1 Week

I have one week left before I travel back to the GMO. Next Monday I will fly to Boston. Then we will bus our way up to Canada. Three concerts with the Harry James Band and the Montreal Jazz Festival. I am sure I will have fun things to share after that. Next Blog next week. See you then.

Fargo North Dakota

What a great crowd at the Fargo Theatre Friday night. Sell out crowd and three standing ovations. The fans were clapping and cheering just having a great time. On sat we played for the Minot ND Jazz Festival. Everyone thought it was really hot outside. They need to visit Arkansas this time of the year. Its around 100 degrees in Monticello. I have not seen the temp abouve 75 since Ive been on the road.

Tomorrow night we play at Forrest Lake Area High School in Forrest Lake Mn. We do a few high schools evach month. We visit with the band students and directors and sometimes do clinics. It is of great educational bennifit to kids that want to be professional musicians. I have learned out here that there are gigs to be had if you can play well enough and can read really GREAT. Improv is important but it is but it is not anywhere near the top on a long list of musical requirements.

Tues morning me and Flat Stanley are headed to Monticello Arkansas for a well needed rest. I will see my wife, family,friends, get my horns repaired, buy reeds and supplies, go to my son Benjamin's wedding and then head for Boston on July 6th.

See you all again in July. Thanks for checking in.

FIVE DAYS

Five days and HOME!!!!! The dance last night was good. About 500 people were there. Most of them danced for the better part of 3 hours. Last night was hard for the bari sax. I had to play all 5 horns. Solos on Alto, Bari and clarinet. Section flute with lead alto and 2nd alto. I have to do tone studies, long tones etc. almost everyday to keep my flute sound good. (With a tuner to make sure the octaves 3rds and 5ths are correct. We all do long tones on our sax mouthpieces every day, then the horn too. When you can play a full major scale with just your mouthpiece it becomes amazing what happens to your sound, tuning and everything else gets better too.

See you later.

Last Night

The dance was a big success. I was very surprised to see so many young people(18 - 35) dancing to our music. There were around 1000 people at the dance here in Cedar Rapids IA. At least half of the people were young. What a pleasant surprise. We are off today and will be in Brainerd Mn. tomorrow for a concert at Central Lakes College.

The sax section continues to get better as a section. Tuning, phrasing, articulation is getting there. We still have a ways to go.

We will be in North Dakota the rest of the week and in Mn on Monday. Headed home on Tues for 2 weeks.

To my cousin and classmates. Flat Stanley is exhausted. He plans to rest in Arkansas until we head up to Maine July 6th.

Live Dance

Tomorrow night at 8:00pm you can go to KRMY Radio on the net and see us playing for a dance. Hope you will join us.

HOME

Well, Almost time to go home for a few days. I will fly home in just about 10days. We pay for our tickets aand the Miller Group pays us back. I will be home for 14 days and then head back out on the road for the rest of the summer.

6 Nights

We finished our 3 hour dance tonight and are getting ready for 5 more nights in a row. 6 nights 5 towns. Travel Travel Travel. The sax section is getting pretty tight. Pitch has settled in and the phrasing , articulation and style is starting to match nicely. Our section leader Kevin lays it down every night pretty close to perfect.

Going to Juners Casino and hotel in Rock Island IL tomorrow. Don't worry Katheryine and class mates, Flat Stanley will stay in his hotel room. No trouble for him.

17 Days

In 17 days I will go home. Cant wait to see my wife Debbie and my mom. It will have been almost 3 months that I have been gone by the time I get home. THE ROAD LIFE> AINT IT GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL The things we are willing to do to attain great musical experiences. If you don' t really love to play music more than anything else don't do this!!!!!!

CLARINET SOLO

To night I played my first clarinet solo with the band. It was not great but it did not suck>LOL
I was scared to death. In the GMO band you always walk out front to do solos so the stress level is higher. We had only 1500 people at the concert tonight.

The concert was really pretty good. The sax section had a great run tonight.

Our fine drummer Jeff will be moving on to a world tour with a an international cruise line. So we have an opening. CE ASKEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NITE NITE<

Dinner Theatre/Practice

The Dirby Dinner Theatre was great fun. Two concerts both sold out. For you Arkansas guys it was much like the old Vapors in Hot springs. Today was a travel and practice day. My room mate and I did tuning exercises for a while and then workd improv patterns in every key. Scott would play the pattern and I would repeat. We kept it in tempo and moved up by half steps. We put in a couple hours on that. Then we got our song list for tomorrow and ran through 30 tunes. Our show changes every day so we don;t get bored.

I have become a much better instrument repairman out here too. When your horn breaks you have no choice but to get it going. My alto fell out of the stand 3 days ago. It still is not perfect but will get me through until I get to a repair shop. Luckily our section leader Kevin has a great repair kit that he loaned me.

Tomorrow we don't leave the motel until 4:00pm FANTASTIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!