Here a gig there a gig

Thanksgiving week is always a little slow and that's pretty much a good thing. I played a couple of things. Saturday night nov 28 was my duo gig at Nobel's. It's just piano and bass. I play with John Mochnick. Sunday I played at Center Grove Baptist Church. I filled in for their guy for the "engage" service as they call it. It's a rock gig. The leader/guitar player/ singer Jerry Tyson is very good. Everybody is very nice and I always enjoy playing there. The music is sort U2 meets the Police or something. I like the way my old Fender Jazz sounds through their PA. The excellent drummer is Philip Morgan one my colleagues at Wake Forest where I teach adjunct. I was looking at my book and realized I have played in a different church every Sunday for almost 2 months.

Church work can be very demanding. It's a lot of music learned in a short time and the charts can be everywhere from great to nothing. It can be fun and interesting.

Gig Reports Return

I have to decided to begin posting a weekly gig report again. I read some old posts from My Space and found it to be a dairy of sorts. Almost therapeutic in some way. So I'll start with a gig last week , Nov. 18th, at a retirement home in Greensboro. The gig was a piano bass and drums trio in the memory unit of this particular place. The pianist, the leader too, is very easy to follow. She knows 100s of songs. I just watch her left hand and play. Just like the old days. We played Blue Heaven, My Buddy, I'll Be Around and many more. The remarkable thing about this gig was some of the audience couldn't remember their names but knew all the words to many of these songs and sang them too. The audience loved the performance. I felt like I had done some good.

The next night was a piano/bass duo at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Winston-Salem. We played a lot of standards and some original stuff. Nice gig but not a whole lot of people there.

Saturday I played with the Matt Kendrick trio at a baby/toddler fashion show/fundraiser. Nice easy gig of standards and a swinging group. The wings were pretty good.

Very nice people hosting this thing. The fashion show was pretty cute.

Sunday was a Jazz service at Shallowford Presbyterian Church in Clemmons NC.

We played a lot of music. Jazz services are becoming increasing popular.