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04.15.2013

OK let's get moving with this...

Man oh man what a time it has been lately. Just got through another French Quarter Fest. The new Website just went live a few days ago. The New Tin Men CD is out (finally!!! it has been a long time coming…). I just got back from the great Bay Area trip and before that the Tin Men spent 2 1/2 weeks in France. Work on the 8th annual Chaz Fest has been proceeding apace with actual yard stuff beginning to happen just these past couple of days. Jazz Fest is right around the corner…Oy vey.

 

The past year has been a pretty good one. I recorded a new CD called I Will Never Be Alone In This Land which has been nominated for some awards (Offbeat, Gambit). My old running partner the esteemed Mr. Carlo Nuccio produced which was lovely in that it was something we'd been talking about for a number of years. He took a bunch of songs that were wildly disparate and somehow came up with a cohesive whole. I don't know…he seems to really like making records. He speaks mysteriously of The Process…Matt Perrine contributed some fine horn arrangements and the caliber of the musicians in general was pretty amazing. One day we had Matt, Roderick Paulin, Jason Mingledorff, Gerald French, Charlie Halloran, Bark Braud and and Eric Lucero playing a brass band thing at an insane tempo. The result is a tune called "Me And My Bad Luck" and it's pretty death defying. There are some things in the total opposite direction as well. All in all I'm pretty proud and it has been fun performing the new songs with different ensembles. This year at Jazz Fest we will have a horn section so we will be able to do some of the stuff we haven't been able to address too much up to now, as well as some older things. Here I will ask the simple question: can you be at the Gentilly Stage by 11:25 AM on Saturday April 27? For that matter, can I?

 

We also did a second sea shanty CD in 2012 called The Straits of Saint Claude which is a general shit-fight. A lot of it was recorded at the Saturn Bar on the night the Saints won the NFC championship in 2010. Not exactly a pristine studio environment, which happily comes across on the record. There is weird mojo all over this one. The Sea Shanty Field is getting a bit crowded these days, but I think we avail ourselves well in our way. As the man said--it ain't nothing nice. A good one to crack up your car to, or to put on during a fire. As the ship slips into the drink there is nothing finer that the last strains of "A Hundred Years Ago" bubbling through the flotsam. Give it a try. But more than that try to make a point to see the act in person, which is a staggering affair. We even got on premium cable with this one so how bad could it be?

 

The new Tin Men CD that came out last week (4/9/13) is another killer. This time we went in the studio with John Porter producing. If you don't know who that is look him up. We were very lucky indeed to have him this time around. The fact that we have been trying to make a CD for eight years says something about fate and the near-impossibility of getting three guys together at any given time. We actually went into a studio and started recording several years ago and nobody can remember why we didn't continue. When we originally scheduled the session we decided on late August, reasoning that we would all be here because it's the height of hurricane season and we as individuals wouldn't want to be away from our families in case there was a hurricane. Well of course there was indeed a hurricane so out finely laid plans were dashed like power lines on Veterans Boulevard. We soon regrouped, however, and the result is Avocado Woo Woo which we all agree is our finest release to date.

 

Ok it's almost two in the morning so I'm going to sign off with the usual promises of writing more often, but of course it's all lies. Perhaps tomorrow I will try to reconstruct the French trip and maybe include a few photos. How does that sound? Until then try to keep your plates spinning and your balls up in the air. Goodnight dear children of the interweb...