Monday, January 31, 2011

Wendy Biscuit - St Louis Blues



More of the same funny faces and flailing arms. Same great players, what a blast! The Marine Pub is the place to be on a Sunday night, and it's over early so you can still get up for work Monday. Andrea and Don are wonderful hosts. I

Wendy Biscuit performs with the Marine Pub All-Star House Band



Here I am, lucky enough to be surrounded by great players...Don Jones on guitar; Steve Ranta on keys; Kenny no last name :) on sax; Keith Bennett on harmonica; Rob Mar on bass; James Badger on drums. This was never rehearsed, just performed. It's bittersweet to watch myself, now I know not to flail my arms so much (I'm used to holding a guitar on stage) and also, I need to be careful about making funny faces!! These guys are so good at what they do, and I'm blessed to have them to cut my blues teeth on. What a fortunate beginner I am to have talented and patiently fun mentors. Count down to the debut solo show with Steve Ranta and Wayne Evans- 4 more sleeps!!

ps. thanks to my mom (who is almost 70 years old and can still party like a wildcat) for taking this these vids with my blackberry....thanks liziloo!

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Didn't It Rain




Here she is, Sister Rosetta Tharpe!  Born in the South, then moved with her family to Chicago in the late 1920's she began performing at age 4. Although Chuck Berry is widely credited as bringing on the Rock & Roll music movement, it is quite clear who coined all those cool guitar licks long before...I've even heard Sister Rosetta scooted across the stage while playing her electric guitar with an entire gospel choir behind her. Now that's some footage I'd love to see. Yet another virtuoso female musical pioneer. Drink it up!

Thursday, January 27, 2011



rehearsal went great. recorded the whole thing with my zoom. bear with me, i now have to figure out how to upload, edit and convert the files to mp3- might take a couple of days. wayne and i called billybags but he didn't pick-up. hope he likes his message. thinking that i need to review those nine tunes he sent me a while back. what i need the most at this point is good vocal stamina. rant is fab, what a rock!
thank god it's rehearsal tonight! my two glorious hours that are all about the love of music that we share. dig working with these boys and the others too. one more week until our first performance..old jazz and blues is a treasure to sing, and i just love not having to worry about playing an instrument in this project. can't believe i snubbed the blues for so long. so much more than just 12 bars of simple chord progressions...