Last night I watched Joe Hen­ry at a dinner/​jazz club called the Dako­ta here in Min­neapo­lis. The venue took a lit­tle while to get used to — I am a lit­tle weird­ed out by music need­ing din­ner to make it an event — but once I set­tled in the show was real­ly amaz­ing. I’ve been real­ly into Joe Hen­ry as a pro­duc­er for years but nev­er real­ly lis­tened to his work as an artist, and now that I’ve seen him live I feel like I have catch­ing up to do. It was a pow­er­ful show.

After the show I snuck towards the stage to say hi to and basi­cal­ly fawn over drum­mer Jay Bellerose, whose play­ing and gen­er­al atti­tude towards music has been real­ly inspir­ing to me over the years. I told him as much and the result­ing con­ver­sa­tion did very lit­tle to change that.

What I am try­ing to say is that last night was a pret­ty good night.

So…lots going on in the still-cold-but-slow­ly-defrost­ing-in-the-teas­ing-rays-of-Spring city of Min­neapo­lis lately.

Along with the sun­shine comes a slew of albums I’ve been work­ing on the past few months…you can check them out here if you’re inter­est­ed. Jim’s (aka the Mad Rip­ple) record was par­tic­u­lar­ly fun as I showed up to the stu­dio at 9 p.m. and by mid­night we had the entire record (well, the drum tracks) in the can. If I get to do his next record I plan on get­ting four­teen songs in 30 min­utes, and I might even attempt a ​“sec­ond” take, which I hear is all the rage in stu­dios nowadays.

My Big Project this Spring is pro­duc­ing a record with my friend Dave Olson…Dave is from Iowa City and has a great sense of melody and song. It’s a chal­lenge for me as that side of music isn’t real­ly my forte (can ​“son­ic insan­i­ty” be con­sid­ered a forte?) but an excit­ing one. More bul­letins as events warrant…

The biggest news for me per­son­al­ly over the last few months was say­ing good­bye to a week­ly gig I’ve been play­ing for the bet­ter part of two years. Nye’s in NE Min­neapo­lis is still the best place to be in Amer­i­ca on a Wednes­day night but it’s time to move on and find some new musi­cal road for awhile. The band — Mol­ly Maher, Erik Kosk­i­nen, Paul Bergen — is awe­some and I’ll still be play­ing with them from time to time.

There’s a say­ing, though, that when one door clos­es anoth­er door opens, and behind that door will be a band called Davina and the Vagabonds who are look­ing for a drum­mer. That’s the say­ing, right? Either way, it’s a pret­ty accu­rate because as of now I am offi­cial­ly a Vagabond. Davina’s music is a lot of fun; it’s sort of root­ed in New Orleans jazz and swing but it def­i­nite­ly veers off into unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry every now and then. It’ll be inter­est­ing to see where we go… Also, to say this band stays busy is kind of an under­state­ment, so if you’re liv­ing in a city of some sort with peo­ple and build­ings chances are we’ll be play­ing there soon.

New (old) Radio Kings at Mas­ter­mix in Minneapolis.

I made this lit­tle mix a few months ago while try­ing to sell a set of DW drums…I used the kit on all of these songs and while the drums didn’t sell the mix is a pret­ty good snap­shot of some things I’ve been work­ing on the past year.

New (old) Lud­wigs at Sound Empo­ri­um in Nashville.

My friend Erik hipped me to this — advice from Thelo­nious Monk as record­ed by Steve Lacy. Very cool and rel­e­vant, and I need to have this print­ed out on fly­ers. (via croz​.fm)

If you nev­er knew Chris Gaffney, I’m not sure that this lit­tle eulo­gy is going to help any. To tell the truth, I didn’t know Chris very well — at least, as well as oth­ers — or for very long. But the mem­o­ries I have of him are just as good as any…and they feel good writ­ing them down.

I met Chris while play­ing in what was to become the Hacien­da Broth­ers. Born from an ​“all-star” band of sorts, the ear­ly ver­sion of the Hacien­da Broth­ers fea­tured Chris Gaffney, Dave Gon­za­les, and Ted­dy Mor­gan. We had a lot of trou­ble set­tling on a name. Chris’s sug­ges­tion? The Axis of Evil. Per­fect. I think up until the day he died Chris was a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed that name didn’t get picked.

Chris was always a lot of fun, even when he wasn’t. He loved music but hat­ed being in the stu­dio. I like to think that lis­ten­ing to that first record I can hear the dif­fer­ence between the first takes — when he still want­ed to be there — ver­sus any­thing lat­er. Chris was the kind of guy to wear his heart on his sleeve, no mat­ter what shape it was in. 

I had a lot of fun talk­ing with Chris on the road. He would tell me com­plete­ly ran­dom sto­ries about his box­ing career or his war career or his music career; sto­ries that, look­ing back, make me real­ize that it’s sur­pris­ing this is the first time Chris has died. He’s lived enough lives to have done it a few times, at least. 

One of the sweet­est and most mean­ing­ful things ever said to me was from him. ​“Richard,” he said, ​“I know I’m not your real grand­fa­ther but if it’s okay with you I’d like to be your musi­cal grand-dad.”

“You can’t be my grand­fa­ther,” I said. ​“You’re the same age as my dad.”

“Well,” he said. ​“We’ll work some­thing out.”