The 2014 Tony Balluff Record Brochure

I have these memories of visiting my grandfather, Hank, when I was a youngster. He could be a taciturn man. I think I first learned how to be comfortable with silences by being around him. The Balluff men I know and have known, myself among them, can be an odd combination of taciturn with the ever-present threat of a happy kind of garrulousness. Months might go by between visits, and when Hank would talk, he’d just start up at the point he left off the last time we sat together. The man was truly at ease with intervening silence. Hank never lived to know what a blog was, but with me I think you get a good idea of how he’d have run one.

So hello! It’s not as though I haven’t had a lot to report. For instance, this year’s been a good year for the recording side of music life. I started the year in Humans Win! studio with the Southside Aces during a chilly February. We’ll celebrate the release of the music that came out of those wintry nights with our fifth album, Second Thursday. 

We try not to be too handsome, so as to not cause distress amongst the public.

We’ll be at the Eagles, well, on the second Thursday of this coming January. I’m proud of my Aces! Look here in the next few weeks to learn all about it. 

In between the February recording and the January release (what’s with the Aces’ penchant for ice and snow?), I also spent time making records with other musicianers. I’m the first chair clarinetist in the quartet Patty and the Buttons, so therefore was involved in two projects in 2014. The first one was a six-song collection of obscene songs from the ‘20s and ‘30s recorded right in my dining room. 

It’s good music made by good musicians, with a good-sized load of ear-burningly scandalous lyrics. This album goes a long way to proving that there have always been folks with filthy minds. My dining room is still embarrassed. In September, we played on top of the White Castle at 33^rd and Lyndale to bring this one to the public. It gives me a smile every time I think of how my resumé now contains “Smut Concert Atop White Castle.” 

Look closely—I'm the big head sticking out over the music stand in the middle

The band recommends, however, that most parents, grandparents, children under the age of 21, religious leaders, teachers, men and women who hold political office, ice cream truck drivers and school crossing guards not ever be caught with one of these discs on their person. In fact, forget I ever mentioned it.

Mercury Blues

The second one, Mercury Blues, saw a November birth with a CD-Release Spectacular at the Heights Theater in Nordeast Minneapolis. This was a show to beat all shows, with tap dancing, knife juggling, bullwhipping, rising pit organs, silent films, and, what was it…oh yeah, the music. This record is safe for children, and you’d be proud to bring it home to your parents. There are great songs on it, my favorites being the originals our fearless leader, Patrick Harison, penned. I love the music I make with those guys.

I also contributed a tiny part to Davina and the Vagabond’s May release, Sunshine:

And finally, a few songs on December’s two-CD set put out by guitar virtuoso, Sam Miltich, entitled Sam Miltich and Friends Live at the VFW. I made the trip up north to help Sam launch it. If you’re ever in Grand Rapids, Minnesota of a Wednesday evening, stop by said VFW for the good stuff.

I guess this reads a little more like the 2014 Tony Balluff record brochure than a “What I Did Last Summer.” I promise my historical perspective will go further than last February for my next one. Until then I’m going to settle into a nice, comfortable silence. 

How To Get Through A Long Winter

February 24^th was one of those days this winter with which we Minnesotans became so familiar. It spent a few hours below zero, and the rest of the day not much warmer; mostly single digits above zero. The Aces were in the studio that night recording “Winter Weather” among other things. It’s a 1941 tune that’s been recorded by folks including Fats Waller, Peggy Lee and Jo Stafford. Fats has my favorite. The first line of the vocal starts, “I love the winter weather…” I remember laughing at the rest of the guys on account of the cognitive dissonance they were experiencing. None of them were loving the winter weather at the moment.

Listen to what Fats was talking about:

Winter Weather

It’s been a doozy of a winter so far. But that’s not a complaint. I’m a winter man. Of this there is no doubt. Snow and cold give me a thrill. I actually don’t remember a year in which I have once stated the common refrain, “I’m so ready for this winter to be over!” I don’t ski or skate, so it’s not about the athletics of the season. In fact, I abhor having anything beneath my feet that has blades or wheels. I’ll leave that to you adventurous types. No, there’s something about the solitude and introspection that gets me. It sparks my creativity. The amount of music I learn and arrangements I put to paper generally increases dramatically during late autumn and winter. Then, around this time of year, I get a little perverse and sadistic. You know those six-inch snowfalls that come after two weeks of spring weather has raised the hopes of the populace? I get downright gleeful. In the last couple of weeks I’ve been saying things like, “It’s too bad we couldn’t hold out for another ten days of below zero so we could break the all-time record.” I wanted that record. I’m probably lucky people have other things to do, or I might find myself the victim of a grisly murder brought on by my hibernal cheerfulness. “How do you like winter now?!” shouts the mob as they dump my pummeled earthly remains into a snowbank. 

So now you can see how for me “Winter Weather” is a theme song of sorts. Nine days later we were in the studio again to have Steve sing his vocal. I know it was a struggle for him to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. He cracked us up when he sang “I love the winter,” through his gritted teeth. But what are we talking about, really? It IS a song of love. But Fats loves the winter weather for ulterior motives. What with the cold temperatures he can pull his honey closer so they can both warm up! Mother Nature as wingman. 

He and his band recorded it the day after Christmas, 1941, in New York, along with a few other sides. He ostensibly urged America to apply themselves to the WWII scrap drives in “Cash For Your Trash.” But if you listen closely, and remember Fats’ history of naughtiness, you can’t be certain that “Cash For Your Trash” might not be a euphemism for the oldest profession. It is a debate that rages to this day. At any rate, in “Don’t Give Me That Jive,” he admonished the object of his missive to basically hush up and “come on with the come on.” And my favorite title of the day, “Your Socks Don’t Match, “ wherein Fats proves to be somewhat of a perfectionist in regards to his women. “Winter Weather” is easily the sweetest, warmest song of the session. Although I can’t resist the cleverness of “Your Socks Don’t Match.”

Fats was so very playful. He had enough twinkles in his eye for eleven men. Imagine him and his band gathering in the studio after Christmas to put down that great, just-a-little-bit-naughty music. That’s what I’m thinking of tonight when I reminisce back all those three weeks ago to when six Southside Aces assembled at a mere four degrees Fahrenheit to make sweet winter music. 

Get some more Fats in your diet:

Your Socks Don’t Match

Cash For Your Trash

Don’t Give Me That Jive

The Curse—or How Bob French and Butch Thompson Saved The Day

Well, we’ve gone and done it again. On Wednesday, the Southside Aces warbled away into microphones in order to stick a fork into the perfectly barbequed, tender meat of our latest recording. That made me sort of uncomfortable to say. Steve insisted that what we were doing wasn’t overdubbing vocals, but “underdubbing.” If you want to know exactly what that means, you’ll have to ask him. He conducts workshops and autograph sessions after gigs at the Stop and Shop on 17^th and East Lake Street. Confession: I appropriated, purloined, pirated and otherwise directly stole that joke from Erik. Although how do we know Steve doesn’t sign autographs at the Stop and Shop? We don’t keep tabs on him. We again employed Mr. Lance Conrad, the owner and talented engineer of Humans Win! studio (the exclamation point is his). Before our vocal night, we Aces men first spent two chilly February nights up in his Nordeast, Minneapolis joint to capture all the sounds necessary from the brass, reeds, strings and skins. The chill was kept outside, though, as all six of us were staring at each other in this room:

Now with the vocals, we have a carton chock full of jazz, some assembly required. It will be a good handful of months, however, before you can put your ears to it, so until the time comes I’ll be building up your excitement. Can you even tolerate the thrill? All sarcasm aside, I’m actually in a tizzy wanting to get it into your hands! Instead, for the time being I’m going to have to content myself sharing with you some of the originals that inspired us to play and record these great tunes. 

I’m going to begin with The Curse. Over the years, you may have heard Erik announce “Bogalusa Strut” from the stage as his favorite tune. It’s a great song that gets in your hips and stays there, moving you around despite yourself. Back in 2005, when we were figuring out which tunes we wanted to record for our 2006 release, Bucktown Bounce, it was a natural selection. The Aces found the song from a couple different directions. There was Erik, who came to the tune through one of his mentors, the late New Orleans drummer Bob French. 

Bob in the New Orleans Times Picayune. Click here for his obituary

My route to the tune was through my mentor Charlie DeVore of the Hall Brothers Jazz Band. The original was written by Sam Morgan and recorded by his band in 1927. It all came from this:

Bogalousa Strut

In the video, check out the first picture of the Sam Morgan Jazz Band. You can see a young Jim Robinson on trombone. You may also have noticed that Sam spelled his tune  “Bogalousa Strut.” That is how they spell the name of the Louisiana town down there, after all. At some point we jazz folk all dropped the O after the L. Maybe it’s because silent Os are dangerous. 

So while you were listening to that, did you run and get your copy of Bucktown Bounce? Maybe you scanned the tune list up and down and couldn’t find the song. It’s because we simply couldn’t get it done. We tried and we tried, until we got fed up with ourselves and left it alone. “Oh well,” you think. You try to be philosophical because there’s always going to be a tune or two that doesn’t make the cut. We were disappointed, but didn’t yet think of the song as cursed. But then came the 2010 sessions for A Big Fine Thing. Take after take of the tune only served to produce enough wincing to get a headache. I believe Erik was the first to say, “That song is cursed.” What was wrong with us? Dave, our band archivist, likes to point out that we could release a whole album of failed “Bogalusa” takes. Don’t worry. That won’t happen unless we get really famous, pass away after long and glorious careers, and our record company (because we’d actually have a record company if we were famous) thinks they could drag a few extra bucks out of you, the fans, if they released all our garbage. They could call it Bogalusa Cut. Or how about Bunch-a-Losers Strut.

It wasn’t the song’s fault, though, and we still loved it and kept working it out on our many stages. The Bob French version originally guided us. He had even added a vocal about a troubled girl—not in the Morgan version—that we used. On top of that, we began to dig into the Hall Brothers recording. Young Butch Thompson produced an epic clarinet solo with the band building up behind him all the way. He starts out alone, and on each chorus they keep adding instruments until they run out of musicians. It’s exciting stuff. 

Check out young Butch on the left. If you have your magnifying glass handy.

So here we are in 2014, after all this absorption and hard work, ready to break The Curse! Right? For us, it would be a double homage. Maybe The Curse could be overcome by the inspiration of two bands. In fact, Bob just passed away in 2012, and this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Hall Brothers recording. Talk about inspiration! We better do it right.

We set a good Bob French tempo, not quite as slow as he liked to do it, but still with that great mischievous bounce that he perfected. Like a man walking by a bunch of women hanging out on a stoop. We all relaxed into that for a couple of minutes, followed by the middle section, where the rhythm guys laid down a couple of choruses by themselves. This was so we could “underdub” Bob’s vocal later. Then came my clarinet odyssey, the Hall Brothers portion of the homage, where I was supposed to burble along by myself to start things, just like Butch did half a century ago. What happened? Dave accidentally played through for a bar, almost yelling an expletive as he did it. 

You have to understand something. Dave NEVER makes a mistake like that. I’m not exaggerating. He NEVER does. We all finished the take, sort of pounding away at it with a lack of dynamics born of frustration, and looked at each other mystified. None of us blamed Dave. It had to be supernatural causes. Did The Curse grab Dave’s arms and force him to play through, like some sort of evil windup monkey drummer?

I’d like to build the drama here. Tell a story of a baker’s dozen of takes each ruined mysteriously. A mistake here, a power outage there, the ghost of a Gypsy woman appearing before Robert pointing her long, bony finger at him, a ceiling tile falling on Zack’s head. The camera spinning around the room showing the men, pale and sweaty, lashing out at each other in frustration as the tension grows and the night wears away, but then…just when they were going to throw in the towel someone grittily says, “We’re going to break this curse if it’s the last thing we do!” They take deep breaths and you see a finger hit the record button, and they valiantly forge on to victory! That’s a good tale, but I’m actually glad I don’t have to tell it that way. As it turned out, victory was right around the corner. We got it on the next take. No drama, we just plain got it! The Bob French mischievousness combined with the Hall Brothers buildup is story enough. The Curse was lifted, and I can’t wait for you to hear it. 

A Decade Of Aces: Part Eight '12

This is the Eighth in a series of historical retrospectives on the Southside Aces, in celebration of their tenth anniversary.

We began 2012 with a changing of the guard. Andy put in his notice. If these trumpet men were actual guards, and the Decade of Aces was the night watch, Zack drew the first two hours, tried to get some sleep for the next four hours while Andy peered over the wild jazz frontier, and finally returned to duty. I would be dishonest if I said that in the end Andy and I had no differences, that the situation was as cheery and flip, crisp and clean as the above analogy suggests. But we are peaceful and reasonable men, and managed to come to the conclusion of this chapter without fisticuffs…even though he is from Wisconsin.

He served the rest of his time with two shows. The first was at the Eagles on January 12^th. We featured the music of Duke Ellington that night. Some of my favorites in our repertoire, including “The Mooche,” “Stevedore Stomp,” and... 

 “Five O’Clock Drag.”

Before the show, a dancer who had never seen us, and wished to know what kind of music we played had approached me. I thought I had given a good explanation, but then he asked, “Well, tell me this: do you perform polkas?” I dryly replied, “The New Orleans repertoire is not famous for its polkas.” He persisted for several minutes, “But could you play a polka?” Eventually I smiled and explained we might be able to provide a “New Orleans polka.” Later, I called “Moulin a Café,” and the band tried to create a polka feel with this nineteenth century ragtime. I think it created more doubtful expressions than a polka feel.

Zack was on the Famous Dave’s in January, but Andy did his last shows with us at the Ritz Theater in February, for the Fifth Annual Best of Midwest Burlesk. The headliner that year was a woman from New Orleans, Perle Noire, who featured a Josephine Baker act. 

I often commented how my work to pay ratio on those shows would have made the union wince, but I also liked to say, “It’s a burlesque house, not a coalmine!” I really enjoyed the sense of accomplishment I got from these shows, but a last-minute request from a performer sometimes required a reality check. This was my somewhat labored analogy: “Asking me to write out a full band arrangement of a Prince tune the night before the show would be like me asking you, in the same amount of time, to assemble a Statue of Liberty costume by stitching together two thousand Mr. Yuck stickers.” 

  

I think you could make the colors work.

One of my favorite memories from that year was backing up a singer named Big Mama Red on a old New Orleans dance band tune, “Mama’s Gone, Goodbye.” She knew how to belt ‘em! We also unveiled my arrangement of “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga. But what has to stand out for the band was our own unveiling! Four acts into the last show, we ditched our trademark black suits to reveal full red Union suits beneath! This went over well, I can tell you. I've always wondered why Andy kept his black dress shoes on. In case of fire? We wore our red union suits beneath our suit coats at the cast party later. Something Jelly Roll Morton would have called “Shootin’ the agate.”

What a cast! As you can see, Union Suits provide flexibility in your wardrobe.

Kriss Abigail Photography 

Lundi Gras at Famous Dave’s included Charlie DeVore working with us and producing his famous “Tiger Rag.” After “When My Dreamboat Comes Home,” which begins with ten bars of Bb, Erik said, “Dang! That’s a long time on one chord!” Robert said, “Like a desert!” Erik, “Yeah. I kept seeing mirages making me think the next chord was coming!” And two jobs for the Aces the following day made sure we celebrated Mardi Gras right. 

It bears repeating. I walked into the Eagles of a March evening to set up our stage, and hear this inquiry coming from the bar—“Hey, Rick! What was that that shot my dad’s finger off?” With that proof of place, I prepared for an evening featuring the music of the Hall Brothers Jazz Band, with Charlie DeVore leading the proceedings. See my blog of that time, The Lineage Of Inspiration, for the whole story. 

At Famous Dave’s, Erik let loose a sentence that was probably a historical first. “Now we’re going to play a Duke Ellington song followed by a Lady Gaga song.” The Lady Gaga garnered us a new friend, a young woman who said, “I basically have two things on my ipod, Big Band and Lady Gaga.” It was a good night, but the music booker at the Big Barn of Baby Back had told us he wanted “to shake things up a bit,” so we weren’t offered another show until deep into the summer. We were a bit miffed after three years of history, so turned down the belated offer. At 11:03 that night we began what I'm choosing to call our leave of absence.  

In April, we went into the Social Dance Studio on 38^th Street and 23^rd Avenue. Terry Gardner of TC Swing had offered us the First Saturday Dance. This was the one where Erik couldn’t wait to get home to eat, so he ordered a pizza delivered while were on the bandstand. Once he was nourished, he was able to drop yet another unbelievable introduction to Robert’s version of “Sweet Sue.” “Half and half poured over perfectly ripe peaches. It’s a warm, rainy night with the windows open. Clean, white sheets. Satin! And Robert Bell stretched out naked! That’s what this song sounds like!” Everyone in the room was either laughing, or uncomfortable, or both.

Dreamy!

April Eagles bring Louis Armstrong flowers. We started the feature with “West End Blues.” Zack planted his flag on the peak of that particular Armstrong mountain. We ended the set with “Mahogany Hall Stomp,” Zack holding the chorus of high Bb with the mute in! Another peak scaled for the French Tickler. In between, Dave McCurdy, subbing for Robert, sang his beautiful “What A Wonderful World,” and Zack finished the night with a vocal on “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South.”  And it was around this time Erik began raffling off “A hug from the sousaphone player.” What a night!

The Eagles seems to always provide high moments of music and comedy. In May, six minutes before our feature on Jimmie Noone was to start, I was the only member of the band in the house. I opened the stage door and peered out into the parking lot. It was there I spotted Erik in jeans and a tee shirt helping Dave load firewood from the back of Dave’s Checker Cab to Erik’s trunk. It was a new one on this bandleader, but long years experiencing my band’s relationships with clocks allowed me to merely nod philosophically and say to myself, "Why wouldn't they be doing that right now?" Miraculously, nine minutes later (only three minutes late!) we started the show with everyone suited up. We played great Jimmie Noone tunes, including one new to our book, “Japansy.” 

All six of us played a great job overlooking the pit of the Grain Exchange in May, where we were well paid and given free whiskey. Four of us played for that swanky affair, Retrorama, at the Minnesota Historical Society again. They put us in the same third floor, marbled corner next to the elevator as the year previous. If we continue to do this job every year until we shuffle off the mortal coil it will become known as “The Southside Aces Memorial Nook.” 

We also played the late show at the Dakota Memorial Day weekend. They were using us to lure over some of the Preservation Hall guys after their show at Orchestra Hall. It worked! A good handful did come over, and it was a memorable evening. Evan Christopher and Irvin Mayfield and others sat in with the band for a fantastic night of music that didn’t end until 2:30, late by Dakota standards. We spun together a version of “Just A Closer Walk With Thee” that came in at sixteen minutes! Normally my warning klaxons go off when a song heads north of SIX minutes, but I didn’t feel nervous for a second. 

Just A Closer Walk With Thee

Irving Berlin was featured at the Eagles on National Bourbon Day in June. I wasn’t going to have us play one of Berlin’s biggest hits, “God Bless America,” on account of how he wrote one or two other hits, until I realized it was also Flag Day. Erik kept calling it, “National Buy The Sousaphone Player A Bourbon Day.” We raffled off kosher foodstuffs. Chuck Sweningsen won the hug from the sousaphone player. After he uncomfortably accepted Erik’s hug, we gave him one of our CDs to avoid a lawsuit. 

Earlier in the year, when I had asked the owner of Humans Win! studio what he thought about having the Aces in to record some Christmas tunes, he replied, “What could be better than a New Orleans Christmas album recorded in the middle of summer by an atheist Jew engineer?” So there we were on June 27^th, at the start of a heat wave. I’m sure folk in southern climes are accustomed to accompanying their Noels with dripping sweat, but it’s a bit surreal for we Northern Men. I had a great time with this project. From a rollicking brass band version of “Deck The Hall,” to our hot swing version of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” to brand new originals—one by me and Erik and one by Claudia and Randi—to songs I called my “Christmas Postcard Arrangements.” These were the ones I fully arranged, with very little, if any soloing. In the studio one night we were recording one of those when Robert asked if he should put a flourish at the end. Zack called out, “Yeah, Robert! You put the stamp on that postcard! Lick that stamp!” We put a Rick Rexroth-sung version of “Away In The Manger” on there, which included a sousaphone introduction. Steve said, “I’ll never be able to look at a Nativity scene again without seeing a sousaphone in the manger.”  

An extremely hot July 3^rd evening found we men of the Aces on the hill behind the Minnesota Historical Society to kick off their Nine Nights of Music series. At the Eagles I presented an arcane and scholarly feature—Songs of the Public Domain! If I’d have had a logo made for that night, it would have been an image of an index finger pushing eyeglasses up the bridge of a nose, in the international sign language for “Nerd.” We had half Bill Evans band—Bill, Charlie DeVore and Dave McCurdy—and half Aces. 

Later in the month, we had the joy of participating in a chautauqua! “Drinking The River” featured us along with an historian who spoke of the brewing history along the Mississippi, a presentation by a waste treatment scientist, a singing Park Ranger and some dude in fur trapper attire. I want you to contemplate for a moment what kind of twists and turns your life would have to take in order to find yourself in the position to make some of your livelihood by slipping into your fur trapper get-up. 

Band on Boat

Fur Trapper on Boat

For our August Eagles, we brought in special guest Henry Blackburn on soprano saxophone, alto and clarinet to feature the incredible music of Sidney Bechet. It was a wonderful night, and a lot of people saw it, one of whom went home with a raffled copy of Bechet’s autobiography, Treat It Gentle. Bechet’s famous “Petite Fleur” and “Si Tu Vois Ma Mere,” were dished up along with “Promenade aux Champs Elysees” and “Moulin a Café.” Henry is fluent in French. Because of all those Bechet compositions with French titles, I joked how Henry was there to judge my pronunciations. “So here we go with the next one,” I paused, “Passport To Paradise.” I looked to Henry for approval, “How was that?” He considered for a moment, “Not bad,” he nodded. Steve chimed in, “What does that mean in English?”

A sultry day on the berm at Abbott produced some lazy tempos to go along with the heat. Zack reminded Erik that Erik owed him twenty dollars, which had been going on for some time. Erik was without the cash that day, too. We usually stand up for solos and for the last choruses, but in deference to the muggy day, I suggested an alternative. “Some of the New Orleans bands just stand up for last song of the set.” Zack said, “I’m in. If some guys did it once in New Orleans, I’ll do it.” Erik saw an opportunity, “Once, in New Orleans, there was this guy who said I didn’t have to pay him the twenty dollars I owed him.” 

September at the Eagles was dedicated to the Gershwins. The raffle prizes included “Potahtoes” and “Tomahtoes” to go along with the tune, “Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off.” This is also where we had a post-show photo shoot for the upcoming Christmas album. If any of you have a copy, you’ve seen the inside cover. Well, here’s one of the rejected photos from that night. If you look closely, Erik just let loose the punch line of a joke I can only tell you in private.

September brought us to Hastings for a wedding and to St. Paul for the second annual Oysterfest at Meritage. Erik gave the crowd a begging story. “I can tell you that the sousaphone player has been able to make it through some hard times with oysters.” Sure enough, trays of oysters began appearing. Later, after I worked myself into a lather on “St. Phillip Street Breakdown,” Erik told the crowd, “The clarinetist keeps his strength up with oyster stout!” Within a few minutes, I looked down to see three cups of the briny brew at my feet. Later, when Erik announce that we were flown in from Minneapolis, the stogie-smoking mayor of St. Paul, Chris Coleman, and his cohorts booed us! He definitely has pride of city. He turned it into cheers when Erik attempted to mollify him by announcing that Dave hailed from Osceola Avenue in St. Paul. This event is tops on my Aces calendar, and Erik will also testify to his overwhelming approval. Anyone reading this ought to plan on seeing us down on St. Peter Street this year!

In October, we played a Foodie Night at the Dakota. Andrew “Diz” Gillespie subbed for Dave. Diz had just completed the Twin Cities Marathon the day before, and said he was sore, but ready to play. “As long as I don’t have to climb stairs,” he informed me. I pointed backstage, “You have to climb two of them to get up there.” Adopting an expression as though seriously assessing the situation, he said, “I better call in a sub.” 

The Eagles was the site of our celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Preservation Hall with all of that music that came out of there. Erik’s first announcement of the night was, “Robert would like everyone to know that the banana is one of the world’s first Super Foods.” This caused me to look over my shoulder at the back line. And there it was, a half-peeled banana resting on Robert’s amp. The raffle included French Market Coffee and Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning, and actual record albums of Preservation Hall I had dug up at Hymie’s Records on Lake Street. 

Special guests two months in a row! Charlie DeVore appeared at the Eagles with us in November so that we might purvey the wares of King Oliver. Possessive tunes like “Buddy’s Habits,” and “Mabel’s Dream.” Wheelhouse tunes like “Canal Street Blues” and “Dippermouth Blues.” We had an actual meat raffle that night. Chicago hot dogs with sweet and hot peppers, in order that the winner could, as Erik said, “make your own Maxwell Street dogs and invite me over!” We may or may not have procured a rye on the rocks from Royal at the bar, and raffled that off as well! The raffle for the hug from the sousaphone player included Erik’s ever more refined declaimers: “I promise to keep my eyes open,” he said. “Now if you’re uncomfortable with the hug, we can make arrangements. Or you can just not raise your hand if your number is called.” Charlie’s grandson Noah won. He tore up the ticket and threw it in the air like confetti, and raised his arms in the air in victory as he and Erik walk toward one another on the dance floor. A huge hug commenced, and Erik told the crowd, “I’d suggest getting a hug from Noah if you need it. He’s a good hugger.” 

So the last time the Aces met in 2012 was December 13^th when we released Santaphone, our first Christmas album. 

If we see our way to a 20^th Anniversary, we’ll probably release our second one by then. The Beaujolais Sisters, Nadine Dubois, Maud Hixson, Rick Rexroth, Charlie DeVore made for a ton of special guests. I had even hired Mike Mello to play sousaphone for the title tune. Bob, the raffle ticket dispenser for the Eagles, approached Henry’s table before the show and said, “Hang on to your tickets now, because you ladies can win a spanking from me.” This caused the expected discomfort from the women to whom he was speaking, and no end of amusement out of Henry. 

When Dave launched the drum introduction to “Happy Feet Blues,” Erik’s toddler son shot out on the floor as if from a pitching machine that catapults two and a half year olds! He couldn’t help himself. He was dancing, throwing his arms up, laughing—Dave’s drumming was an electric wire to his heart. I saw him and I never felt so joyous playing that song. Charlie’s present to the assembled was a sixteen bar chicken cluck vocal during “Winter Wonderland,” and our present was a loaded raffle. A candy cane of Hershey’s Kisses, a set of actual candy canes, the Lifesavers Memory Storybook, Christmas Jello molds, eggnog, and four signed CD release posters with the Aces in their Union Suits. Christmas booty!

The album was called Santaphone after the tune Erik and I wrote about Christmas procrastination miracles. I know it isn’t Christmas, but you can feel how we felt putting it all together in the summertime if you give it a listen right now! Plus, Claudia made a cool video.

Listen! Watch!