Books – Page 31 – Keith Robertson

Week in Review – September 16, 2018

Back to New York again this week. The hotel that I usually stay at was transformed into “The Macallan Manor” for several nights as the club members there enjoyed a very fancy scotch tasting experience with some good bands playing.

It’s always very sobering to be in New York on September 11th, as we all remember watching the horror unfold on our television sets in 2001 , while the New Yorkers lived through it. My colleague took these pictures at the memorial – the only night of the year when lights outline the silhouette of the fallen twin towers.

Meanwhile, I was attending a Jethro Tull concert at the Beacon Theater on the upper west side. This was a sold out, 50th anniversary concert by a band that I enjoy very much but have never seen live. My pre-concert meal was at an excellent Mediterranean restaurant, the Hummus place, that is right behind the Beacon theater.

The mushroom hummus was amazing and the falafels were some of the best I’ve had. On exiting the restaurant, I was amused to see the Jethro Tull equipment truck – “Scotsman & Clan Transportaion”.

The concert was very enjoyable with a lot of video accompaniment from the 50 year history of the band and of world events.

It’s fairly amazing that a band with a flute as it’s main lead instrument and with a very classical bent has survived this long. Here’s a video of their Bach cover, “Bouree”.

The concert lasted well over two hours, with an intermission. The Beacon is such a gorgeous old theater with great acoustics – here are a couple of pictures from inside.

Predictably, the last song of the show was “Aqualung” which came with an entertaining video backing.

Hurricane Florence caused me to change my plans and travel down to rendezvous with McD in Florida a day early on Thursday. My flight to St. Petersburg arrived with no issues and a smooth ride overall. Diana’s hotel was within walking distance to downtown and we enjoyed exploring the area. Dinner was at the Copper Shaker which had excellent cocktails, service, and food.

Diana worked most of the day on Friday and so I was able to explore the breakfast joints, bookstores, coffee shops, and cigar bars of St. Petersburg reasonably thoroughly. I found it to be a very friendly, eclectic, walkable, and enjoyable city overall.

On Friday night we moved over to the Sandy Pearl resort in Clearwater Beach. The beaches there are made up of beautifully fine white sand. We enjoyed dinner at the very casual Frenchy’s Café, known for the grouper sandwich and “Crabby fries, and then enjoyed a lovely sunset.

Saturday started with lobster benedicts at Clear Sky café next to the hotel – very good. It was very hot and humid by the pool and so I didn’t last very long before retreating to air conditioning. I heard some great music coming from Clear Sky in the afternoon and so wandered over to listen. Diana joined me, and we met a fun couple from the nearby town of Dunedin. It made me smile because a work colleague recently moved back to Dunedin in New Zealand to run his family businesses. The couple had known each other from Kindergarten until the end of middle school and had recently reconnected – some good stories. They also recommended “Bon Appetit” in Dunedin for dinner.

We enjoyed dinner and the Dunedin sunset very much. Our waiter, Michael, had been in the restaurant business for 52 years, and certainly knew what he was doing. We shared a steak tartare starter, and then Diana enjoyed a nicely cooked lobster tail while I had the Dover sole (deboned table side by Michael). This was very much an old school restaurant.

In an effort to coax me out of air conditioning and down to the pool, Diana treated me to a poolside cabana on Sunday. This was a very special and luxurious way to relax and enjoy football and a book all day. I’m writing his post from the luxury of the cabana couch. Thanks Diana!

The Cowboys don’t play until later today, but the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (the local Florida team) just beat the Eagles, which always helps the Cowboys playoff chances.

I’ve been absolutely loving the book “Rules of Civility” by Amor Towles this week. This is about the exploits of a young lady in New York during the years surrounding the Great Depression and is exceptionally well written. I loved “A Gentleman in Moscow” which was Towles most recent novel and this, his debut novel, is even better in my opinion.

On the music front, I was reacquainted with this amazing Ray Charles song – a tribute to Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and John and Bobby Kennedy.

Wow! What a song and what a performance.

Week in Review – September 9, 2018

Diana spent the week in Pacifica with her Mum while I worked from home all week and did my best to be self sufficient. The great news is that Clorinda is home from the hospital and back to normal after giving us quite a scare. Her neighbors, Andy and Jude, had a party on Saturday night to celebrate their sixtieth birthdays and you can see from these pictures that Clorinda was her old-self – camera always at the ready. She’s very fortunate to have such kind neighbors.

Diana captured this lovely panoramic sunset from the deck of Andy and Jude’s home.

I passed the time on a rainy Saturday by going to see the movie “Blaze” at the Alamo draft house and cinema in Denton. The movie is directed by Ethan Hawke and tells the story of the country folk musician Blaze Foley, a little known and very talented songwriter. The movie is very well done in a documentary style but with actors playing the roles of Blaze and his compadre Townes Van Zandt. Charlie Sexton, who we saw at the Kessler a few months ago, plays an excellent Van Zandt. Here’s Foley’s best known song:

Today has been spent weeding the garden and enjoying the start of the football season. The Cowboys haven’t played yet and I’m hoping for a positive start. I’m looking forward to McD finally returning home this evening.

A trend began this week of people substituting penguins for Trump in pictures with some hilarious results. Thanks to Brent for turning us on to these. Definitely a positive change.

I read a few short stories from Ry Cooder’s “Los Angeles Stories” this week. Regular readers of the blog will know that Cooder is one of my favourite musicians, with his “Paradise and Lunch” being a top 10 album for me. It always frustrates me when world class musicians are also very talented in another artistic field – just doesn’t seem fair.

The stories are in what I believe is called the “LA Noir” genre. Kind of like short versions of LA Confidential. It’s amazing how quickly Cooder can set a scene and introduce several very believable characters.

I came across this music from Abdullah Ibrahim this week and have been enjoying it very much. Ibrahim is from Cape Town and is heavily influenced by Duke Ellington and Thelonius Monk. Apparently there’s a jazz sub-genre known as “Cape jazz” that this represents well.

In other music news, I was introduced to Ronnie Earl through this track:

Earl is from Boston and originally graduated with a degree in special education. After seeing a performance by Muddy Waters, he became interested in playing blues guitar professionally. He has been the associate professor of guitar at Berklee college of music for several years now.

Week in Review – September 2, 2018

A similar routine again this week to the last couple – Diana working in St. Petersburg, Florida Wednesday through Friday and me working at home. There were a couple of differences – Diana got stuck in Tampa due to a thunder storm around the time she was due to take off on Friday afternoon, and I had to drive to the Fort Worth office every day for all day meetings.

On the bright side, Diana was able to connect with Merry Lee and Jeff, have dinner at their country club, and then spend the night at their lovely new home in Tampa. She put a lot of work into making sure that her client presentation on Friday morning was successful and so it was good that she was able to relax with friends. She learned earlier on Friday afternoon that her Mum had been taken to the hospital by paramedics and was very concerned about being so far away from her – Jeff and Merry Lee were a welcome distraction. We just learned that her Mum could be discharged from hospital this afternoon and Diana will be in San Francisco tomorrow afternoon to make sure she settles in well back at home.

Meanwhile, I took advantage of being in Fort Worth all week to meet up with a colleague for dinner at the Capital Grille downtown. We walked from dinner to a jazz club called the Scat Lounge. On the way we passed by Sundance Square and downtown’s most iconic public art, the Chisholm Trail Mural which serves as a reminder of Fort Worth’s rich cultural roots. The three-story Richard Haas trompe l’oeil mural spans the 1908 Jett Building’s southern facade and was completed in 1988 to commemorate the Fort Worth segment of The Chisholm Trail cattle drives of 1867-1875.

I had been reading about the Scat Lounge for the last couple of years and was looking forward to trying it out. As luck would have it, a band named “A Taste of New Orleans” was playing on Wednesday night, and they were a real treat. Here are a couple of their performances.

The Scat Lounge is an excellent venue – just the right size and very reminiscent of a New York basement jazz club.

We met Patty and Brent for dinner and a movie on Saturday night. The movie was quite unique and different than you might expect – a true one of a kind dedicated “To Patty”. It featured Chad and his exploits over a 24 hour period. The version we saw was just the initial “rough cut” but a truly hilarious and very clever production.

After the movie, we enjoyed dinner at The Grape on Greenville Avenue (McD’s favourite Dallas restaurant). I enjoyed the Moroccan Rabbit “Tagine”, Brent the Crispy Pork Collar, and the ladies both had the Steak Frites. After dinner margaritas at the Blue Goose across the street put the ladies right off to sleep. What a lovely evening with great friends that we’re going to miss very much.

I finished a couple of very different books this week. The first, “The Sportswriter” by Richard Ford, is part of a trilogy that tracks the life of Frank Bascombe, a New Jersey based writer for a sports magazine. The book tracks his experiences over a long Easter weekend when he is 38 years old, having recently lost a child and been divorced.

I’ve heard Ford described as the poor man’s John Updike and particularly this trilogy compared unfavorably to Updike’s “Rabbit” trilogy. I found the writing styles quite different and, with several decades between the settings, the situation and scenarios quite different as well. I’m not ready to run out and read the rest of the trilogy but do look forward to catching up to them sometime soon. “Independence Day” from the trilogy won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 1996.

The second book, “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” by Ottessa Moshfegh, was completely different than anything I typically read, and it’s probably good to try new things from time to time. I had read a positive review in the New Yorker magazine and it was the book club pick at the Wild Detectives book store that I love in South Dallas.

The narrator is a young woman, living in New York in the year 2000, and determined to withdraw from life for a year in order to escape from or cope with her traumas. The book is incredibly dark but the writing is very good. I would not recommend this book to the faint of heart.

Here’s a song I heard for the first time this week from the Chris Duarte Group. It reminds me a lot of “Tin Pan Alley” by Stevie Ray Vaughan and has equally good sound and production.

My boss just sent this picture from the Toronto air show this weekend. What amazing precision and a great picture that he took.

Week in Review – August 26, 2018

This week was very much a repeat of last week. A quiet week of work for me at home while Diana traveled to St. Petersburg again for work Wednesday through Friday. She had a successful but tiring trip and week.

I met Diana’s stepson, John, at the airport on Friday afternoon and took him to Perry’s steakhouse for a drink and a happy hour snack. He had an 8 hour layover in Dallas between returning from a business trip to Nashville and starting a business trip to Santiago, Chile (which sounds very exciting). Then Diana met up with both of us at the airport for a little while when she landed and I followed her home.

Diana treated me to dinner at Gregory’s on Saturday night and Brent joined. What a delicious feast! I had the weekly special – scallops with crawfish etouffee, goat cheese, and crumbled hatch chile cornbread. Diana had read about it and knew I would love it. We started with a gorgeous duck confit – apparently slow cooked for 36 hours – that just fell off the bone. Diana and Brent both had scallops “sea bass style” – over the lobster risotto that typically comes with my go-to Gregory’s choice, the sea bass. It’s so nice to have such amazing food available in walking distance from our home.

I finished the Paul Simon biography, “The Life”, this week. The book is almost 400 pages long and I still felt that some important areas were too short. I would have liked to have learned more about the recording processes and musicians involved in some of his great albums. That being said, there were many details on the inspirations behind the songs, and the challenges of getting just the right set of musicians and sounds in the studio. The section on the making of the Graceland (one of the original world music records) album in 1986 was very interesting as it described Simon traveling to South Africa, assembling the musicians, and trying to get the right sound.

One of my favorite passages covered the 2003 Simon and Garfunkel reunion tour (that I saw in San Jose) that included special guests the Everly Brothers. I remember the Everly Brothers being invited on stage midway through the show as Paul Simon told of them being one of the original inspirations for their music, and particularly remember a fantastic rendition of “Bye Bye Love” where Simon and Garfunkel sang with the Everly Brothers.

Another memorable passage talks about Simon performing at the 2006 New Orleans jazzfest, the first after Hurricane Katrina. Quint Davis, the organizer of jazzfest, is quoted as saying: “Paul and the music meant so much to everyone that there were a hundred thousand hands in the air and a hundred thousand eyes crying. The highlight was when he brought out Allen Toussaint and Irma Thomas to join him on “Bridge Over Troubled Water”. It was the most emotional moment that we’ve ever had at the festival. He wasn’t a musician. He was a hero.”

Here’s a song that I “Shazamed” from a movie that was playing in the background while I was reading – “Holes” by Mercury Rev from their 1998 album “Deserters Songs”. I hadn’t heard the band before and some quick research told me that this was their big break through album and included appearances by Levon Helm and Garth Hudson of The Band – no wonder it caught my attention as those are two of my favourite musicians.

Week in Review – August 19, 2018

This was another quiet week at home for me, with Diana traveling to St. Petersburg, Florida on Thursday and Friday, where she finished out a very busy work week.

McD solving an outage late into the night

We met Brent for coffee and a crossword after our workouts on Saturday morning. He refused to attempt the crossword after a quick glance over it – “I don’t have a crossword brain – good for puns and witty remarks, but not crosswords”. The time while not solving the crossword was put to good use – reading an article in the “Scientific Mind” on the fact that men with high testosterone also happen to be better dancers, hence the reason women are attracted to good dancers – honestly!

Saturday night brought a classic Texas torrential downpour and thunderstorm. This one lasted much longer than normal and provided the garden with a good soaking.

I finished the novel “Wonder Boys” by Michael Chabon this week. Chabon is perhaps my favorite author and the film from this book is also one of my favorites, so I had quite high hopes for this read. It did not disappoint. I enjoyed it more than Telegraph Avenue, which was one of my most enjoyable reads last year. The characters and crazy antics built around a writers celebration at a Pittsburgh college are excellent. It’s difficult to set aside visions of the actors who played the main characters – Michael Douglas, Robert Downey Jr., Katie Holmes, Tobey Maguire, and Patricia Clarkson – but I tried hard and enjoyed the written characters even more than the visual versions. I’m looking forward to catching up on some more of Chabon’s catalog in the near future.

Aretha Franklin passed away this week. “Live at the Fillmore West” is one of my top 10 live albums and I listened to it a couple of times this week. Aretha’s concert piano technique coupled with the versatility, soulfulness, and range of her voice make this album very special. Here’s a sample – a duet with the unforgettable Ray Charles:

Wow! – I’ve seen some amazing shows at the Fillmore in San Francisco, but nothing like this. One of my all time favorite Aretha performances was at the Kennedy Center Honors when she performed for Carole King’s induction – “Feel Like a Natural Woman”. The reactions from Carole and President Obama say it all.

An advertisement for a Blue Note concert by Maceo Paker, saxophonist for James Brown in the 1960s and Parliament Funkadelic in the 1970s, included a link to this video featuring Trombone Shorty from New Orleans. This might be the best trombone solo I’ve come across:

And finally on the music front, a music video that a friend turned me on to this week. The band is called Meute. They hail from Hamburg and describe their music as “German techno marching band”. I like the horn arrangements and performance very much.

Week in Review – August 5, 2018

Diana made her first business trip for her new job on Monday and Tuesday. The destination was San Jose and the meeting seems to have gone well. She was entertained to find a picture of an old typewriter in her room – they show up everywhere since we saw the California Typewriter movie.

This picture from her flight home shows the layer of smoke from the massive California wildfires that continue to burn. The Mendocino fire is now the largest in recorded history with close to 300,000 acres burned.

I dropped Diana off for her flight and we stopped into my favorite Dallas area coffee shop, Redefined coffee in Grapevine, for coffee and a crossword on the way. When I arrived at my office I found a nice new mousepad on my desk – a gift from Mike Mead that merges the Scottish and American flags in a creative way.

On Thursday we flew to Pensacola, Florida to rendezvous with Denny, Anne, Jack, Mason, and Sabine for a long weekend in Navarre beach. Anne’s parents, Carolyn and Jack, have a condo there that they live in during the winter months. Navarre beach is located on a very thin sliver of an island that parallels the coast – it takes just a couple of minutes to walk from the leeward to the gulf side of the island.

We stopped at the Union Public House in Pensacola for a drink and a snack before making the drive. The crab fingers and scotch eggs were very good.

Our next stop was at Joe Patti for fresh seafood. This place had the largest and most impressive array that I’ve seen – amazing variety. Denny picked up some scallops and lump crab meat.

Diana captured this picture of the gorgeous sandy beaches as we drove along the island. Here are some of the lovely views from the condo after we arrived.

Denny and Anne cooked up an amazing feast for dinner including perfectly cooked fresh scallops with tzatziki sauce. That was followed by a pretty wild game of cards against humanity which Mason won, just edging Denny and me.

Diana and I did some work calls first thing in the morning and after a late, lazy breakfast, we headed over to the beach on Friday and stayed there until a thunder storm rolling in from offshore seemed ready to soak us. Then we headed to T.J.s in Navarre proper on the mainland for a late lunch.

Our Friday night entertainment was a walk down to Juana’s to listen to the live band. The music was classic rock which everyone (except maybe Denny) enjoyed. The people watching in the music section of the bar was some of the best I’ve seen in a while with all kinds of characters involved. It became clear why the floor of the bar was nice soft sand.

Saturday morning was a repeat of Friday with a trip over to the beach. The current and waves were much calmer and so we were able to spend some more time playing in the sea. Lunch was at Windjammer on the pier where Anne and Diana had found some impressive sand art on their earlier walk down the beach.

Sunday morning brunch was amazing crab benedicts assembled by Chef Denny, Anne with a small contribution from me. After brunch we enjoyed some quality time on the massive blow up island in the water out behind the condo. Diana tried out Anne’s paddleboard and did very well – no falling at all.

D paddle boarding – should she be that far out?

Then it was that awful time again – time to leave the Ogans and fly home to boring, land-locked McKinney. Thanks to Mr. Denny for driving us to the Pensacola airport. The candle that Anne gifted to Diana caused some brief interest from the Pensacola TSA staff.

My cigar cutter and ashtray set up caused me to be stopped for a bag check on the way out of Dallas to Pensacola and I was lucky to get a TSA agent who was also a cigar aficionado and let it pass. So we were able to get extra screening on both legs of the trip.

Jack had Anne send us home with a gift from him (one that didn’t alert TSA) – a piece of wine cork art that is now hanging in our bar area.

A huge thanks to Jack and Carolyn for the use of their condo for an excellent long weekend!

My reading this week has been from the new Paul Simon biography. I’m about half way through and around 1974 when “Still Crazy After All These Years” was released. This has been a very interesting read – I enjoy hearing about the inspiration for the songs and the special recording techniques and musicians used on the various albums. I was interested to learn that the Muscle Shoals “Swampers” were the key musicians on the “Rhymin’ Simon” album – one of my favorites. It’s amazing how many of the records that I love were recorded at Muscle Shoals with that great cadre of musicians.

Here’s a song from that album:

Denny turned me on to a great version of “As Long as I Can See the Light” by My Morning Jacket while we were in Navarre:

And to finish out the music section this week, here’s an excellent song by Little Richard with Jimi Hendrix on guitar and Billy Preston on organ that I heard about through the Immortal Jukebox blog (highly recommended):

Week in Review – July 15, 2018

We arrived in Glasgow via Houston and London Heathrow on Thursday afternoon in time to celebrate my Mum’s 80th birthday. Diana did a nice job of wrapping her gift, a necklace with birthstones for each of the grandchildren, in a fancy stack. We were amazed at the array of 80th birthday cards – no two the same. You just don’t get that kind of selection with us. The weather during our visit was perfect and a very nice change from the 100 degree temperatures that we left behind in Dallas.

On Friday we decided to take a trip up to Glasgow in the afternoon. We parked at Buchanan Galleries and enjoyed lunch in Princes Square. It was fun to observe the various buskers along Buchanan Street and to see all the people enjoying their lunch al fresco. As we were leaving I spotted a dinosaur exhibit in the shopping mall and was able to coax McD into hatching from a dino egg.

On Saturday we went for a walk along the front at Troon which came with a stop for ice cream at a kiosk by the beach. David brought Penelope’s Cousin (PC), his new Porsche Cayman GTS, to Merrick View for a visit in the afternoon and then we went for an exhilarating drive on the Fenwick road.

Saturday evening brought the 80th birthday celebration dinner at Lochgreen. This is the same place where we had my Dad’s birthday party and we reprised family pictures before going in for dinner.

We had a lovely meal and Lorna provided one of her typically creative birthday cakes.

We slept in late on Sunday and then David took us to Brig o’ Doon for coffee and a snack in the afternoon. President Trump was leaving from Prestwick airport and the traffic of protestors and observers made for a slower than normal trip. The Brig o’ Doon is situated in Alloway, home of Scotland’s most famous poet, Robert Burns. His poem, Tam o’ Shanter, finishes with his trusty horse, Meg, helping him escape witches giving chase after a night of too much imbibing. Meg makes it across the Brig o’ Doon only by shedding her tail to the witch. Here is the original verse and a translation.

There was a wedding going on and so we were asked to move out of the backdrop for the wedding pictures as we posed atop Brig o’ Doon.

That’s Heather’s new boyfriend, Michael, holding her hand as they ascend the bridge. He seems like a lovely young man in spite of being vegan. I got a picture of Diana under a line from another of Burns’ poems that I sang for her on St. Valentine’s day. My Mum commented that the gesture wasn’t complete without presentation of a red rose to accompany the song.

We enjoyed a lovely dinner of my Mum’s famous boeuf bourguignon and individual pavlovas on Sunday evening before Heather, David and Struan had to head back to Aberdeen for work on Monday.

I finished a couple of books this week. “Famous Father Girl” by Jamie Bernstein tells of her life growing up as the daughter of Leonard Bernstein. I enjoyed this very much – particularly her stories about her Dad preparing to conduct some of the famous symphonies around the world.

The other was “Still Alice” by Lisa Genova. I loved “Every Note Played” earlier this year and my Mum had left this one on the bedside table for me to read during the visit. I enjoyed this one very much as well – Genova does an amazing job of capturing what it must feel like to face the onset of early Alzheimer’s.

Week in Review – July 8, 2018

At last, a mostly peaceful week at home for both of us. Diana worked hard for four solid days to continue to come up to speed on her new job, her accounts, and the people that she works with. I had a couple of busy days with high impact outages and other annoyances. However, I was able to watch some of the World Cup and particularly enjoyed the Japan vs Belgium and Brazil vs Belgium games. It’s fun to text back and forth with my friend Judy, soccer referee extraordinaire, in California about our predicted outcomes. She chose Brazil to beat Belgium and so lost that game, while I chose Sweden to beat England and lost that one. I’m predicting Belgium wins 2-1 over England in the final.

One of my favourite musical bloggers shared these thoughts about the best footballer ever in his opinion, the Scotsman Alan Gilzean. He was a wee bit before my time, but this video would support the commentary that follows it:

Alan Gilzean was to use a fine Scots term a supremely canny player. He seemed to have an advanced football radar system that allowed him to know exactly where he was in relation to his markers and his team mates.

He insouciantly brought off feats of skill and technique that other fine players could only dream of – leaving opponents admiringly bemused and teammates exhilarated.

But, with Alan Gilzean it’s not the numbers that you remember it’s the breathtaking elegance of his play – the way he could amaze you game after game with the subtlety of his footballing imagination.

Reading about Gilzean had my mind drifting back to Kenny Dalglish, my favourite Scottish footballer, and his goals for Scotland in the World Cup and his amazing performances with Celtic and Liverpool.

On a sad note, I heard of the passing of Henry Butler on Monday, at the young age of 69. Butler was born in New Orleans and lived there for much of his life, moving to Boulder, CO after Hurricane Katrina and finally living in New York where he was an active participant in the jazz scene.

I met Mr. Butler on my very first visit to New Orleans, about a year after Katrina. I was visiting some folks from my State Farm account team and met up with Denny and Anne after dinner. They took me to the original Rock N’ Bowl and then to see Kermit Ruffins at Vaughans. Henry Butler was sitting in on keyboards with Kermit and Anne introduced me to him as she was helping him to a taxi – Butler went blind from glaucoma at a very early age. What an amazing night that was and what a typical kind gesture from Anne.

I like what the New York Times had to say in their obituary:

Mr. Butler’s music was encyclopedic, precise and wild. He was acclaimed as a member of a distinctively New Orleans piano pantheon alongside Jelly Roll Morton, James Booker, Tuts Washington, Professor Longhair, Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint and Dr. John. He was also a forthright, bluesy singer who often used New Orleans standards as springboards for improvisation.

Mr. Butler commanded the syncopated power and splashy filigree of boogie-woogie and gospel and the rolling polyrhythms of Afro-Caribbean music. He could also summon the elegant delicacy of classical piano or hurtle toward the dissonances and atonal clusters of modern jazz. He could play in convincing vintage styles and sustain multileveled counterpoint, then demolish it all in a whirlwind of genre-smashing virtuosity.

Dr. John (Mac Rebennack) once described him as “the pride of New Orleans and a visionistical down-home cat and a hellified piano plunker to boot.”

Ivan Neville, who leads the New Orleans band Dumpstaphunk and recorded with Mr. Butler as part of the all-star group New Orleans Social Club, said by email on Tuesday that Mr. Butler was “an amazingly, truly gifted musician and pianist like no other.” He added, “At times it sounded like he had three or four hands instead of just two.”

My big take away from this is – go and see the great live performers while you can! Make the effort to get out and see live music – you’ll rarely regret it.

Our noisy pool pump got even noisier this week and finally gave up the ghost. An expensive but much, much quieter pump has now been installed and is working very well. The great news is we’ll no longer be awakened by the pump turning on and off during the winter nights. It turns out the pump had been leaking for a while and supporting an outbreak of weeds in the pool equipment area – McD with her weed gun to the rescue!

Patty and Brent joined us for dinner on July 4th. Diana was hungry when she went shopping for dinner and so we had several courses – D’s famous meat and cheese platters, lamb chops on the grill, a selection of sausages with a selection of mustards, caprese, shrimp and veggie fries. There were lots of leftovers for the rest of the week. We decided not to brave the crowds to watch live fireworks and settled for the New York music and fireworks display on television – a sign of aging I’m sure.

We watched the movie “A Song for You” on Friday night. This film gives a behind the scenes look at 40 years of the PBS music show “Austin City Limits”.

I really enjoyed the view into what makes this show special as well as the commentary from musicians and the clips of archive performances – those by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Ray Charles being highlights.

Saturday took us back to the Kessler for perhaps our last concert with Patty and Brent before they move north – I’m sure we’ll try to tempt them to visit in the future with upcoming concerts. They’ve been working through a list of Dallas restaurants that they want to try or revisit before moving and chose North Italia at the new Legacy West development for our pre-concert dinner. The home made pasta dishes were excellent. Patty found a perfect new car for David parked across from the restaurant:

The concert was by the Devon Allman Band with opener Duane Betts. Devon is the son of the late Gregg Allman who started the Allman Brothers Band (one of my very favourites) with his brother Duane Allman and Dickie Betts on guitars. Duane is the son of Dickie and (you guessed it) named after Duane Allman. Both Devon and Duane played sets of their own music and then concluded with a tribute to their fathers and the Allman Brothers.

The opening dual guitar riff from “Blue Sky” always makes us smile:

The music is very much from the Southern Rock genre with a strong blues element. We particularly enjoyed Devon’s cover of “I’ll be Around”, originally recorded by The Spinners.

Devon was very brave when he rambled through the audience playing a guitar solo and stood up on one of the folding chairs beside us.

What a great night of music – right in my sweet spot with the dual guitars.

We stayed at the Joule hotel downtown after the show – a chance for Patty and Brent to treat themselves before moving. A good feature of this hotel is the champagne they serve you as you check in. That might be Diana’s favourite part of the hotel.

I finished “Blue Lightning” by Ann Cleeves this week. This was one of the books I got from my Mum and Dad for my birthday and is set on Fair Isle (located about half way between Shetland and Orkney islands) and a birders paradise. A body is discovered in a bird observatory and detective Jimmy Perez has to solve the murder in the middle of a very strong storm. I enjoyed the insight into the competitive bird spotting world and the twists and turns of the murder mystery plot. Fair Isle is also known for very intricately designed hand knitted sweaters.

Here’s one more song from Devon Allman to finish out the post this week:

Week in Review – July 1, 2018

Back to New York again on Monday for a week of long meetings every day. My flight was delayed by a few hours while a tire was changed and extra fuel was added so I was a bit grumpy by the time it took off. The movie “The Death of Stalin” really cheered me up. I had no idea what to expect and quickly started chuckling at the crazy exploits of the Russian leadership as Stalin dies and they compete for power. The actors include Jeffrey Tambor, Steve Buscemi and Michael Palin and all are hilarious. The movie was directed by Armando Ianucci, whom I’d never heard of. Some quick research showed him to be Scottish from Italian descent and a graduate of the University of Glasgow – might explain why I enjoyed the dark, off-kilter humor so much. I also learned that he was a bit part of the creative force behind the HBO series “Veep” – a show that I love and McD doesn’t – it’s just a bit too raunchy and wrong for her and she can’t understand what’s funny. Here’s Ianucci and the cast being interviewed about the movie and drawing some direct comparisons from the Stalin era politics to our current leadership.

On the drive in from the airport I heard this excellent song by Book T and the MGs. It’s rare to hear Booker T on the piano versus the Hammond organ and I love the gospel feel of the guitar by the legendary Steve Cropper. Sunday Sermon was originally the B side to their 1970 cover of “Something” by George Harrison.

After checking into my new favourite Wall Street area hotel, the Downtown Association, I headed out for a quick dinner and found a new Mediterranean place around the corner named Zeytin. The food was very good with lamb-beef doner meat that reminded me of the late night kebab shops that Andy Bull loved so much in our Edinburgh university days. The beet hummus was also very nice. A good new place for a quick and casual lunch or dinner.

When I made it back to the hotel room the Jools Holland show was on TV and a very unique looking musician named Seasick Steve was performing. He was born in Oakland, CA and is now 78 and has had a very interesting life. He lived as a hobo for many years – jumping trains and working short term jobs. He played in blues bands and as a session musician and producer. In the 1990s he produced albums by Modest Mouse and in 2006 he received his big musical break appearing on the Jools Holland show in the UK for the first time. He went on to perform at many large festivals and won several awards. Seasick Steve makes many of his unique guitars and other instruments.

Here are some pictures of Heather preparing to attend her graduation ceremony on Tuesday to receive her first class Honors law and languages degree. Everyone is exceptionally proud of her accomplishment.

On Tuesday night I decided to try out a new jazz club I had read about in Tribeca – 75 Club. It advertised a speakeasy style basement jazz club. One of the great features of New York is that you can take the subway to any neighborhood and stumble across a very good restaurant. I was drawn to Serafina at West Broadway and Chambers Street and had a delicious dish of scallops with celery root puree and shaved black truffles.

Now it was time to try out the 75 Club which lived up to its advertising very nicely. As I approached the club I was surprised to find a large collection of semi trucks full of movie gear and catering stations set up all along Murray Street. The film crew was eating in the first floor of the Bogardus mansion that houses the 75 Crew. A quick bit of research revealed that they were filling a scene for an episode of the show “Ray Donovan” starring Liev Schreiber. I’m amazed at how many people it takes to put a show like that together.

Named after its builder, James Bogardus, the originator of cast-iron architecture, the building was built in 1850 and features a 5-story facade replicating the late 15th century Palazzo Veladramini in Venice. It now serves as a very popular space for wedding and special events.

The pianist and bass player, Tardo Hammer and John Webber, were sitting at the bar telling stories when I arrived in the basement of the mansion. This was equally good entertainment to the music that they performed to a very small Monday night crowd.

I would like to return to this venue on a weekend night and enjoy their nice club table seating and acoustics.

I snapped a couple of pictures of the Oculus rail terminal and Freedom Tower on my walk to and from the club.

Meanwhile, in Arroyo Grande/Pismo Beach, California, Momma D was busy babysitting Lily and Ben. She seemed to do a good job of swinging Ben and had a good visit with Alicia to her new home at Cuesta college. I think McD worked much harder than I did this week – and I know I was pretty tired by the end of the week.

Wednesday night took me to the Blue Note jazz club in Greenwich Village to see the band Lettuce. This is a New Orleans style funk jam band featuring a stellar group of very in demand musicians – Adam Deitch on drums, Adam Smirnoff on guitar, Erick Coomes on bass, Nigel Hall on keyboards, Ryan Zoidis on saxophone, and Eric Bloom on trumpet.

Alicia and I saw Lettuce at the Granada theater in Dallas about 9 months ago and so I was excited to see them on the line up this week. I enjoyed the diverse crowd as compared to typical Blue Note shows – the lady at the table next to me introduced me to her eighty year old parents who were looking forward to the show.

After Lettuce I met up with my old boss who was in town for the night. We wandered down the street to a music club called Groove that had another great band playing and had a good chat for a while.

My flight back on Thursday was delayed by lightning and we ended up sitting on the plane for over 2 hours at La Guardia before take off – delays both ways on this trip which hasn’t happened to me in a while. Diana was flying back from California and we had arranged to meet in Dallas and share a car home. Fortunately, her flight was delayed almost as much as mine and everything worked out well, albeit a few hours late.

On Friday we had Rachel and her boyfriend Rich over for dinner. Neither of us remembered until Thursday night and didn’t have anything in the house for dinner so ordered pizza and arancini from Cavalis. We were both tired but had a very nice visit and enjoyed meeting Rich- we approve.

Saturday took us to Poor David’s Pub for the first time in a couple of years to see Sawyer Fredericks. We had dinner before the show at a restaurant in Deep Ellum called Local that Diana chose. Local is housed in what was once the Boyd hotel and is very modern and minimalist inside. The Boyd hotel was built in 1911 and is one of the last remaining building in Dallas with a cast iron front. I didn’t know there was such a thing until earlier this week when I read about the Bogardus mansion that houses the 75 Club and learned that Bogardus invented the technique. The hotel was a hub for jazz and blues musicians in the 1920s with Leadbelly and Blind Lemon Jefferson (the father of Texas blues) both staying there. It’s also well known as having been a hangout for Bonnie and Clyde. We enjoyed the restaurant very much with Diana opting for the filet while I had a very tasty sea bass.

D’s champagne cocktail with house made sorbet

We checked into the Nylo hotel after dinner and then made the short walk to Poor David’s Pub. The owner of the club, David Card, is celebrating his 41st year of presenting music in Dallas and we had a very nice visit with him prior to the show starting. He used Diana’s comment about how young Sawyer is (19) in his opening as he had thought he was ten years older. I enjoyed David telling me about his top 10 list of shows he’s presented.

View of Reunion Tower from the Nylo hotel

This poster inside Poor David’s shows what must have been an excellent show before Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen became so popular. I also enjoyed a new plaque that’s in the walkway in front of the club.

Sawyer won the TV singing competition “The Voice” a couple of years ago and we both loved the tone and quality of his voice.

Here’s a video of “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” – one of the songs we really enjoyed on the Voice.

The show was very good with Sawyer’s songs very mellow and deep for a 19 year old.

Patty and Brent stayed downtown on Saturday night as well to celebrate Brent’s birthday and we were able to meet up with them on Sunday morning for a birthday brunch at Saint Ann.

I finished up “Emerald City” by Jennifer Egan during my travels and really enjoyed this collection of short stories. The theme connecting the various stories seemed to be using travel to escape financial or family traumas. I’ve enjoyed all of Egans books that I’ve read this year very much.

This song by St Paul and the Broken Bones came on a Spotify radio channel that I created based on Anderson East and I don’t remember enjoying a song this much on a first listen in a while.

Week in Review – June 24, 2018

We arrived home from California on Monday just in time for Diana to rest up for the big day – Back to Work! She started as a VP of Operations for NTT Data on Tuesday. Her week was spent meeting her team, peers, and folks that she’ll be working with – a busy week of back to back meetings and trying to keep all the names straight. She seems to be working with a good group of people and will enjoy it once she gets settled back into a routine.

We had been looking forward to our Saturday concert for a while – The Eagles with special guest Chris Stapleton at AT&T Stadium (the Cowboys home stadium) in Arlington. If you ask Diana who her favourite band is, she’ll always answer that it’s the Eagles. We were guests in a suite that included dinner in a nice club and so arrived early to beat the crowd of 75,000 entering the stadium and enjoy a relaxing dinner. This also allowed Diana to select the perfect seat in the box.

Chris Stapleton has an interesting story. He moved to Nashville to be a songwriter and has contributed over 150 songs to albums by such artists as Adele, Luke Bryan, Tim McGraw, George Strait and Brad Paisley. He has won five Grammy awards and seven Academy of Country Music awards. His performing career really took off in 2015 when he sang his cover of the song Tennessee Whiskey from his recently released Traveler album as a duet with Justin Timberlake at the Country Music Awards. A huge audience was introduced to his soulful voice and guitar playing and the album was number one for many weeks.

We both thoroughly enjoyed Stapleton’s show which included all our favourites – “Fire Away”, “Traveler”, “Parachute”, “Broken Halos”, and “Tennessee Whiskey”.

By the time the Eagles took the stage at 9pm on the dot, the stadium had filled to a capacity of close to 75,000. The band included long time members Don Henley, Timothy B. Schmitt, and Joe Walsh with new additions Vince Gill and Deacon Frey (replacing his father and founding Eagle, Glenn Frey, who died in 2016). Do you think Deacon looks anything like his father at the same age?

Timothy B Schmitt – Love Will Keep Us Alive

The new members did a great job as you can see in the video of Vince Gill singing “Take it to the Limit”.

The last time we saw Timothy B. Schmitt was in the small, intimate Granada theater and AT&T stadium is about as far from that as could be imagined.

Here’s Deacon singing one of the songs that his Dad made famous:

The top song of the night for me was a cover of the Tom Waits song “Ole 55”:

The first encore was the song most associated with the Eagles, “Hotel California”. I enjoyed the trumpet introduction – there was a 5 piece brass section on several songs including the James Gang song “Funk 49”.

Of course there were the classic Joe Walsh songs – “Life’s Been Good” and “Rocky Mountain Way”:

And it all came to a close over two and a half hours later with Diana’s favourite, “Desperado”:

We spent the night at a hotel near the airport so that Diana could catch her flight out to California to babysit for John and Maddi, who are enjoying a few days in Hawaii. She’ll enjoy spending time with Alicia before she starts college.

I had a quiet, relaxing Sunday afternoon and finished the book, “The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music” by Steve Lopez. Lopez is a Los Angeles Times journalist and this book is about his experiences in befriending a mentally ill homeless man who he had noticed to be an amazingly gifted musician. As it turned out, the man, Nathaniel Ayers, had been trained in classical music at Juilliard. He attended Juilliard on a full scholarship from 1970 – 1972, when black students were extremely rare – especially ones from lower-middle-class, single-parent families. He did extremely well in that ultra-competitive and stressful environment (straight A’s in music performance classes; and also in other classes until his schizophrenia kicked in and his grades began to fall) until the illness finally forced him out. Ayers had been living on the streets for 33 years and was in his mid-50’s when Lopez met him.

This beautifully empathetic and honest book is as much about Lopez’s efforts to help Ayers as it is about Ayers himself. There are many memorable sections – one of my favourites describes Ayers’ reunion with Yo Yo Ma at Disney Concert Hall – they attended Juilliard at the same time. The book concludes with Ayers finally accepting use of an apartment and music studio in a care facility on Skid Row – he is the musician in residence at the studio.

I highly recommend this book.

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