The Idiomatiques and My Gypsy Jazz Journey Blog Part Deux

Scoredog · July 2017

So now that you have the preliminary information it’s time to start my Gypsy Jazz Journey in earnest.
Let me be honest, the majority of my journey takes place walking from my bedroom to the computer to watch youtube videos (my fitbit is turned on and the results are not good). Being a crusty old dude used to doing it the old fashion way, learning face to face and notes on a page, it’s odd to think the majority of my education has come from youtube. Most of it not paid for, just grabbing this lick from one guy and then lick from another guy till most licks, unless they are really unique to that player I’m watching, have been assimilated until there is a lot similarity (part of GJ’s sound). BTW I have yet to cop a lick from a woman, they are hard to find unless it is violin.

I love Robin Nolan, very simple concepts and he deserves to be supported but if you learned his simple stuff, I mean really assimilated it, for most players that would be enough and he just gives it away. I have sat down with Gonzalo a couple of times for lessons in LA and did about 8 lessons on Skype, of course you can record them so it’s like youtube, again very useful. Also got together and played with Robin for a weekend up in Mill Valley when he was at Djangofest last year. A couple of Skype hangs with Denis Chang who has been very giving of his time and information. Did I mention I spend a lot of time on youtube?

So The Idiomatiques were formed with the aforementioned members. We got our first job playing in a clothing boutique in it’s off hours. The owner sang and was talked into using us as her backup band. Since she had a good following the band quickly became known in certain circles in Santa Barbara and we started woking maybe a gig every 2 months (exciting stuff here). I started taking occasional lessons from Gonzalo, at Bone’s suggestion, as he would pass through LA from time to time.

So with gigs at the clothing boutique the question would come up, do you have a CD for sale and of course being newly formed the answer is no, but we are working on it! (yeah right). I’m not sure at what point bands or players go “hey why don’t I (we) record onto obsolete media” what a great idea that is and we can push it onto people who hopefully still have a cd player even if it’s not hooked up! So after getting numerous requests (3 or 4) we decide if we are a band we need a CD and off we go to get it done as soon as possible.

At this point I am fixated on getting good at this though in the back of mind I’m thinking you realize how old you are and how young some of these guys are, you will never really be able to compete. The other side of me says at your age you are supposed to be having fun so just go for it and enjoy the ride. While this is going on I have 3 smooth jazz hits and JAZZIZ mag names my album Bleu Horizons one of it’s top 10 albums of 2013…and all I can think about is my wrist position still sucks and my tone is weak.

So we start recording at Brian’s (our accordion player) place. The goal was to get this done quickly with the songs we play and everyone will be happy. We start by recording Django standards with no interesting arrangements and mediocre playing but an odd thing happens as we start recording, we start as most bands do, getting ideas of wouldn’t this be cool and wouldn’t this idea be cool and then originals start coming in and while we still had our half ass-d Django songs we quickly rushed together, a personality starts to form with the band and some new material starts coming out un-like any gypsy jazz band I had heard. We had R n B fused with GJ,

a really NY cool cat GJ song called “Stop It “ written by Brian.

Our Bassist Kim is a scat whistler and a true Bass profoundo singer so our vocals took on a unique character though the rest of us are just functional singers.

We added George in place of Bones at the end of the album because as mentioned Bones was injured and George was willing. George is an excellent flamenco player but still learning the Gypsy Jazz ropes.

We released the album, parts of it I am proud of, but to get it out relatively quickly we kept the Django standards so the album is uneven in my mind. The band as it is finishing the album takes a trip to Mill Valley to see our first Djangofest. We have our warm outdoor clothes on (it’s cool), we are going to play that festival in the downtown area whether people want us to or not. BTW at this point the band had attended one GJ concert total accumulation for all 4 members, Dorado Schmitt Allstars had come through town and since we had never seen another GJ band before we decided we better go. After watching we realized we had a long long way to go but it wasn’t until Django Fest Mill Valley did we really come to a sobering realization that we were further away than we thought. The first night was Joscho Stephan. The next night was ****’s group Trio Dinicu followed by Paulus Schafer. We left Sunday afternoon with our tail between our legs, though we managed to lead the jams going on downtown. We decided to print the album, move on, improve our show, start a 2nd album and make sure we get it right. Getting to become a better GJ guitarist though was all on me.

The beginning of the climb up!
I’ll continue the next phase of the blog most likely next month. Thanks for the read.

Best

Craig
(Scoredog)