Jazz without and with Lady Blue

It was a sunny, sticky, hot time in the old town on the night of my recent Jazz In July performance on 7-15-08, themed "My Personal Giants of Jazz: Fats, Billie, Ella, and Irene", a retrospective marking 2008 as the 25th year of my singing career in our city. It was an outing that officially included "other" musicians than Lady Blue (David Larson on keys, Pat Noonan on drums, and the one and only Scot Sutherland on bass). But the Lady Blue spirit still surrounded me, starting with Ben's sons, JB and Jeremy setting up the P/A system--a great help from two awesome young guys who could have easily been in air-conditioning playing Guitar Hero. And on the day before the gig, the sad news came that Pat Noonan had a death in the family, so who stepped up to save the day? Why, our very own Randy Maker's Mark Ramaekers, who definitely made his mark with an A-game drum performance. And who rescheduled his other band's rehearsal so he could come and be with his Lady Blue posse to sit in on one jazzy tune? Why, our very own Kevin "sent from heaven" McGinnis, always a welcome bass presence on any song.

To top it all off, Alpha and Omega narrations were composed and read by Brandon, which were quite simply among the most magic moments of my existence, being honored in such a way by my very own husband, so affectionately and publicly.

Thanks to all who attended this special night, and to torment you further, here's some of what you missed if you were gone:

Fats Waller songs--Ain't Misbehavin, Honeysuckle Rose, Black and Blue
Billie Holiday songs-- God Bless The Child, We'll Be Together Again, I Love My Man (Billie's Blues)
Ella Fitzgerald songs--I Got Rhythm, It Don't Mean A Thing, Between The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (which featured a special "birthday boy" cameo by my old pal Dean Schmitz, doing an outstanding job on the drums), Lady Be Good
Irene Myles songs--In The Dark, Lady Irene, Foreign Land
Finale songs--The Apology (a beautiful jazz original by written by Brandon), Rain Like Jazz (original by me), and the amazing, emotional composition, Everything Must Change

Hope to see you on July 28 at Grace United Methodist Church for a night of acoustic duo jazz, with Brandon and me, where once again, we will summon the spirit of Lady Blue to surround us yet again for another special evening.

Wellmark, Winefest, Arts Festival

Have you ever been eagerly anticipating the chance to connect with your audience, only to discover that they are seemingly a football field's distance away from you? That's the story from our three recent above appearances. All 3 groups were adorable and well-intentioned. I could see on their faces that they wanted to "get this party started!" But due to the distance, as well as other factors, they stopped short of really letting themselves go.

It was indeed an honor to be featured at each of these high profile events, and even though the pep and interplay was decreased, the band still received high kudos from the groups after the fact. Only at the Arts Festival did we manage to reach across "the lawn" and get some booty-shakin' and shoutin' goin' on.

Actually these gigs did remind me of a weird oddity in performing which is, sometimes the quietest groups generate the most kudos, sometimes the loudest groups give little to no kudos (which isn't what it's all about anyway, but still feels good), sometimes the largest groups are touched the least, and sometimes (most of the time throughout my career) the littlest groups bear the greatest fruit and provoke the most impact. We'll just call this "the performance paradox."