A Necessary Change of Course

This is a picture I took from the deck of the QE2 at 6 in the morning on the day we docked in Rio de Janiero harbor.

Thanks to the elemental restorative powers of Brazilian music, I am thrilled once again to be writing, practicing, and playing.

Not that the dealings with the big band weren’t fantastic. Getting to record charts by me and my dad with Butch Miles is not an honor to be sneezed at. And capturing the artistry of Tony Campise on a recording that will endure is an honor I’ll think about whenever I write a tenor solo’s hashmarked chord symbols from here onward.

But something happened, something that sapped all my musical energy and a considerable amount of life energy as well. No, I’m not going into that here, but it’s just the ancient story of trust betrayed writ large and personal. I had to find something that would revive me. Astute readers of this blog know that I have health issues that are complicated by stress, and if MUSIC means stress, music must go. Or, alternately, music must change. I chose the latter, reinforced by the passing of my 59th birthday.

And that’s when I remembered that Bruce and I have been talking about getting something Brazilian together for a very long time. Almost since we met, perhaps when we were still plowing the field of Mr. Fabulous, when I heard Bruce sing the Girl from Ipanema the way it ought to be sung, in Portugese, we’ve been talking about exploring the rich contradictions of Brazilian music. By that, I mean this: How can a country so intrinsically sad produce so much music that is uniformly happy? Why are there songs whose titles use the word Triste—sadness—but whose bouncy rhythms and elegant harmonic language is nothing if not happy.

By the time I called Bruce, I’d already written a couple charts. If nothing came of it, I’d just be using them to practice on my own. The charts were chôros, a style of music that was in vogue in Brazil roughly from the 1920’s to the 1950’s. I had been pulled in by a recording of chôros by flutist Paula Robison called Brasilierinho which Ginger Von Wening pointed me to. She had set up a band called Double Coyote in Houston, playing chôros and bossa novas, but had just recently moved back to California.

I figure if the worst that could happen is I’d have some new parts to ‘shed, that’d be just fine. So I called Bruce and I called Monte Mann and asked them over to rehearse a few things to see how they sound. The three of us were very pleased with how things went, and I remembered just how much fun it is to play with guys who know how and don’t bring their shitty little sideshows into the music with them. We rehearsed around 10 tunes in 2 hours.

Pleasantly glowing from the experience, we I sounded 2 more possible recruits for what was becoming a project.

Jimmy Shortell, who plays jazz trumpet and accordion, was the first. I ws thinking how great it would be to add his playing to the stringed instruments, and how he could lighted the load of every member by being able to play chords and solos. I kid him mercilessly about that accordion, but the fact is that it fits into the folkloric thing about chôros, which have roots in the streets of Rio. Jimmy can read like nobody’s business. So off I went to rewrite all the charts I’d written for the first core, adding accordion and trumpet parts.

We had some ideas for a percussionist, but I remembered Fernando Ledesma, who was the drummer in Double Coyote, Ginger’s band in Houston. I called to get his number, and rang Fernando to find he wasn’t busy and he was always ready to play Brazilian music. Fernando’s played with the band Opa in the seventies and, through an association with Uruguayan pianist Hugo Fatturoso, with Airto, Flora Purim, and Hermeto Pascoal. This guy’s the real deal!

Last night was our first rehearsal with the five guys, and it was fantastic! I’m inspired to diligently practice and I need to keep writing to keep everyone interested until we get a couple gigs happening. Booking a 5-piece Brazilian band is lots easier than booking an 11-piece big band!

And even so, Marilyn’s been working some dialog up from an outline I wrote for the Mineshaft Canaries, which we’ll be rehearsing on March 10th. Seeing all of the Canary charts are written for my rather unique instrumentation, I might be headed back to the big bands sooner rather than later. But it won’t be the center of things again.

In the Can

I’ve had a week plus to consider the consequences of the recording. Here are my thoughts:

The studio, and the engineer who runs it, are every bit as tip-top as Eddie King, who owned and operated the studio where we recorded nearly thirty years ago. It’s a lot easier to handle the vagaries of recording a big band than Eddie behind the wheel of his Neve 3 board, going directly into two channels. The stuff we recorded last week is still in multi-track format, with virtually unlimited tracks we can add or use for experimenting with or clam fixing.

Nonetheless, Mike Hersh has a real respect for the music which shows in just how close the tracks sound now to a finished project. The tendency is to improve those tracks to perfection, which I am not interested in because every iteration seems to lose something, not in sonic quality but in feel. Mike worked great with Jimmy Shortell, who knows how to push the guys by reading the score and gently nudging them toward product.

No complaints about the band I put together. It was a real thrill having Butch (Basie's drummer for many years) and Tony Campise (who left Stan Kenton pretty much the day I joined back in 1975) there. Paul Baker and Tony Bray rounded out the saxes with me. The youth movement was the brass section with Kevin Flatt and Pete Clagett (we were on QE2 together) on trumpets and Ulrican Williams on the slide trambone. It was a bit of a youthful rhythm section too, with Ulrich Ellison on guitar, Angelo Lembisis on piano, Kris Afflerbach on bass, and Jimmy on drums. Marilyn Rucker was the canary.




The main thing a brought away from this session, though was that, despite the fact that I had a coronary and I have an ICD watching over me, I can still write all the charts, select the tunes from our massive and growing repertoire, select from among the many studios in town one that would be most big-band friendly. I selected and hired the personnel at my cost, while using the perfect combination of veterans and young studs.

Many thanks to Noreen and Larry for providing lunch.

In fine and one half hours we recorded 10 tracks, all of which we were sightreading.

Next step the clam fixes, the final mix, and we’ve doubled the size of our nearly 30-year old demo.

Found on Google Earth

I've been thinking a lot about QE2 and what her faith will be now that Dubai's economy is crashing.

Here's a shot from Google Earth, taken about three weeks before I joined, at the Malaga pier.

You can also see her at across from the Sydney Opera House, also on Google Earth.

Anybody want to hazard a guess what'll become of her?

The Folding Bike Imbroglio

From Rebirth of a band

From Rebirth of a band

So how is it that I ended up this day, a week before Christmas, with three folding bicycles? And, it would be fair to ask, what good are these funny little things that look like you ought to be wearing a clown suit while you're riding them?

Good questions. It all comes down, as most of the things I do nowadays, to ships.

From QE2 October 2007-March 2008

My friend Ricky Williams, an otherwise sensible bass player from QE2 who was once the computer officer on her in an earlier contract, has a Dahon folding bike. He left at home in Omaha when we were playing in the Queens Room band. (Dahon was the first mass-market folding bicycle company, designed in the USA, executed in Taiwan.) But his fervor for folding bikes is undiminished by mere airline luggage overcharges. He HAD brought his Dahon when he didn't have to bring his bass with him and enjoyed the freedom of getting into port and hightailing it anywhere he wanted.

I had my own interest in folding bikes, and a couple years ago I bought one which popped up on craigslist. The bike is of Chinese manufacture, actually pretty well made, 18.5 inch wheels, made for a promotion for Forever 21, a boutique. I bought it for a couple hundred from a gal who had graduated from UT and was moving out of the state. I like riding it around the neighborhood and into the new development that was the old airport. I can hop on it and get something at Starbucks in minutes. But I wouldn't consider riding it more than a mile or two for all the effort it takes. It's be a nice ride for someone who can ride it to the bus, load it, folded, onto the bus and ride a little way to the office. I was considering bringing it onto ships, but with all the crap I've got to bring it's a little too clunky and heavy.

Fast forward to last month, when I spotted a new Schwinn Loop at this address for $189, tax-free and free shipping. Jan and I were booked on the Golden Princess leaving LA on January 7, and the more I thought about it the more practical having a folding bike on the ship seemed to be. I'm just bringing my alto, so I can ship it ahead by UPS to a friend's house and practically ride it up the gangway. We can see a lot of Hawaii without paying the blood money to the Princess tour operators.

With those things in mind I ordered a red Schwinn Curve for Jan to use, as a holiday gift. Jan uses a mountain bike to get to work part of the way. Parking is awful near the UT campus, so she parks in one of the surrounding neighborhoods and rides in, parking her bike in front of the building where her office is located. Things being what they are on a large college campus, her bike gets stolen every couple of years, Kryptonite notwithstanding. Seeing the Schwinn comes with a large cloth bag to put it in, I thought she might get more out of the folding bike because she wouldn't have to lock it up out front--she could fold and bag it, sling it over her shoulder and keep it under her desk.

The Curve arrived a couple days ago, and I am VERY impressed with its quality. A little on the heavy side with a steel frame, but with a rather unique low center of gravity caused by its unusual frame design. Hey, for $189, how can you go wrong? Shimano shifter, 7 on rear cluster.

OK so the very next night I'm looking at craigslist and there's a folding bike. The past week there was a Bike Friday, the custom-made, state-of-the-art folder made in Eugene, Oregon, but it was way out of my price range at $1500. Plus it was way out past Fredricksburg, nearly halfway to El Paso. But yesterdays was a Downtube IX FS, which incorporates some of the sophisticated features of a Bike Friday and a lot of their own stuff as well. This model runs $400 new (factoring in shipping), and the guy's had it a year, and will switch over to his new mountain bike and he's willing to sell of $199. This is a high-frame model, aluminum frame with a 9-speed index system (all on the rear cluster!), full suspension.

There's just no comparison with the Schwinn. The Downtube never feels like a diminished bike. It's light and agile, with a higher center of gravity that takes a little getting used to--yeah, 30 seconds' worth--

So how could I say no? So I didn't. I can sell the Forever 21 for a couple hundred on cragslist, and I'm pretty much where I was when I started out, except for a Christmas gift for Jan. But, when I told Jan about the Downtube's ride she got REAL interested. We'll see. Maybe we'll let the Schwinn go, although it has its charms. (Check out that integrated rear rack!)

Either way, I hope there will be two folding bikes under our bed on the Golden Princess, so that after five sea days we'll be able to toodle around in Hilo, Honolulu, Kauai, and Lahaina. Oh and Ensenada, which is a stop we make to stay within the limits of the Jones Act.

Forebodings Ashore

Back?

Good. I left the service of QE2 on March 30, 2008, at the Port of Los Angeles, underneath the Vincent Thomas Bridge, a few hundred feet from where my career as a cruise ship musician was started in the early eighties. That doesn't mean to imply that getting off the ship was easy. Due to the incredible incompetence of one shipmate in particular in the crew office, the guys in the Princess entertainment office did not receive my request for an early out when we were as close to LA as Osaka.

I had to refile the form and more or less walk it through the stations of the cross. While I never served in the military, this is the kind of situation I thought only a branch of the armed services could botch this badly. One of the things I had to do in order to get this thing off the dime was to actually appear before this individual in the Crew Office. He was argumentative and defensive, aside from the general propensity toward advanced ignorance. And, he had a pronounced speech impediment, which caused him in his fury to ask, when I told him I had a plane ticket for Austin and would be leaving whether they had a replacement for me or not, "Are you fretening me?" Indeed I was not. I was just informing him, in the interest of advancing the cause. Fretening was the furthest thing from my mind.

No matter. Once the Princess office had the paperwork in hand it was a small matter to plug in a replacement for me. Los Angeles is a city noted for its out-of-work saxophonists and its international airport, so either bringing in someone local or flying someone in so from faraway places with strange sounding names is not trivial, but easy.



When we were in Hawaii, I was within range of my Sprint phone for the first time, so I arranged to have 2 parties pick me up: Steve, my trombonist buddy who I've been playing with since junior high or whatever it's called nowadays, and the family of my sister Cindy--Joe, her husband, a native of the recently-visited Kingdom of Tonga, and their son, Evan, who had been signed to play football for Southern Methodist University while I was gone. My thinking in the matter was that if I had two cars coming to collect me and bring me up to LAX, one would certainly show. (As it turned out, both vehicles showed up at very much the same time.)

The formalities for getting off the ship took two hours. My goodbye collection of photographs was taken entirely in the Staff Mess, where we tended to congregate whenever there were great waits in time to be tolerated. Of course, we had just cleared customs four days before in Hawaii. but no matter. We're fighting terrorism, and that means plenty of waiting around when it comes to cruise ships.

Finally we loaded up and headed out. Steve showed up in his early seventies Porsche 911, and my sister's family, not to be outdone, rolled in in a very fancy Mercedes Benz.

From the time we were in Singapore I was coughing. It was really nothing new, as the QE2 has a 40-year-old ventilation system. We all tended to pick up upper respiratory infections, a common ailment among the musicians on any ship, more so on the venerable QE2.

Thinking nothing of it, and not wanting to complicate my exit, I chose not to trouble the ship's doctor, but rather thought I'd be better off bringing my cough to my doctor in Austin. Trouble was, I had just a couple days in in Austin before heading to Atlantic City for a three-week gig at Harrah's, in the big showroom, playing the English ratpack show.

Jan and I only had a day and a half together before she jetted off to look after her folks in Alabama, who are in their nineties. The folks desperately need Jan to show up and do what she does best: organize.

As soon as she left, I started feeling bad. Sleep became difficult. But what could I do? I had to catch a plane the next day for Philadelphia, and then a limo--A LIMO--to Atlantic City. Three weeks work was nothing to sneeze at, and that was the deal I made with myself: the reason I left QE2 early was that I had booked these three weeks, to compensate for the lost wages.

My health, well, I'd take care of that when I got back to Austin. In the middle of the three weeks in Jersey, Jan flew out for a visit. I was short-winded, unable to sleep through the night, but I was really digging the gig. The headliners were American, the MD a very swinging Brit, and the remainder of the band was cats from New York City. I was playing alto, doing my best to do an authentic 1950's Marshal Royal lead sound. The trouble was getting from the bus to the venue was a bit of a struggle.

What I did not know was that my heart and lungs were filling with fluid, a process that must have started aboard QE2 with my presumptive upper respiratory infection. I was unable to walk distances or to sleep through the night because I was on the verge of Congestive Heart Failure.

Jay Cummings

Old buddy Jay Cummings, who played with Lionel Hampton, the Glenn Miller band when I was on it 30+ years ago, Woody Herman, and Stan Kenton, has been working for Norwegian Cruise Lines for quite a while now. He was on the Norwegian Gem with Kevin (below) and took the time to join us for lunch in the Canaries last year, when they pulled into the next parking space to the QE2. Jay offered plenty of amusing anecdotes for QE2 drummers Jim Panalver and Trevor Newby.

Kevin Hayunga, Sian Williams, and Trevor Newby Last Year in the Canaries

In happier times, Kevin (Yogaboy) met us for lunch. He was playing on Norwegian Gem, which was parked in the same place as QE2. Joining us were the two Welch persons, Sian Williams and Trevor Newby, author of the email cited below.

An Email from Trevor

As you may know, I spent a good part of last year and this as a crew member on the venerable QE2, on its last World Cruise and several forays into the Med and the Caribbean. Unlike some of my fellow bandsmen, I had no interest in returning. If I go back to ships it’ll be Princess Cruises for me, where I’ve always felt well-treated.

But, I have to say that I enjoyed the company of several fine musicians, among them Trevor Newby and Stevie Studd (not his real surname--shown above eating Filipino Fish Soup), who have between them measured their time aboard QE2 in decades.

I’ve been watching the webcam from the bridge of the QE2 on its last voyage to the port of Dubai, which you can find on Google Earth. After the ship had passed over into Dubai hands, I wrote Trevor an email asking him how the voyage went and what he was going to do in the future. Here is his reply, unedited:
========================================

Hi Rich'

Great to hear from you.I am home in the UK now,we arrived in Dubai on the  evening of November 26th,and no one was allowed ashore that evening,not even passengers.and that was down to the 'Port Of Dubai'.All crews last days work was pretty much the 26th,and pasengers flew home on the 27th,as did many crew,as they staggered the flights home,some crew also went on the 28th,I was one of the ones who flew home 03:10am (local time),arriving in London Heathrow yesterday morning at 7am GMT.
 
Well what can I say,for a Final cruise it was pretty discusting the way the 'ol girl was treated,there was of course no intention of having any BIG NAMED ENTERTAINER on for the last cruise,however they air head CEO,Carol Marlow,was on-board for the last we of the trip,and of course quite a few Passengers decended on here,in discust,and quite rightly so,after paying 3 TIMES than the standard brochure price for a cruise of the same length!!...So,with that in mind,they....the chain of Contempt,panicked,and we got Des O'Connor out for the night of the 26th...whoop di doo.....All I can say is they must've paid him a shed load of money to come out at a moments notice.
 
Its quite strange at one moment the cruise really seemed to be dragging and everyone was just so  wired for going home,then before you knew it we were on the Plane,it was like the last 48hrs flew by.
Stevie Studd was better than I expected,I mean the guy has spent almost half his life on there!!...So,I guess thats it,I have been offered the Queen Victoria,January 10th,join in New York,at least I get Christmas at home....Hey,great to hear from you Richard,you take care,and please keep in touch,wishing you and your family a WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS & NEW YEAR.
 
 
                               Kindest Regards......Trevor

Another weekend whizzes by

This is the last couple of days I can watch the QE2’s bridge camera as she makes her final trip to Dubai. So sue me. It hasn’t been an easy week for my health either, but I choose not to belabor the point. The most irritating thing is that my sleep schedule has gone out of whack. I find myself excreted from the tube of sleep at odd hours, unable to resume sleeping and not really any good for work, either.

The only thing I did this last week that amounted to anything seemed to be when I was volunteered to take over the planning for the cruisecritic.com meet & greet for our cruise in January. In the process I discovered a relational database that runs on my iPod Touch. It’s fully featured, with a bunch of templates, and it cost me under $10. Incredible. I’ve been using Bento to put the book in order. (No, there were no missing parts, after 27 years.) But I might migrate the databases for both ORB and the big band to the iPod Touch so I can bring the database to the gig in my pocket.

Here’s a link to the product, HanDBase. So far I am very impressed.