| Greetings Friends, I’m back from a Midwest spin and it’s good to be right in the middle of the heat of summer here in SD. I love this place!
I loved that place too, that being Mackinaw Island. It’s a plane ride to Traverse City, Michigan (ran into some young students on their way to Interlochen School of the Arts, where I also attended my last year of high school), then a 3 hour drive to the ferry and then you eventually arrive in this cool little town where there are only bikes and horse drawn carriages. The death of the car is a good thing! There’s a big old-fashioned hotel and lots of quaint Victorian houses. The island is about 8 miles long and it’s mostly taken up with beautiful trees and rolling hills, clean air and tons of folks walking and bike riding. People on bikes are happy. People on bikes rule! We played our concert and then had the afternoon off so we rented bikes and rode around the island, stopping to take a few swims in the clear, cool waters of Lake Michigan. It was a good trip!      I ran across this young fellow on a TED talks vid and he’s one articulate young ‘un. I love his take on being inspired and how that plays into learning. Long live hackschooling! Check it out here!
The gig situation this week starts out tomorrow with a Del Mar Powerhouse concert that unfortunately is already sold out. Sorry about this. It’ll be a hoot with Amber Whitlock singing and the rest of the band swinging. We’ll try for another date further down the road that you can all attend.  photo by Mark Keller On Friday night I’m joining Gilbert Castellanos on trumpet and Rob Thorsen on bass for a night of jazz at the Westgate Hotel in downtown San Diego. Both of these guys play up a storm and it’s honor to swing it out with them. Hope to see you there.  That’s it for this week and thanks for tuning in, Peter |
“Rick”
This week I’m playing a show with Amber Whitlock on vocals and you talk about an amazing sound, well she’s got this on going big time with her singing. I had the pleasure back in 2001 of doing a fair amount of recording with her and these tracks ending up being the backbone of my Nikki’s Rose recording. For the tune “Rick” I adapted a poem by young Nikki where she talks about her surfer boyfriend Rick. I made the music flow like an Ivan Linns-ish reggae groove and the here it is, a modern day surf song. Amber sounds beautiful and there’s also a wonderful piano solo by Amber’s husband Rob. Check it out here!!