Concerts in the Park are starting "NOW"!!!
Functional Fusion opens this years series of Concerts in the Park - in Grants Pass. The band has been around since Spring of 2003. Jason Garcia, the band director at Grants Pass High School had the idea of combining 4 local music teachers with a few of the high schools' Jazz Band students and put together 2 - 3 songs to entertain the band students and their parents at the annual end-of-year banquet. Their little gig turned out to be a huge hit. The band started playing at a few local events, brought in a chick lead vocalist as well as rounding out the band with instrumentalists (there's 10 of us altogether) and have now developed a large repertoire of great tunes. How we wish for the time to get together and jam on our own to create some magical tunes of our own, but since we have a wide range of age and experience, we can rely on our own favorite musicians and bring in tunes that we love to listen to and love to play: Stevie Wonder, Tower of Power, Earth, Wind & Fire, Michael Jackson (old skool), Brian Setzer, Van Morrison, Prince, Joss Stone and Chaka Khan.
And Note all Grants Pass concerts in the park are currently listed on this sites Live Music Calendar
It's On!!!
A few weeks ago I had started promoting this and then I heard that it was "up in the air". Well I can happily report that IT IS ON!!! From the Brinkerhoff's…
"New Report" - same picture as last week...
I got a new report from Dennis and Linda Hardesty on this past weeks "jam" happenings around Grants Pass. My thanks to Dennis for another great exclusive!!!
Last week followed a familiar pattern for me: three 'normal' work/rest cycles done more or less on autopilot, then a noticeable upswing in energy, biorhythms and endorphins as the 'music cycle' kicked in. Thursday night's jam at the Cedarwood Saloon started things off right. This week's rock-solid house band--Mike Herman (guitar), Mike Bowman (bass) and Paul Olson (drums) and led by 'Big Ron' Rasmussen--powered through a tight opening set, then welcomed a diverse bunch of jammers, including Dave Vestnys, Vernon Hixson, Julie Lee, Ernest Adam and many others. As usual, the joint was jumpin' till nearly midnight.
After one more rest/work cycle, my wife, Linda, and I made it to the Dancing Otter for their Friday jam, just in time to hear an amazing set by 'Alternative Acoustic'. I love my rock 'n roll, but it's a totally different sensory pleasure to hear every note played by really good pickers in a quiet atmosphere. As the evening went on we heard from Mike Semora, some a capella originals from Tim Sullivan, a few songs from John Eyler and a beautiful set from 'Tribal Journey' with Mike Semora sitting in. 'Big Ron' fit in a few of his signature numbers, and even dragged me up for what he called the 'longest song in the world.' Ernest Adam came in fairly late but still got in a nice set playing Ron's old Ovation guitar.
After all that fun, and knowing I had a hot Saturday of house painting to look forward to, I would not have predicted the best was yet to come, but it was. By 2 PM the sun had run us indoors, and by 4 we were cooled off, cleaned up, and cruising to Rogue River to check out the Rooster Crow. More specifically, we wanted to check out the 'State of Jefferson' band, who were playing in the bandstand of the Woodville Museum. We found them, playing in front of a large green lawn, deeply-shaded by huge trees. A delightful breeze sprung up, and—along with about thirty others--we found we were exactly where we were supposed to be. As an old deadhead, I'm a sucker for a jam, and jamming is what these guys do. They slip from blues to rootsy reggae and back with no apparent effort. They obviously love making music and passing the feeling on.
I had heard most of the band at a Blondie's jam months ago, and was familiar with Ryan Redding and Erik Vestnys from various jams since, but had not heard the whole group before. Technically, I still haven't, since the two horn players could not make it, but, who's technical? Michael St. John on drums and Joe Ginet on guitars and vocals completed the lineup Saturday. For the last set they invited local favorites Dave Vestnys and Vernon Hixson onstage to spread the love.
Cool breezes on a hot day, great musicians trading licks on a beautiful outdoor stage, green grass to cool your toes . . . life doesn't get much better than this, and there were less than fifty people present.
We wanted to stay in Rogue River and catch 'Colonel Mustard' at the Creekside Pub, so we had dinner at The Station on Vernon's recommendation. When he said 'best salads on earth' he was not exaggerating. After sundown we hung out at the Creekside for two sets, and once again Dave and Vernon sat in with the band--whose 'regular' members are Chris Graves (guitar), John Trujillo (bass) and Mary Wacker (drums)--adding to our growing impression of the local musicians being one very large, mutlti-functional extended family. By 10 pm we had to see to our own family, so headed downriver, fully re-charged for another week.
The "Poetry Circle" is Spinning Again
This Thursday and every Thursday beginning at 7pm at The Dancing Otter "I" your humble Rogue and Poet am hosting a Poetry Circle "Be there or be Unwordy!"
Lynn's Designer Aprons
New to my pages is local designer Lynn Kelly. Her medium is Aprons and she has a website www.lynnsaprons.com
you can visit to see (and buy) her work. She also is a regular at the Artisan and crafters market in Grants Pass. Lynn is linked on this site permanently under Craft Artist's.
I took some images from her site to offer you a slideshow of her work... enjoy!
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There is a book coming...
Behind this tale is local author Jennifer Brozak. Last word I heard was that the book is due out in July!!!!
I made a trade with Larry's Music I get a nice ad in their bi-weekly newsletter - and I get this nifty "flash" for my website. What's really cool is that you can click on the items in this and buy them right here - right now!
Thousands of cool items available
Site Changes
Slow and steady is alright by me. On one hand it seemed like I kind of took a breather from the site this last week but in truth I was working the back-end - trying out some coding changes, refreshing a bunch of pages and studying up on the next phase of my snailish computer development "MySQL and php". Of course presently I'm clueless on both of these things but in a year from now I might just know enough to do some cool stuff. That's the idea.
One thing I did do on the site this week was add a page listing all of the main music venues in the Valley complete with addresses, phone numbers and a link to a map! That was fun. I now have listed around 40 venues in the Valley that at least occasionally have live music To see the new page click here. Now it's the task of reporting all of them on the Calendar. Yikes!
Also of note is the gift shop is now open. You can now "Buy Stuff" right here on Rogue and Poet. How cool is that!
I'm starting to get nibbles from advertisers and "Sellers". That means that over the next few months you should see a lot more stuff showing up in the sidebars: Ads for businesses - and ads for stuff the site is selling. I'm also discovering that I need to find new ways to keep interesting stuff available. Some of the reviews I've done - some of the slideshows that have been posted - these are things that should have some shelf life. I'm not sure how I'm going to do this yet but look for info and changes in that direction shortly.
One other note is that soon I need to get flyers out. Local artists have found Rogue and Poet but now I need to put much more emphasis on the "locals" finding the website. Any thing you can do from your end will help; give me links on your websites, or just spread the word.
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