Friday, December 30, 2016

Mojo Workin' and Sittin' In

Wednesday: I was invited to play with Scott Glazer's Mojo Dojo, a monthly gig at Blind Willie's celebrating Scott's love of soul and blues. The band members rotate--this month, it was Micah Cadwell on guitar, Randy Hoexter on keyboard, Justin Chesarek on drums, and Will Scruggs on bari sax (I played tenor). The two saxes thing worked incredibly well with the songs Scott chose, giving it that buzzy old school sax thing without getting in the way of the vocals.



Every time I play this gig, I'm anxious on the way there. To some extent, I worry about sight reading charts in front of other people. My greater fear is the soloing situation--every solo spot is high volume and high energy, and after three or four songs, I've got nothing new to bring to the table! For whatever reason, this particular gig flowed really well, never got too loud, and every instrument didn't solo on every song. Way better!

We were fortunate to have warm weather and a nice full room, too. Great gig.

Thursday: Nick asked me to swing by Venkman's and add a little saxophone to his duo with Tim Smith. They mostly play Beatles stuff, but on this show, they dipped into a little David Bowie. I sauntered out of the green room and straight to the microphone to play on the end of Changes, then stuck around to play on Young American and the Beatles Oh Darling!


I'd never played Changes before, but (like probably everybody else in the western world) I'd heard it a million times! David Bowie is the only listed saxophonist on the album, so I'm assuming that's him. It might explain why it kind of stutters.