A Great Gig

I had so much fun last night. We played at the Jazz School in Berkeley. The band was Dave Mathews on piano, Jeff Chambers on upright bass, Michael Spiro on percussion and David Flores on drumset. I get so much from these guys, there's such an awesome musical conversation that happens when you play with greats. I adore Dave's piano style, he's so versatile and lavishes so much on boleros and ballads, then has great chops for salsa and samba. I met Jeff at Jazz Camp last year and upon first seeing him play in a faculty concert thought immediately, I hope I can play with him someday. Turns out he toured with Cuban pianist/composer Gonzalo Rubalcaba for several years, and here I was wondering if he played latin jazz. His bass solos were so beautiful and his feel is so comforting. Mike does everything well, be it Brazilian or Mexican or funk, as does David Flores. What I love is that songs that I always do the same, such as Delirio, suddenly transform and I find myself singing all kinds of new things because the band is so hip and creative.

We ended the evening with Miles Davis's All Blues really up-tempo 6/8 and I couldn't figure out how to get into a really cool bridge that Wayne wrote (and I wrote lyrics for) for the arrangement on our record, so we just skipped that, and at the end we went into an open percussion session with Mike and me singing some cantos (chants to the Cuban Orishas--the only one I know is Ladioke, but he was singing a bunch of different ones).

I'm hoping on Sunday, when I play with essentially the same band, substituting David Belove on electric bass and adding Wayne on trombone, we can set up that bridge section enough in advance that I can come into it and know where I am. That's what I love again about Dave Mathews, afterwards we talked about it and he knew exactly how the melody line went and said he'd practice so he could play some transition that would make it easy to jump in. That's the key, these guys are great at comping and soloing. I just love 'em.