Domesticated Tour Pics

The second date on the tour brought us back to Queen Street West at our old stomping ground The Rivoli.. Ariana Gillis opened the show and her focused powerful set really cast a deep voodoo over the crowd. This shot of me in the back alley brings a lot of good memories back from the days when we regularly played The Bamboo, The Horseshoe and The Cameron Tavern!
Dan and Micah at Parc LaFontaine in Montreal.

As anyone whose ever been on the road will tell you it sounds great in theory and can be a lot of fun. But it also means sleep deprivation, long periods of boring road travel, weird performance situations, bad food that sounded good in theory... and wild parties full of groupies and drugs.

(OK clearly when your band is discussing the relative merits of the smoked meats at different Montreal deli's for most of the tour the wild parties are not so much a reality)

Last Domesticated Tour Date!

Tour Blog July 6th

Our last show of the season. A special event because I will be joining Daniel Barnes' critically acclaimed Jazz Quartet at The Hillebrand Jazz Festival. An honor and a privilege. Made even more special by the rarity of the occurrence.

Singing Jazz and Blues has always been a very natural place for me. Since my early teen years when I sat with the standards trying to understand the chords and melodies and lyrics of Cole Porter and the Gershwin's my musicality has been informed by the work of Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughn. I've been lucky enough to work in the Jazz idiom long enough that I feel at home there and cherish the opportunity to join a top notch Jazz Quartet like Daniel's.

Daniel and I have been working out the set list and decided on a few choice standards I have been working with since my teenage years.

Lullaby Of Birdland which is of course best known in it's version by the incomparable Sarah Vaughn is one of the uptempo tunes we're doing. Giving the band a chance to shine and the singer a chance to stumble LOL

Light and frothy lyrically but with a gorgeous melody, it was in fact one of the first of the Jazz standards that I tried to learn how to play and sing back when I was preparing material for the coffee houses and cabarets in Toronto at the tender age of 14 or 15!

I first heard Stormy Weather in Ethel Waters version. She was a huge superstar of stage and screen and recording studio in her day and the song was written for her before it became Lena Horne's trademark tune. I've always been attracted to the deeper spiritual question and the time change on the bridge. A complex and yet simple art song that defines the spirit of the blues.

We're also going to try out hand at the tune Cloudburst as a vocal duet for us brothers. This tune was penned by Lambert Hendricks and Ross in it's vocal version and covered by the Pointer Sisters in their early days as a Jazz vocal group. Daniel and I grew up on these recordings so this is going to be a blast.

The Hillebrand show is in fact the first time I've joined The Daniel Barnes Quartet at a Jazz festival. A very special way to wrap up THE DOMESTICATED tour!