Tony: Winter of a Kentonite

Last night Tony Campise, who played with the band Monday night on wobbly legs, fell in his Corpus Christi hotel room soon after checking in. He never made it to the stage of the Texas Jazz Festival, where he was booked for a couple nights he had stretched to a 4-day hotel stay.

There was certainly nothing wrong with his playing Monday at Ruta Maya. But he was a little more edgy than usual, even accusing me of misrepresenting the hours of the gig. (He subsequently looked in his book and cleared me of all charges.) But, he had to be helped onto the stage and he was having an intestinal struggle.

Tony and I might go back further, I suspect, than anyone in this town. The Kenton band played in Santa Cruz in 1974, when Tony was the alto player and leader of the saxophones. My college band, the Cabrillo Jazz Ensemble, opened the show, and I was lucky enough to hang with some of the guys. I subsequently joined the band, but just after Tony left.

Since I moved to Austin I’ve played with Tony many times, not enough to get alienated by some of Tony’s quirky habits, nor he with mine. He was the first guy I called when I was setting up the recent demo session. I knew he’d cost more than any of the other guys, but I also knew he was worth it. Tony was on his very best behavior at the session, playing a couple torrid solos and helping the band through some rough spots.

I always try to mix generations, because the best results happen musically when the energy of youthful enthusiasm is tempered by the example of experience. That day, Tony was the éminence grise to all of us, and particularly to a young trombonist originally from Houston called Ulrican Williams, who shared with me a story of the day that Tony spoke to the kids at his middle school. That long-ago day Tony filled Ulrican with something that he’s been chasing ever since, culminating with him playing on the same recording as Tony.

I feel like the same thing happened to me, 35 years before, in Santa Cruz.

At 4 this morning it was determined that the fall had caused fluid to fill Tony’s brain which would need surgery to relieve. It’s now 7 pm as I write this, and we haven’t word of Tony regaining consciousness yet.

We have another gig at Ruta Maya Monday, one for which I’ll need to hire a tenor player.

Soon: Appearing in Public!

Slim is out of the country, and in the vacuum steps Austin’s Boogie Big Band, a phrase I thought up while designing this flyer.

I miss InDesign and the process of making stuff up as I work out a design. I used to own a typesetting service where ad guys in nice suits would come in and pay extra for me to do their rewrites. When “desktop publishing” was ushered in and they all went out and got Macs, well, they found out in a hurry why I got paid what I got paid. I do miss it though, like I miss the molar I had yanked 10 years ago, the one I still roll my tongue over. The fonts are Futura extrabold condensed and the Century Schoolbook family.

Anyway, this is a coming-out party of sorts, and we owe it to Slim, who has developed swing night at the Ruta Maya World Headquarters, to the extent that both the Lindy Project and Four on the Floor come out and teach swing dance lessons before the band comes out.

Marilyn will sing a couple tunes (most likely the ones we recorded), Jimmy will do a couple, but my goal is to make the band roar, preferably with about half new material. I have maybe 80 charts we haven’t played yet, but if the recording session is any indication they’ll work just fine.

Some consultation with the dance instructors about the tempi they are teaching might be useful and instructive. Jan brought up the importance of adding a Latin number or two for the sake of variety.

So, to summarize: The most important foot we need to put forward is that we will NOT be a cult of personality, that the music will, unadorned, speak for itself, that the band will play to its strengths, that no problems arise like the restaurants that Gordon Ramsey saves on BBC from their own bizarre instincts to compete for the longest, most complex menu. Useful alliances with the swing dance community must be made.

So far, saxes are me, Tony Bray for the second of the Mondays, Kevin Flatt and Rich Haering on trumpets, Ulrican on trombone, unknown on the rhythm section as Jimmy’s setting that end of the band up. So the band’s sketchy, but there are enough good paying gigs that I don’t feel bad about asking anyone.