ConocoPhillips Party 3/30/12

Greg Galindo joined up with me to go perform a Howl At The Moon Piano-Show-To-Go tonight in Lake Jackson, TX for ConocoPhillips emergency response team. Greg and I blended well together as we tackled a variety of requests from the small-but-fun party crowd. Prince, George Strait, Sonny & Cher, Areosmith... the requests were all over the place! But we kept up, and everyone had a great time.

Sundance Records 3/29/12

Sundance Records, a San Marcos tradition, is going out of business. It's another sad reminder of the digital age we live in, but we performed a live show to show our appreciation for a great local business. Ian Lee and His Fine Fellows (with me on accordion, Chris Wallis on djembe and Errin Scroggins on bass) performed an hour long acoustic set to close the show this afternoon. We were joined by a couple of great acts who opened the show. First up was Adam Lilley on guitar, Jason Harold Wilkinson on djembe, and Patrick McBain on guitar, who performed a great half-hour set. Then second up was Stephen Wells & G.K. Matthews on guitars, and Adam Lilley on percussion. Great show for a sad occasion. Long live Sundance!!!

Sundance Records 3/27/12

I took a day off from playing music to provide P.A. and run sound for the great Texas singer/songwriter, Ray Wylie Hubbard for one of the last shows at a local San Marcos landmark, Sundance Records, which is in its final week of business. Mr. Hubbard put on a fantastic set of his original material, and I would be happy to run sound for him again.

Tantra Coffeehouse 3/25/12

Ian Lee and his Fine Fellows performed our first official band show tonight in San Marcos, TX for a fund raiser to help out the Coffeehouse. Ian, Chris, Errin and I performed about and hour to a packed tent full of people. This show also marked the first time in many years I brought my accordion out to a show. Great tunes written by Ian will be available soon, and the CD release party will be held at Tantra! See you then!

Pier 27 3/24/12

40 Rock Entertainment was responsible for providing the seven hour long show tonight in Kerrville, TX for the grand opening of Pier 27, so that's exactly what we did! Josh Adams, Chris Saucedo, Alex Sutherlin and I took turns singing to the people and playing requests. We traded off instruments regularly, so at any given moment, we had all kinds of different configurations of piano, bass, drums, sax, and guitar. The crowd stayed to party all night, and it was a successful grand opening for the club!!!

Taxi's 3/21/12

I drove down the street to the San Marcos, TX piano bar known as Taxi's to perform a show with the man himself; Taxi Haskel. It's been a while since my last show here, and it was a welcome return! Always a good time to perform with Taxi. But before we started the show, we had a small problem with the piano, which involved drilling a couple of hole in the side of it before we even could hit note one. Taxi had a drill, and I'm handy with power tools, so I cut a place to run some cable in the piano! Never had to do that one before a show before. Thanks goes out to Taxi's crowd for a fun night!

Betsy's Bar 3/18/12

Ryan Kennedy invited me to perform with him and his band in Austin, TX for the end of the South By Southwest festival. We performed about an hour-and-a-half of blues and rock to an appreciative crowd. Pete on drums and Jeremiah on bass rounded out the sound as Ryan sang some of his original tunes. This line up also just finished a soon-to-be-released CD. I'll keep you posted!

The Hanger 3/17/12

For St. Patrick's Day, I headed to San Antonio to perform with Josh Adams of 40 Rock Entertainment. We had a good crowd, all dressed in green of course. Right at the beginning of the show, green beer was served, green beads were given out, and green bills appeared on some request slips. It was fun to perform with Josh again, too. We traded some U2 tunes just to get us in the spirit...

Pier 27 3/16/12

Kerrville, TX is about 1-1/2 hours away from my house, so Chris Wallis loaded up his drums and met up with me to caravan out to the club. The crowd steadily grew all evening long, and the requests were flowing like water. Some very unusual songs were brought up, too. Requests for "Mess Around" and "Black Magic Woman" came up, as well as "Mack The Knife" and "One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces". We played them all, even though Chris and never had even talked about some of the tunes we played, he knocked them outta da park. Great crowd!

AJ's Ale House MF 3/15/12

Big night in Marble Falls, tonight! Joe Resnick banged out beats on the drums, and I played piano for a packed house. This was easily the best Thursday night crowd I've performed for so far at AJ's! The peeps were throwing requests our way left and right. There were actually so many requests that Joe and I decided not to take a break all night. Then, at the end of the night, something happened which has never happened to us while at a request show. The crowd began chanting "One more song" over and over. We left the stage, and for five minutes, the crowd steadily grew louder and louder, still chanting "ONE MORE SONG" until we retook the stage to play one final tune. Great crowd!

AJ's Ale House MF 3/10/12

The crowd instantly propelled the show into high gear tonight in Marble Falls, Texas. We played request after request, including all the popular hits and many odd ball songs. My favorite part of the evening was during our second set, Chris Wallis (drums) took over the vocals for a rousing rendition of Guns N Roses' "Sweet Child Of Mine". I personally think Chris should sing that song every time it is requested! Fun night all around!

AJ's Ale House NB 3/9/12

New Braunfels, Texas was rainy as I set up and prepared for my evening performance with Joe Resnick. The crowd filed in almost on cue right as we started our first song of the evening. We had tons of requests from Madonna to Ray Charles, and we played every one of them. Several people just camped out to party with us all evening long! At one point, I unintentionally made Angie's mom cry by playing the Stone's "Angie" for Angie. Who's Angie, you may ask? Guess you had to be there.

AJ's Ale House MF 3/8/12

Joe Resnick joined me in Marble Falls, TX for another fun filled night of request-based piano sing along tonight. We started off while it was lightly raining outside, and the people inside requested a few tunes. I think the weather started to scare the crowd a bit, and we performed for just a few by the end of the night. I still had a good time performing with Joe!

AJ's Ale House MF 3/3/12

Mark ran sound for Chris Wallis and me this evening in Marble Falls, TX for our request piano show. We had several large parties of people come our to show to celebrate birthdays and just fun times in general. It was mostly a classic rock crowd tonight, and they loved to dance. We saw many memorable moves on the dance floor, but my favorite was when someone requested "You Can Leave Your Hat On" only to have two men in hats decide they were the appropriate dancers for the song. It was one of those times I wished I were wearing a blindfold...

AJ's Ale House NB 3/2/12

New Braunfels, TX with Joe Resnick tonight was great as people requested their favorite tunes. Lots and lots of dancers, singers and general good-vibes were inhabiting AJ's tonight! Seems like I've a few fan who've been coming out to challenge my Beatles knowledge, and a few who want me to play every '80s tune I possibly can. I kept up with the requests all night long and the crowd stayed with us until the bitter end! Thanks crowd!!!

AJ's Ale House MF 3/1/12

Tonight in Marble Falls, Texas, Joe Resnick laid down some drums to some of the strangest and most challenging requests I've ever gotten. Somehow, the entire crowd got it into their head to request me to play a song as if another person had already covered it, and I was covering the imaginary cover. It all got started when a woman request White Snake at the same time a man requested Bob Dylan, and when I asked which one first, a third party in the crowd yelled, "Play White Snake like Bob Dylan would cover it!" Thus began the insanity.
I played White Snake's "Here I Go Again" in the style of Bob Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone", and sung it like Dylan. Then it was "Freebird" as Kermit the Frog. Then "Ice Ice Baby" as Stephen Hawking. Then "Purple Rain" as Elvis would've done it. What a crazy, crazy night.