My Latest L.A. Adventure

I went down to Los Angeles this past weekend with my friends Sidney Weaverling and Ryan Mead, who are rueda de casino (Cuban circle dance) teachers. They were giving several workshops on Saturday, and I have been meaning to see a concert with Clare Fischer, a father of latin jazz and one of my musical heroes, for some time. They paid the gas, I drove, and we stayed in sleeping bags at another dance friend’s house. Here's a video of beautiful Sidney dancing with our host, Yossi (actually, upon closer viewing Ryan is right behind them dancing with another woman):



On Sunday I started the day with a run from the Santa Monica pier to Venice Beach. As I usually do in L.A., I underestimated the distance from where we were staying to the beach. It turned out to be something like 25 miles away on the freeway! I got back from my run in time for Sidney’s first class, a Cuban son workshop with some beautiful choreography. The class was held in the bottom floor of an early 1900s house in a Hispanic neighborhood with lots of heavy vehicular traffic, which made it feel like we were in Havana as we crammed concentric circles of dancers into a small parlor.

After several hours of classes, I met my uncle at his elk’s lodge. He gave me the grand tour, and showed me the dinner he was secretly cooking for me and the handful of other patrons. We went back and sat at the bar, where he proudly informed everyone that I was a jazz singer. They proceeded to examine my shiny shoes, necklace, earrings, you name it! I sat there for a long while, chatting with a hilarious woman who gave me parenting advice punctuated with choice expletives. We clipped coupons for soldiers, or soldiers’ families -- it wasn’t clear -- and peeled lottery tickets. Eventually my uncle served us his delicious meal: perfectly cooked standing rib roast, creamed spinach and freshly baked yorkshire pudding. Yum!

After the dinner, I left, to the consternation of the remaining barflies, in search of the 3rd Street Steakhouse, where I’d been told Frankie Vasquez was singing with Johnny Polanco’s band. I was meeting someone out front, and while waiting I chatted with the doormen. One turned out to be a great dancer who'd recently been at the Oakland salsa congress, and the other a witty, very Mexican-looking British musician with movie credits to his name. He gave me his card: Flipper Dalton.

Inside the club, I was pleased to hear Frankie Vasquez, a wiry sonero who pulses with energy. He prefaced many of the songs with short explanations of their recording history in Spanish. He also often sang along with the trombone moños led by Johnny Polanco (who afterwards told me the band was mostly ringers), and danced with abandon during each song. When I had a chance to meet him, I told him I’d seen him singing on Manny Oquendo’s birthday at SOB’s in New York City, fronting Libre. (He asked me if I’d come to the show they had later that night, but luckily I didn’t as it turns out that by midnight my friends had all gone to sleep back at the house and I had to climb the chain link fence to tap on windows until I was let in!)

On the break, the bass player came to talk to me and my music biz companion about his new release on Blue Note, saying he was burned out on the salsa scene and wanted to play clubs like Yoshi’s! Well, that made me feel pretty good, given my recent success at Yoshi’s.

But the whole reason I went down to L.A. was for the concert on Monday night, the Clare Fischer Big Band at the Jazz Bakery, led by his son Brent Fischer. I took notes during that show, and felt so enveloped by the beautiful music and generous musicians that I’m going to write about that in a separate post…