A Great Outing

The StillWaters Jazz Band played at Dixie's this past Saturday. In spite of the cold, rainy weather we still had a good-sized crowd in attendance.

The band was the best we have been so far. It was a lot of fun playing and everyone really seemed to enjoy it. I think that my favorite part of playing out is getting to see people who are really having a good time and really enjoying the music. It is very gratifying. I heard one woman say that our music made her want to get up and dance. That was cool.

I still botched about half of my solos, but I guess it is OK. It just gives me something to shoot for. The area where I seemed to improve most this time out was with rhythm. I really mixed the rhythms up even within the individual songs. It was a new level for me to step outside of things that were working and experiment with shaking things up. It made for some diversity in the music. I've never felt the freedom to try that before.

We had a good rehearsal last night and will be adding St. Louis Blues in response to a request that we received at Dixie's. We also worked on Bye Bye Blackbird, and for the first time we actually didn't stink it up. Hopefully, we will be able to add both to our play list soon. These songs have very tough rhythms and if they aren't just right the song is awful. We may also be adding The Preacher to our repertoire in the coming weeks.

The band has concerts coming up on April 12 and 19. We will be at the NC Veteran's Home in Salisbury on the 12th and we'll be at the Salisbury Brian Center on the 19th. Both shows are from 3:00 to 5:00. We will also be looking to schedule another date at Dixie's sometime in April. (It will probably be on a Saturday, which kind of narrows things down. Also look for us to play there in May.)

If you are interested in having us play for you or your group let me know by emailing me. The address is sjb at realsalisbury dot com. (The address is written that way to keep spammers from mining the address from this post.) Make sure to give me a contact number where you can be reached. Hope to see you soon!