We know that our guitar
playin’ friend Gary Hendrickson can play the blues. And we know people who say
that only through pain and adversity can you truly feel the blues. Well, after
a knee-repair relapse, Gary is feeling both. We all hope he heals quickly.
Gary’s misfortune
means Big Wes Turner’s Trio will NOT
be at the Essen Haus this Thursday (August 18). Instead, The Sparks Band will be playing their deep repertoire of hits and
obscurities from the 60s (with Tom sitting in on bass).
On Saturday, August
20, The Maintainers play on the deck at the Varsity Club in Merrimac
(inside if it rains). Blues stalwart Mel Ford on the guitar, rhythm section
Tom and Rick from Big Wes T’s Trio, and filling in for the vacationing
harmonica-man Frankie Lee, Ken “Birddog” Olufs. Where is the Varsity Club, you
ask? Head up through Lodi, past Okee, to Lake Wisconsin (also known as The
Wisconsin River), take the free ferry across, turn left, then keep eyes right.
You can’t miss it.
Still on the
calendar (Thursday, August 25), a concert right outside the Green County
courthouse in Monroe, Wisconsin, with the Birddog Blues Band
and the fabulous Family
Business.
And the very next
Saturday (August 27) The Sparks Band
steps in again at The Varsity Club—Beatles, Animals, Stones, and Kinks, Oh my!
Even Beau Brummels, and Left Banke. Easier than building a time machine.
That’s it for keeping
all up to date. Did anyone notice a promise to deliver more than a list of gigs
in the previous post? Something about the "ART" of
bands in bars. Well, time is short and the deadline looms, so we must make do
with this teaser...
...A svelte guy in
a sport coat and no shirt is up on a stage with a wireless microphone jumping
up and down in time to some music that is so dominated by booming bass-drum quarter
notes that its essence is mostly just that. His “band” is a couple of guys behind
him with laptops. In front of them are hundreds, maybe thousands, of people
yelling, screaming, pumping their arms in the air, and generally displaying
signs of excited participation in whatever it is you call this. A concert?
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