Wednesday is “open mic night” at Bayou Bistro, where anyone can hop onstage and play for the patrons. Since there’s no guarantee that anyone will bring an instrument, most open mic nights feature a “house band,” which in Bayou Bistro’s case is the Tropical Sons.
While Bayou Bistro is a short drive away for most of the other band members, it’s a fifty- to eighty-minute drive for Yours Truly, depending on the traffic. I can’t do it every Wednesday, but I try to play when I can.
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Bayou Bistro is a charming down-home bar. If you drive past it, you might not even realize that it’s a bar — it’s hidden away by the water, and you could easily mistake it for a fishing shack. But it is indeed a bar, with friendly staff, and sandwiches that don’t disappoint (I’m fond of their mahi mahi, shrimp, and banh mi sandwiches).
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As you might expect, a band called the “Tropical Sons” has a sort of uniform, and in our case, it’s aloha shirt and shorts with optional hat. For last night’s gig, I went with my “Disney Polynesian” shirt, which is one of my favorites. It’s a gift from my friends Natalie and Eldon, who somehow found it at a market in Ottawa:
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We played from about 5:15 until 8:30, with a break to get a bite in the middle. Here’s what my view looked like at the start of the gig…
A short while after, we started our second set, also known as the “Sunset Set.”
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And we played on into the night, wrapping up around 8:30 (Bayou Bistro closes at 9).
Once again, a fun gig! I’m going to be busy for the next couple of weeks, so it may be a little while before I get a chance to play at Bayou Bistro again.
The fun starts at 5:30 and wraps up around 8:30. If you’re in the area and like seafood, beer, and great live music, come on over! It’s an open mic night, so if you feel like playing with us, bring your instrument!
Here are some scenes from the last time I played there, a few weeks ago:
Tampa Bay Ukulele Day takes place this Sunday in downtown Dunedin! It’s a day of workshops where you can hone your uke skills, a “strum and stroll” event where you can see scenic Dunedin while playing, and see local talent, including Tom Hood and the Tropical Suns, which includes Yours Truly on accordion!
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The schedule
There’s a lot going on, and it’s happening all day. I’ll be with Tom Hood and the Tropical Sons at Dunedin Brewery at the start, then moving to Pioneer Park later on in the day.
Improve your skills with these workshops hosted by The Flea Bitten Dawgs, a band who describe themselves as “ukulele jazz Americana!” The fee is $30 per workshop, or you can attend all three for $60:
Plays Well with Others (10:00 a.m.): This workshop is created to help a group of players playing the same instruments to sound exciting to an audience. The challenge is to become a group with individuals playing separate parts of a song. We’ll break into different groups, with each group learning their section of the arrangement, and we’ll then put it all together to create the song.
Finding Your Inner Chord (11:30 a.m.): This workshop is about think of chords as sounds instead of a form on the neck. You’ll learn how to make your songs interesting and how to get away from the habit of just strumming through a song. If you write songs, you’ll find a better voice for your chord progressions. While this is not a class about theory, we will touch on the basics of chord construction.
Percussion Workshop (1:00 p.m.): Explore how different beats give a song its character. Learn how beats move the music and engage better with the audience. We’ll start with basic rhythms and work into more complex ones. Our goal is to move away from strumming four beats to a measure and dig into the structure of the song. While this is a percussion workshop, you can use this knowledge with any instrument you play. We recommend you bring a shaker, or small hand drum, but tapping on your ukulele will work. This workshop comes with take-home lesson sheets.
Their song list crosses ten decades of music. They mix originals in with the covers they love. One of Thom’s songs was recorded by Supe Granda of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, and two of David’s songs were recorded by the group for the Narrow Boat Sessions, Great Britain’s premier folk music organization. PBS produced a segment of Thom’s involvement with the ukulele which featured The Flea Bitten Dawgs.
Raffles!
You can buy raffle tickets — $5 each or 5 for $20 — to win one of the following:
And of course, I’ll be there, with a couple of accordions, playing first at Dunedin Brewery from 11:30 until about 2 or 2:30, then at Pioneer Park around 4:30. Join me!
When I first saw this hoodie, my first thought was that its design was a little too bright and bubbly.
An almost periwinkle background? Pink, yellow, and light green lettering in a font better suited to selling cotton candy? Did whoever designed it even listen to the album? Even just once?
Maybe I spent too much time picking out rock t-shirts in head shops on Toronto’s Yonge Street during my misspent youth, but it’s my opinion that prog-rock t-shirts should be black. I think that Wish You Were Here, with its themes of loss and disillusionment with the music industry, is better paired with graphics like those from the video for Welcome to the Machine.
And then it occurred to me: if you were 17 years old in 1975 (when the North American tour featured on the hoodie took place), you’d be 65 years old today. Those bright colors might work better with a retirement wardrobe of golf clothes, cruisewear, and senior chic in general.
I can’t justify spending $28K on this monster analog synth setup, but maybe you can. If you’re working on a soundtrack or sound design for a movie or game, or the next big electronica/EDM/electroacoustic masterpiece, this collection of systems assembled into three racks just might be the thing you’re looking for!
The seller’s based in Clearwater, and the lucky buyer will have to pick it up there or someplace nearby, and you’ll probably need at least an SUV with the back seats folded down to drive away with three racks’ worth of gear.
Massive Eurorack setup including three Doepfer A-100 cases. Everything has black panels and has a nice aesthetic. I have extra panels for a few items that didn’t come in black. I have almost all the original manufacturer boxes.
Also will include a huge lot of organized eurorack cables, extra power cables, and misc screws and parts.
This is a truly incredible setup!
Must pickup in Clearwater or arrange for meet-up in Florida. I can drive to your or meet you – free – depending on location. Not willing to ship – way too large, heavy, and delicate.
Erica Synths DIY Polivoks VCO II – Updated design based on the original Polivoks VCO
4ms Company Ensemble Oscillator (Black Panel) – Black panel for the Ensemble Oscillator
Erica Synths Black Double Bass – Erica Synths Black Double Bass is unique module that combines two transistor suboscillators (-1 and -2 octaves) and lowpass filter.
2hp ADSR (Black Panel) – Four Stage Linear Envelope
Erica Synths Black Quad VCA2 – Four channel voltage controlled amplifier and mixer
Erica Synths Pico VCA – Dual linear VCA
Erica Synths Black Quad VCA2 – Four channel voltage controlled amplifier and mixer
Erica Synths Drum Mixer – Dedicated Drum Mixer with a compresor
CalSynth uO_C – Micro Ornament & Crime in matte black
Acid Rain Technology Navigator – Attenuator, Attenuverter and Mixer
Mordax DATA (BLACK) – Four channel oscilloscope, Spectrum analyzer, Spectrograph, Tuner, Dual waveform generator, Clock source/div/mult, and more
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For those of you who aren’t familiar with synthesizers (I used to be — and still am — a synth keyboardist), this rack is a killer collection of:
Synthesizers, which make all the beep boop sounds,
Drum machines, which make all the thumpy and OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ sounds,
Sequencers, which record the order in which the beep boop, thumpy, and OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ sounds should be played,
Effects, which add dimension to all the sounds, from reverb to echo to distortion to oddball sonic effects.
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The asking price is US$28,000. I can’t tell you if this is a good price or not; I’m more familiar with the more conventional synths you’ll find at Sam Ash or Guitar Center than with this sort of rig.
Maybe someone should contact Trent Reznor and see if he’d be interested in coming down to Clearwater, and maybe, you know, meet up with me for a beer or two?
Another Wednesday, another fun gig with Tom Hood and the Tropical Sons, the house band for open mic night at Bayou Bistro in Tarpon Springs. It was a fun pre-Thanksgiving celebration, and a chance to play some good ol’ classic rock with great local musicians at a very friendly bar with tasty seafood.
