Lately..

Thursday night ASB played at Thirsty Ear Tavern with the LES Crew. These guys are sooo good, another grrrrrrreat (Tony the Tiger anyone?) C-Bus band, man this city is oozing with talent. This hip hop crew started as a three piece and grew quickly to a live band with up to eight members. First of all, everyone in the band but the guitarist, drummer, and bass player raps...WTF? AND they are all good, and one of them in addition to rapping, Ev Jones has a beautiful soulful voice ala Ceelo. Oh yeah, and DJ Red Sun also has a great voice, this band alone is oozing. My good friend Carlos, a recent import from New York, who is a great supporter of ASB is now helping out with management for LES. Not only is he great support, he also is a great performer. Carlos hopped on stage w/LES and blew the roof off the place, such energy, look for good things from him in the past, he is currently working on his own band with members of LES and other local C-Bus favs. So before I got on that tangent, the Thirsty Ear. It was a great night, tons of supportive people. I worked all day today on a video that will be coming out soon using footage from that night. Thanks to Ginger and everyone else who helped film the night.

Friday night I played with Matt Monta and the Hot Coal Band at Mickey's Bar on 5th in Grandview. This place is interesting, Bree (singer/cello/goddess in MMHCB) described it in a text asking people to come out to the gig Friday as "just like grandpa's basement". Only such characters come out at Mickey's, you have to just go to experience it. It is normally a karaoke bar but has a decent sized stage and room. The Resistors played after us and jammed out the rest of the night. We ended early at around 11pm and I left during the Resistors set to catch Tony aka G. Finesse and his N.S. Crew. AGAIN, with the live hip hop bands, so good to see this stuff coming up in the local scene, and by that I mean the scene I am involved in. I am sure there have been tons of live hip hop bands (have there?) grace Columbus but I am just getting hip to this and I love it. I know Stretch Lefty has been doing there live band hip hop thing for a while which I love. Also rappers like Envelope and Catalyst blow it up but I don't believe they have live backing bands. For me it makes a huge difference. I caught the last part of G. Finesse's set at Ruby's and it was great. He even threw in a cover of "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" by Chili Peppers and spit his own verse on top of it, niiiice. Tony has amazing stage presence and you can feel his passion for the art. The horns (Evan Oberla, Terrence Farmer, and Colin (forget his last name)) in addition to the guitar, bass, drums (Mike Twice shout out) just rounded the groove out. Oh, and I missed Kristen Marie but if there weren't enough going on for you, she plays cello with this hip hop crew. Something to definitely see.

Tonight I play at Bernies, last time I played there there was barely any sound equipment, I think the sound man was sleeping during our set, and plenty of charm...if ya want to call it that. Actually, if ya put that stuff aside Bernies aint that bad. It does not pretend to be anything it is not, a basement under High Street on campus. The vibe is usually pretty chill there and you find some cool people that are into the music so I am excited to see what happens tonight. Matt Monta and the Hot Coal Band can be found here if ya haven't heard it.

I am having a songwriter night coming up at my house where people gather around and share new songs/old songs or whatever they want in an acoustic setting. It has been a great thing every time I put one together. This time it is a pot luck, let me know if you want any info about this, anyone can come. My duets project is coming along as well, not sure if I wrote about it but Kerry Henderson and I just recorded a track. 5 tracks down, about 5 to go, ideally. That's it for now PEACE.