Posted on 2024-10-28 DJ Hairy Presents Bebop Beatniks Playing The Blue Crane From The Archives Of Something Blue - 2024-10-27 Thanks Marty. Today I'm going to play the title track of the soon to be released Bebop Beatniks album, "The Blue Crane". Every fall I enter my festival season starting with Beatles At The Ridge, then Blues Fest, and then The King Biscuit Blues Festival. Sometimes things work out better than you could expect. Jeremy Jackson and Alex Washam both have busy lives, Conley Hunt started working on weekends, and I also had issues so we hadn't played together as a full band all year. And we also hadn't played with a horn player since last year's Blues Fest. We were scheduled to play at Beatles At The Ridge, the next weekend at Blues Fest, and then the next weekend Alex was getting married. So congratulations to Alex and Rachel, but you can see how this would complicate our schedule. Fortunately, Jeremy was able to play both dates and Alex was able to play at Beatles At The Ridge so, fingers crossed, I soldiered on. And now ... Introducing Dr. Paul Lessard. Paul is the new theory and composition professor at ASU this year. I'm not in school but I took my degree in composition and I wanted to meet him. We got together in his office and hit it off immediately, talking about music composition. It's surprising how few people I know who actually want to talk about composition and it's definitely one of my obsessions. Well ... Paul plays jazz saxophone and he said to let him know if we were getting together to play because he'd like to sit in. So I got to thinking and the next time I was getting the band together to play I invited Paul. As it turned out Alex and Jeremy were busy so, as the song goes, it was just the two of us. We had a repertoire session playing some of my originals which, surprisingly enough, Paul had never played before. He played great and I invited him to join us at Beatles Park to fill out our quartet. He said he could do it and the rest is history. We played the Beatles Park gig on September 21 and then Alex's Blues Fest Sunday opened up and we played Blues Fest on September 29. Sometimes the stars align and everything goes right. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon at the Craighead Forest Bandshell, we had the lake behind us, a small but appreciative audience, and we had played every song on the set at least once before. I got good audio and video recordings. I will post links at sbblues.com to the Youtube videos. In early November I will release the new Bebop Beatniks album, "The Blue Crane", featuring three songs I wrote. And now, here's Bebop Beatniks playing "The Blue Crane". Something Blue Archives - List Of Concerts https://archive.org/details/somethingbluearchives?sort=-publicdate Bebop Beatniks - Beatles At The Ridge Festival - September 21, 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6-LYX4YDnU&t=10s Bebop Beatniks Live At Blues Fest - September 29, 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXeH69cZuHc&t=2600s music And that's Bebop Beatniks playing "The Blue Crane". All of the musicians in the band play solos. The solo order is Paul Lessard, alto; Hairy Larry, piano; Jeremy Jackson, bass; and Alex Washam, drums. Visit the Something Blue website at sbblues.com for links to the videos. Don't miss Something Blue, Saturday night at 10:00, to hear Geri Allen and Kurt Rosenwinkel, Nigel Harpur, and ADHD.