My Ridiculous Festival Schedule
Posted on 2026-09-23
I'm back in school. I had Alex Upton for Jazz Improv last term and Logan Smoot this term. I think the Lab Band Is playing Helena West Helena on their second concert.
I put on five acts at the KASU Arkansas Roots Stage last Saturday at the Beatles at the Ridge Festival in Walnut Ridge.
Jazz Buskers with Eliecer Tamez on trumpet and Neale Bartee trombone. Ryan Hartness is also playing trumpet. He was in the Copyright Infringement band at Delta Jazz Workshop and graduated as a vocals major. They are all singing giving us five vocalists total with most of them writing their own harmonies.
So, an octet with 5 horns and 5 vocalists. Also everyone except the bass plays hand percussion. No drums. It's an ambitious project.
Our set
Eliecer improvises a solo with muted trumpet (a nod to Miles). Then we all sing Summertime and after a horn feature and solos Eliecer sings it out in his own amazing way.
Ryan Hartness sings Nature Boy just like Nat King Cole. Eliecer solos.
Neale sings Fly Me To The Moon and everyone says Frank. He scats a chorus. Then a horn feature and soloists including Preston Morgan on tenor. Preston is a senior at Valley View and is one of our star soloists playing fills behind the vocals on all of our swing numbers.
Danielle Russell sings There Will Never Be Another You, again with a horn feature I wrote and solos. I also wrote the intro and the outtro which I play on piano.
I sing After You've Gone with a trumpet/alto duet before the solos and a shout chorus. Ryan Wright plays alto. He reads really well and swings but he doesn't improvise (yet) so I wro
te his solos (and the duet).
We close with Danielle singing my song, Freddy's Blues, which is a little piece of musical theater. We have an optional extended ending with round the block solos and a vocal re-ending. We didn't play the optional ending.
The idea is to be able to sound like a big band and like Manhatten Transfer, in our own way. All done with an octet.
I have prescient ears and I can already hear how we'll sound in a year.
We are Jazz Buskers and we can do this on battery power in the middle of a field.
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Jay Shepherd and Shane Chastain played as Silver Wings. Quality entertainment with dinner jackets. Jay is teaching at ASU again and about to finish his doctorate in guitar performance at Memphis.
My blues band, Delta Legends, burned it up, closing with Voodoo Child and All Along The Watchtower. Danielle sang Watchtower with me and then I did a harmonica solo with feedback. I wore Michael Doyle's hat for the Dylan song. Delta Legends is a vehicle to showcase John Shepherd's guitar work.
The Spencer Brothers sang old Johnny Cash songs. John Spencer is almost as old as I am.
And then my new band, #jazz #blues #fusion, closed the show with Jarrett Robinette sitting in on drums. James Carvell and I are the songwriters in the band and we do all originals. My son, Uldis, is playing bass in the band.
My daughters, Sarah and Gretchen, were both at the show.
I recorded all of this and I got video on almost all of it.
Saturday and Sunday is Blues Fest at the Craighead Forest Bandshell. Then The Biscuit (11 gigs in 4 days), The Levon Helm downhome Jamboree (dance party to tunes by The Band), The Renaissance Fair (helping with The Friends Of The Library Booth), and our Halloween Party (you're invited).
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