This was such a fun Youtube video to watch. I check out a lot of solo “how to” music lesson demo clips on Youtube, so I’m familiar with the thousands of (sometimes really good) videos demonstration/lesson videos out there. Here is a great video montage of some of these clips featuring various instruments all mashed together to create a funk opera! Enjoy!

For the record, I have to credit Bradley “Bacon”, aka “The John Stockton of Kalamazoo”, for posting this on his Facebook page. Woot!

Register at madison.com to win two free tickets to see Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe with the Clyde Stubblefield Band this Saturday, March 28th at the Majestic Theater in downtown Madison, Wisconsin.

It could be YOU who’s going to the concert for free this Saturday!

Friday evening on the rooftop of the Blind Pig Pub on 6th Street

Thank you Katjusa Cisar from 77 Square.com and the Capital City Times for providing local news coverage down in Austin for the Madison bands playing SXSW.

Here’s a link to article, some audio clips and a profound quote from fellow horn star, Pete Ross, who says “South by Southwest is like spring break for musicians.” Indeed, it was!

The Jimmys will be playing at 4:00 P.M. on Friday, March 20th at The Blind Pig Pub for a 50-minute set.

Our friend Joey B. Banks uploaded this YouTube video from one of our recent shows at Madison’s. Check it out…and thanks for posting, Joe!

P.S. That’s Adam Palm on the trombone. He sat in for a few songs that night. He’s a new guy to Madison and a great player. Give him a warm welcome if you see him out there…

This new service caught my attention. “Contxts” is a simple, but clever idea. You can get my contact information by doing the following:

Text the message “funkysax” to the number 50500.

As another feature, I can text my e-business card to anyone on request by texting the message “send 9876543210″ to the number 50500. Just replace “9876543210″ with the recipient’s full phone number.

I figure this could be of use at SXSW when David Geffen of Geffen Records wants to sign our band, but we’re all out of business cards (certainly a hot commodity!).

I confess I haven’t watched this Shawn “Thunder” Wallace lesson yet, except for the very beginning where I discovered he plays quite a bit. You can hear how crushing his chops are. I’ll be curious to hear what constitutes a “trick” or a “gimmick” and what his definition of “real musicianship” is for him.

No disrespect to him or his playing, but I’ve always felt his technical mastery has always obscurred any soulfulness. I’m not trying to start a flame war, but sometimes simple is better, fewer notes says more, how you play it matters more than what you play. I enjoy listening to him and learning from these lessons, but aren’t some of the master techniques the real gimmicks? I guess I won’t know until I learn more of them!

If I were his student, I think I might be this guy. He’s asking the kind of questions that I ask myself sometimes. Maybe this is the answer. And a zillion more hours of sheddin’.

Shawn Wallace was at WMU for undergrad when I was getting my grad degree. He’s a master technician. He’s now a professor at Ohio State University.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ShawnThunderWallace

This is spot-on what Eric Koppa was trying to explain to me during his last visit. This particular pattern series (@~7:30 in the video) that works against the root and tri-tone and can be inverted back and forth to create cadenza-like material within many chord spaces. The power of these patterns is linked to the freedom that Prof. Wallace explains at the outset. If you know the 3rd and 7th relationships within chord changes, “you can pretty much murder anything else” if for no other reason than there are so many possible variations within and around the 3rd and 7th notes that can be explored and emphasized against the original chord voices. These patterns extend the harmonic vocabulary…

Here’s where we’ll be at 7:00 p.m. on Friday night of SXSW week…should be fun!

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So I’m poking around looking for any interesting links for former Jah Kings keyboardist and Kalamazoo music talent, Willie Phipps. Fairly quickly, I stumbled onto this YouTube video from the Gull Lake Girls performing “Let’s Have Some Fun”. Willie’s playing the keyboards for the arrangement.

What really cracks me up, though, is that my mother, Nancy Husk, is the Gull Lake K-6 music teacher, so I’m sure the Gull Lake Girls are former students of hers. Nice work, people. Keep up the good work!

Addendum:
Here’s a little more funky project that highlights Willie Phipps’ talent.