| Hi Good People, there are a lot of great things going down and take for example this—last week Pat Metheny led a band of sonic wizards through an absolute on fire set in downtown SD! Can music get this good?! Hard hitting, from ballads to the whole band blowing the roof off of Anthology—it was a magic night. Like a fry cook putting it up to ten and letting the vat take it’s own merry course! So good to see and hear this go down at Anthology too. It wasn’t tame and I like it that way—it was loud! For me it’s a full on inspiration to keep hanging out in the woodshed!
Next up, good things happen to good people and today I heard that Chris Thile, the mando player that has changed the course of the mandolin in the world of music, just was awarded the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant. It’s an award that you don’t politic for and it’s simply bestowed on you for being so bad ass. They offload a ton of money to you and you can just use it as you please—just keep playing music until the money runs out. This cat deserves it if anybody does and check out this to get further into the story: UT article  Nickel Creek recording at SpragueLand with (left to right) Chris Thile, Sean Watkins, and Sara Watkins. Next up, I just got wind of Denise Donatelli’s new vid and they ended up using a bunch of footage of my hands doing the six string ballet. Check it out and also, if you’re in LA we’re playing up there next week at Vitello’s. See below for the deets. Up for this week I’ll be at the Roxy on Thursday night and I’ll be dialing for dollars—not that really but actually guitaring for smoothies. Their “Sunrise Smoothie” deserves the next MacArthur “genius” grant of it’s own I think. The big gig for this week is at Tango del Rey on Saturday night. While in Japan last year with Dianne Reeves I met Yosuke Onuma and Joe Powers at a club that we jammed at after the Dianne gig. These guys can play! Joe is a hot chromatic harmonica player and check this vid of him playing with a symphony. Wow! Yosuke is one of the top jazz guitarists in Japan and is super famous too! He’s a great fellow and surfs too so part of his trip here in SoCal is to catch good waves. We’ve got a great night of music planned and we’re staging a rehearsal the day before the gig to iron out the deets on the tricky tunes. It’ll be a good one and we’d love to have you hear this unique sound. Look below for the fine print.  Me and Yosuke jamming last year in Tokyo!  New friends with Yosuke on the left, George Nagatta, and Joe Powers.  We went out to lunch the next day and Joe starting jamming at the restaurant. That’s what I have for you today and thanks a mil for reading…all best, Peter |