Cousin Harley Plays the Blues: a live show note

 THIS JUST IN: if you can't get a ticket for tonight, take heart! A show has been added for next month at St. James! Yay! 

Selfie with Art Perry: I don't usually do these, but we had been gabbing for near an hour. Someone should interview this guy! Y'know that Ray Condo was his student? Jim Cummins, too. But there's so much more...

Anyhoo, as you see, I went out last night. It was an expensive way to reward myself for having survived the month of March, which involved both friends and family having surgery, a pre-tax-refund stretch of bein' broke, a death-march of transcription (which I have returned to) and some lower back pain from being sedentary too much, not to mention being capped off with two weeks of illness. I truly spoiled myself: Dinner at Frankie's + a taboo beer + a soggy tiramisu cost $65 with the tip (not bad but I coulda just stayed home and eaten what was already in the fridge! On the plus side, it was nice to have an alternative to my own cookin' -- there's a Larry Norman lyric about being stuck with your own cooking, maybe in his most playful song, and there really is a point where that becomes purgatorial, y'know?). More importantly, I snagged two Paul Pigat slabs o'vinyl ($60), his Ray Condo tribute and the one I just interviewed him about, which he was debuting; it was fun getting the whole band's signatures. Derry, the trumpet player, was the hardest one to track down, since I didn't see where he went: so I lurked outside the toilet for awhile, then went and checked out the front of the venue, where a couple players (let's leave them some privacy) were, I suspect, smoking something (but probably just tobacco; no vipers here, not even Stephen Nikleva). Then I went back to lurk by the toilets again, feeling kinda self-conscious, like -- "Look, Martha, there's that pathetic nerd with the Sharpie and the record again."

Fuck y'all, this is cool to own: 

But I'm still run down, and have a doctor's appointment at 9am -- the semi-annual "has your cancer come back" check up, which is kinda in my experience akin to a warranty (because my cancer didn't come back last time until after the warranty had run out -- err, after my doctor told me I was in the clear and could stop coming in; six months later, what's that sore on my tongue?). So I made my apologies, having got my rekkids signed during the mid-set break, and ducked out. I see from the setlist that in so doing I missed out on a trio-format "High and Wild" off the Ray Condo tribute, but c'est la vie (really, I coulda probably caught that and then ducked out, but I didn't actually read the setlist until after I got home: d'oh!). 

It was my first trip to Frankie's. Everything was decent, though David Matychuk had advised me to try the tortellini, which I could not see on the menu at all. But the guy beside me was having chicken linguine, and it looked great, so I went with that. It was definitely decent! My enthusiasm for any pasta meal often runs out before the pasta itself, but it was tasty and well-presented and came with focaccia slices with a balsamic/ oil dip. Honestly, the three best things about Frankie's weren't the food, but a) the sight lines, which are good from almost any seat, even the bar where Art and I were sitting; the sound, which was terrific; and the civilized audience, who -- even though Cory Weeds had joked about how the no-noise policy wasn't going to matter much, so fullsome was the band's sound, and told people, by way of alerting them to the policy, that they could pretty much ignore it -- did not make a single sound that *I* could hear over the music. Often restaurant gigs suck, because bands are hired as "background", but not at Frankie's, apparently. I'd go there again! 

My photos aren't very good, mind you, but who cares, Art Perry was there, go bug him! I did decide midway through the first set to lift my camera and shoot vid, and was surprised and delighted that Paul proceeded to namecheck me in introducing the next song, "Down in Mexico," which rearranges the Coasters original quite a bit. I get namechecked infrequently by musicians, and never when I've got vid rollin'. Great song, great arrangement. I imagined Melody Mangler suddenly manifesting from the wings (she was present the last time I saw Paul, at the Rickshaw, doing a solo set opening for Los Furios). Or did I see him one time after that, with Mike van Eyes? (Nope, that was the week before). 

 Art joked as we walked to the Skytrain that he was going to get himself a red bandanna: I guess he dug "Down in Mexico" too.

The thing about last night that people should bear in mind: this is not what Paul usually does. This band is so tight, so skilled, and the music such a joy to listen to that it really does put an imperative on you: if you like bluesy jazz, as led by a rockabilly virtuoso, you really really should see if there are tickets to Frankie's tonight, because there might not be another chance. There hadn't been, earlier -- the words "sold out" were on the page, as they are now, but then it turned out when I clicked there was one seat at the bar that opened up. It's not optimum, being at a 90 degree angle to the band, seated on a bar seat that has no room for re-positioning, but if you twist your ass around and get your left foreleg up on the seat, you can actually get a pretty good view. My leg didn't even fall asleep, and I only kicked Art a little. 

He forgave me!