w/Willie Walker & We ‘R’ (2010)
I first heard Willie Walker sing when he'd sit in with "The Dixie's All-Stars" at a
Thursday night house job I had at Dixie's on Grand in St. Paul from '02 to '05 (the
"Dixie's All-Stars" was Billy Holloman, B3 organ and synth; Nick Dodd, drums; and
me, guitar - plus a cast of thousands). He floored me with his sweet, soulful voice
and from that first time I heard him I hoped I'd get the chance to work with him
regularly someday. Finally, in 2010 he was reforming his band and I got a call from
his trumpet player Steve "Tamu" Jones, who had been a regular at Dixie’s, if I'd
care to join. Sign me up!
These tunes were recorded live by Greg Harder off the mix board at the
Minnesota Music Cafe in St. Paul on Valentine's Day 2010, a couple weeks after I
joined. The musicians on these are: Willie Walker, vocals & guitar; Steve "Tamu"
Jones, trumpet & keyboards; Johnnie Timm, bass; Ron Maye, drums & vocals; and
Scott Ives, guitar.
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A Change Is Gonna Come
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What’s Goin’ On?
There’s a guitar solo somewhere around the middle of A Change Is Gonna Come
and one near the end of What’s Goin’ On?.
In 2012 We 'R' added two more members to the band to become a 7-piece:
Michael "Kenyatta" Johnson on saxophones and Jesse Mueller on keyboards - both
monster players. Hope to get some new recordings to add here soon.
Bassist Johnnie Timm is currently working/touring with Nicholas David Mrozinski
(of The Voice fame) and whenever Johnnie is out of town we are very fortunate to
have Wendell Thomas subbing on bass.
w/The Curly Martin Group
featuring Barbara LaShoure (2008)
These songs were recorded at Macho Nacho in Rochester MN in 2008 on a little
Sony 'MD' (mini-disc) recorder - the thing isn't much larger than a cell phone. We
placed it on a table 15 or so feet in front of the band, set it to record and voila -
not too bad. The musicians on this date are: Barbara LaShoure, vocals; Curly
Martin, drums; Brian Nielsen, Hammond organ; Nick Salisbury, bass; and Scott
Ives, guitar. These are all complete tunes. Cissy Strut and Don't Go To Strangers
are about 7.5 MB each, Let It Rock is 4 MB and Fever is 16 MB.
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Cissy Strut - instrumental. The quote at the end of the guitar solo is “Jean
Pierre” by Miles Davis and is for, and in memory of, my friend JV - James
Vasquez (aka: “Creeper”)
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Let It Rock - not crazy about my solo but like the song
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Don’t Go To Strangers - beautiful ballad sung beautifully by Barbara
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Fever - 16 minutes! - the last half or so of which is audience participation
(big fun). Organ solo begins at about 2:52, guitar solo about 4:30.
w/Big John Dickerson (2005)
I had the good fortune of working with Big John starting in 2001 and continued
working with him up to his semi-retirement in 2011. Biggie was/is a constant
source of inspiration and always amazes me with the energy and love he puts into
performing- even into his mid and upper 70s.
All of these clips are just my solos from the tunes and were lifted from videos of
three engagements at Legends in St. Cloud MN in 2005. The videos were recorded
by Mike Stomme on one camera, the audio was taken off the club's mix board
(Don LaBounty, sound engineer). The performers on the first two videos, songs
labeled as "L1" and "L2" , are: Big John Dickerson, vocals; Donald "Hye Pockets"
Robertson, drums; Lisa Yorke, keyboards & vocals; Steve Yorke, bass; and Scott
Ives, guitar. On the songs labeled "L3" the Yorkes are replaced by: Ron Scott,
keyboards; and Donnell "Papa D" Woodson, bass. The next to last clip, Everyday I
Have the Blues, was recorded at Famous Dave's in Minneapolis in 2004. It too is
lifted from a video, though I don't know who recorded it. It has the same
musicians as "L1/2" except Donald Thomas is playing drums on this one.
The last clip, Down Home Blues, was recorded at a music/beer festival in Mankato
MN is 2008 and is just a video file - .WMV (and several of the clips above that are
also videos if you click on "<Video>" after the song title - click the song title for the
audio only version - recommended). The Mankato job had the same musicians as
on "L3", plus Jamela Pettiford on vocals and Jason Weismann on sax. Love Biggie’s
reaction at the end of my solo when he realized he cut me off at just one chorus
(funny).
I intend to post some full-length versions of some of these tunes with Big John
eventually - got to get to work on that.
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634-5789 (L1) <Video>
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A Good Fool Is Hard To Find (L2)
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Black Cat Bone (L2)
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Can I Change My Mind (L2) <Video>
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Everyday I Have The Blues (L1)
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Feel Like Making Love (L1)
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Feel Like Making Love (L2)
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Georgia On My Mind (L1) <Video>
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Georgia On My Mind (L3) <Video>
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Homework (L1)
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Last Two Dollars (L1)
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Let’s Stay Together (L1)
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Mustang Sally (L2)
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Red Beans Cookin’ (L2)
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Room With A View (L3) <Video>
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This Masquerade (L2) <Video>
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Too Many Women (L2)
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Under The Boardwalk (L2)
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What A Wonderful World (L3) <Video>
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You Upset Me (L1)
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You Upset Me (L2)
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Everyday I Have The Blues (at Famous Dave’s - MPLS - 2004)
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Down Home Blues (Mankato MN - 2008) <Video>
That’s a lot of audio/video clips but they come from DVDs of three nights, so
considering that these are about the only solos I can tolerate from those three
nights it’s not too many clips at all really.
w/The Twin Cities Jazz Orchestra (2000)
TCJO was formed about 1995 by trombonists Neil Danielson and Roy Henline with
the intention of performing non-standard big band jazz - nothing too out there or
avant-garde, just something a little different (as a lot of big band music has been
written since the 1940s). Unfortunately the band folded in 2003, the music
required lots of rehearsal time and it was too difficult to get 17 people together on
a regular basis to rehearse it. We did however record and release a CD in 2000
called Temporary Insanity. The first two clips are my solos on it, the third clip is
some guitar comping ala Freddie Green on a Rob McConnell chart called Be-Bop
Charlie. My playing on Groove Blues not as clean as I'd like but I liked some of the
notes (especially the high A over the Eb7 chord near the end!) so it stayed; the
guitar chart for Conspiracy Theory called for a "screaming guitar solo" so the
overdrive is cranked up for it. Only the last third or so of the Conspiracy Theory
clip is the guitar solo as the horn work before the solo is really cool - so I left it in.
This CD was recorded in late 1999/early 2000 at Wild Sound Studio in Minneapolis,
Matthew Zimmerman, engineer.
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Groove Blues
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Conspiracy Theory
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Be-Bop Charlie
Lisa Krieger/Scott Ives Duo (1993)
Lisa Krieger, vocals; Scott Ives, guitar. These three tunes were recorded at my
house on a Yamaha 4-track cassette recorder in '93 as a demo tape. I don't recall
that we got any "work" out of it but the recordings turned out pretty okay I think.
Some Audio Files (.mp3)
at the Minnesota Music Cafe, St. Paul MN
Sep 2012
A bunch of recordings, mostly live, from 1993 or so to now or so. The audio files are in .MP3 format so
should be playable on most computers/devices. There are a few videos in the w/Big John Dickerson
(2005) section though, and these are in .WMV format, so they might not be playable on an Apple
computer/device (dunno). If not that’s okay as they’re not recommended viewing anyway - just
included a few as video because the recordings came from videos, the lighting was nice and low, and I
made the videos like 1” x 1” and ... And if you don’t like anything you see or hear here, as Big John used
to say before a performance: “... there ain’t no seatbelts on any of those chairs”!
Homebrew (1991/92)
Way back in ‘91/92 I had the Yamaha 4-track recorder, a Boss drum machine and a
Roland guitar synth so I tried my hand at making some one-man-band recordings.
Some of those recordings turned out okay and some not so much.
Hypatia and Samba D.C. are original tunes. I should rename Hypatia as it has
nothing to do with the person Hypatia - who should have symphonies written in
her honor - but I guess I liked the word, so I still haven’t changed the title. Pretty
sure that Samba D.C. is an original but I’ll admit that it owes to Jim Hall’s Simple
Samba (on his Where Would I Be? album) - and which is NOT a “simple” samba!
Night Gallery and Noreen Goes to Brookdale are basically a couple jams over the
drum machine. Night Gallery gets its title from the Rod Serling TV series “Night
Gallery”. I was watching that show one night (a long, long time ago) and the
background music for the episode was all minor chords moving around in minor
thirds - like Gm to Bbm to Dbm to Em, very diminished sounding and “Very scary
boys and girls” (Count Floyd). Apparently that progression stuck with me and it
came out in this jam. Noreen Goes to Brookdale is also a jam but over a pretty
standard chord progression. It gets its title from my Mom, Noreen, and Noreen
likes to shop. Brookdale was a shopping mall in Brooklyn Center MN.
Capriccio and Tedesca are a couple easy classical guitar pieces (composers both
anonymous) that I orchestrated on the guitar synth - aka: the “Homebrew
Chamber Orchestra”. My timing a bit off on piecing together the different phrases
in Capriccio but orchestrating these on the guitar synth was a lot of fun.
My Ideal is me playing along on two choruses from a Jamey Aebersold play-a-long
record (Volume 22: “Thirteen Favorite Standards”).
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Hypatia - a lazy little tune played very lazily. Had to program the drum
machine for this this one because it’s basically in 3/4 time but every once in
a while there’s a 4/4 measure (or 1/4 measure - either way). I’m not a
drummer so please forgive the drummer occasionally doing a cymbal crash
or bass drum hit from out of nowhere - he did the best he could - as did the
two guitar players. Bass from the guitar synth.
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Samba D.C. - drum machine, guitar synth bass (I think it was an upright
bass patch) and two guitars - one rhythm and one melody.
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Night Gallery - TURN IT UP!!! A hard rock rhythm from the drum machine
and a fretless bass solo (synth of course) followed by a guitar solo with lots
of distortion - and probably delay and chorus and ... The ending seems
kinda Allman Brothers-ish to me, probably copped it from one of their
tunes.
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Noreen Goes to Brookdale - pretty standard chord progression. Drum
machine, P. bass and organ from the synth with an improvised flute solo
over the top (flute has a chimey kind of sound with it).
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Capriccio - wishing I’d had a good tuba sound for the bass part in this one
now. Just pretend it’s a tuba and not acoustic bass
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Tedesca - another one from the “Homebrew Chamber Orchestra”.
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My Ideal - just two choruses from this play-a-long record. First chorus is
the melody played mostly chordal style, second chorus is a solo on it.
A year or so ago I got some software called Band-In-A-Box from pgmusic which is
pretty cool. Type a few chords into it, pick out a rhythm accompaniment and you
have a backup band - can make your own play-a-long tracks. Hmm. Where’s that
recorder? That’s not meant to be taken as a threat, but if is I’ll repeat from the top
of this page - “... there ain’t no seatbelts on any of those chairs”!