Last night’s gig was productive in all sorts of ways. First, I got to play for the first time with  Marcus Graf. Actually, last night was the first time I’d ever met Marcus. This is a circumstance which is not unusual at all on a jazz bandstand, though if this were a “social” gig, it’d be very bad form to walk up at a private gig, in plain sight of guests at a party, and introduce yourself to to another musician in the band for the first time. Sao Paulo’s is, thankfully, not nearly so picky on this point. Anyways, it was great playing with him, though honestly I will ask him to turn more towards me next time he plays so that I can hear him. What I could hear sounded great, though.

Another nice thing – for only the second time in my life, I had the bass player – Jon Blondell – ask to grab a copy of the sheet music for one of my tunes. This is quite flattering, since everyone knows that the only person on the bandstand guaranteed to know what’s going on is the bassist. Especially if it’s Jon. Jon wanted to grab a copy for his band on Tuesday at the Elephant Room, to play and maybe record. Totally cool with me. My only demand is 50% on every dime past $500K in profit that they make on that record (please note that the song in question –  ”I Don’t Know, I Don’t Care” – has actually already been recorded, and is available on the album “Who I Am”  in Napster, on iTunes, and at Amazon.com, Cheapo Discs, and Waterloo Records).

Finally, as a very nice surprise, after we finished and I dropped off our sax player, Philipe Vieux, he asked me to hang on a sec while he ran in to grab something from his apartment. It was a very cool reharmonization – in C# – of Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal – an old work song that he was working on with Wakie in lessons. He’d promised Wakie he’d transcribe the tune so that I could try it out with my band, and here it is – a really crazy (in the good sense of the word) looking version, titled “Twenty Three Kilometers”; I guess Philipe was stopping just short of a literal transcription.

Sorry about that, I couldn’t resist.