to play music with that crew, not to mention the epic hangs/music listening sessions that inevitably occur in the hotel rooms or on the bus when we’re not actually performing.
Finally, I’m simultaneously happy and proud to introduce a new project that I’ve put together very gradually over the course of this year… Meet Midnight’s Children; Portland’s new Soul/R&B/Funk extraordinaires! The band has Chuk Barber, who can be found playing with The Lowrider Band and The California Honey Drops among other groups, singing and playing percussion, Portland’s guitar wizard Dan Duval, Alex Weinberg from Shafty on keys, Nathaniel Daniel from Yeah, Great, Fine playing bass, Chelsea Luker of The Quadrophones and Joy Tribe singing and playing woodwinds and myself on drumset and backup vocals. We’ve been working on a mix of covers and originals, ala Prince, Jon Cleary, D’Angelo and others and our rehearsals have been sounding fantastic, so be sure to check us out! Our debut show is January 13th at The Goodfoot, so I hope to see you there!