NOTE: this blog is no longer active as of 12/07. New one: http://blog.kirchhof.com
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Mon, 22 May 2006
Sorry About The Quiet Around Here...
It has been a busy, busy series of days, with Ryan's orientation at
UT, his school and jazz band practices and concerts, awards
ceremonies, band trips, field trips, day work, night work, etc. The
young fella made all of the commendation lists and honor rolls, aced
his TAKS stuff, and the last ten days have been a string of showing
proud paternal support at his honorifics in between trying to put
bread on the table and dealing with some pretty amazing mail traffic
with long lost colleagues (some from as far back as the late seventies
Armadillo days) over on my MySpace page. It's a full
life for the moment, over here at R & R Kirchhof Haus...
Neat one: I am happy to say that the first time Ryan performed as a
musician, playing the family cornet on a public stage (as opposed to
school), he improvised a solo to a Charlie Parker tune. It was a sort
of monotonic polyrhythmic thing, but he did it, and I was chuckling as
I watched him up there on the Stubb's stage. It certainly could've
been more interesting musically, but, hey, the foundational principle
is good; he's only been playing for six months. Not bad musical
company to be in, and not a bad way to start off a career, should he
choose to go in that direction. Probably has Charlie as his guardian
angel now, after showing that kind of courage...
Saturday (after a busy 12th birthday party at Park & Pizza) he
spent the night with a friend, and I went to hear Shantytown
Underground at Flamingo Cantina. They're a local roots reggae outfit
helmed by Claude McCann, and they are a great band, with 10 people on
stage, full horns including my old buddy/nemesis Wallace on valve
trombone & the always tasty Mark Wilson on sax, with backup singers,
the works. It is just a
wonderful band, playing reggae songs the way I like them
to be played. I spent the entire set just smiling and remembering why
I love the genre so much.
This type of thing is exactly the project that I envisioned with
the Mau Mau Chaplains when we founded that band; unfortunately, that
got sidetracked back into the 'country reggae' stuff and musically
uninteresting two chord jams, which is why I had to bail on 'em, even
though they are mi idren and I love 'em dearly. (Of course, we must
note that they survived just
fine without my opinions. They're still a great band, and I
love to watch them perform. It's just not the band I wanted to
be in; not my cup o' tea as a musician. Heh. I like songs, with
verses and choruses and bridges and middle eights and change-ups. If
structural minimalism is the goal, there's a huge canon of Gregorian
Chants available out there...)
Anyway, I am delighted to add a newly discovered reggae band to my
list of must-go-to's. I hope that Claude will let me mix 'em
sometimes.
I also talked with Kris Brown, and it's likely that I'll start
playing w/ Family Sauce soonly; we've been trying to hitch our wagons
together for a couple of years; we share the funk, and now it looks
like the stars are finally aligned. 'Twas a good night all around,
kind of an old home week for Austin reggae, and I left with a huge
smile on my face, happy to have renewed many a friendship and happy to
have heard some of my favorite colleagues ply their trade.
So, anyway, this dad is very proud of his boy, and Dad will be playing
again too, soon. Greezy Wheels is going to release some new product
imminently as well; I am doing some tracking on that project this
evening. I'll keep you posted; looks like a July release with quite a
few radio stations around the country ready to add it.
Other neat stuff may be coming soon, too. It is a time of change
and opportunity.
Posted at 16:37 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
[Reload all]
[E-mail]
