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.