Passinwind
I know nothing.
- Dec 3, 2003
- 23,079
- 46,041
- Disclosures
- Designer/Toaster Tech @ Passinwind Electronics
Yep. I saw Cold Blood as an opening act way way back when. My money would be on her and Marriott just both having the same influences, but I would expect there to have been mutual admiration going on in any case. He was fab when I saw him play with Humble Pie too.
And I did something pretty radical last night: I went and saw a current act I've never seen before, Gunhild Carling, in the big city at the PDX Jazz Festival. I've posted vids here of her work a few times; she's best known for playing many horns well, jazz bagpipes, and her Postmodern Jukebox stints. The venue was a new-ish small jazz club right downtown, with easy parking right across the street, a huge food cart pod on the next block, and standard bar food in the 10 dollar range available from the big pool hall/bar upstairs. The club books a lot of burlesque acts and it wouldn't have been at all surprising for Ms. Carling to have brought in her family band and go all three ring circus, which is kind of her specialty. So my wife passed on the show because she doesn't dig Vaudeville acts, and I went with my neighbor. But when the band lineup was released a few days before the show it was just three local Portland guys, and only one name I really recognized.
The show was billed for doors at 7, and we allowed for about a twenty minute buffer, hoping that would be enough to get one of the limited amount of tables. There was a short lineup when we arrived, maybe 20-25 people in front of us. But somehow none of those people took all the front row tables, and we got a two-top about ten feet away from the lead vocal mic position. We noticed that there were only a couple of horns on stage, and just a very spare setting. Personally, I liked where this was going. Then after the first tune Gunhild mentioned that her general theme for the night was going to be "Louis and Ella." So yeah, mostly classic straight ahead jazz with a great trio backup, no rehearsal, band members meet each other for the first time on stage at sound check. I recognized the upright bass player by face as someone I mixed backing up a touring Diva several years ago, apparently this is a specialty of his. Never heard a single misstep from him all evening. The keyboard player was pretty young and later told us he was barely hanging on all night, but Gunhild herself made most of the (very subtle) mistakes, and those just came down to on the fly arrangements and her wanting to give us the best possible readings. So, a mulligan or two on count-ins, no biggie. The drummer was uncanny at nailing feels and count-ins off a single sung vocal phrase or foot tap sequence, just crazy for no rehearsal.
And then Ms. Carling herself is a real force. I've never seen a better trombone player, for starters. And in many tunes she backed that up with great trumpet solos as well. The mind boggles at singing like that, transitioning to a few different horn solos, and then back to vocals, never seeming out of breath. And then throw in a little tap dancing, costume changes, a lot of hilarious vocal patter, and two long sets, including half a dozen new self written original tunes and yes, bagpipes. All this and more for twenty bucks plus the service charge, sweet!
I made it a point to talk to the people around us during the set break. Every single one found Ms. Carling via YouTube, and the show was clearly sold out. Nice to see the brave new world working out for someone worthy, at least.
