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In response to my recent quandary, enter our drummer Jazzy Jeff, who enumerated the band’s next steps thusly:

• get a bass player to round out the sound of the group, and maybe a guitarist
• develop more material while we continue to tighten current stuff up
• work towards putting on an “evening with Gordon Wright Band and Friends” at Old Town School
• get re-booked at Schubas as headliner
• play out a bunch, adding in additional originals/covers to fill out the night
• Find a corporate sponsor to put us on the road from Chicago to Boston/Chicago to Denver…woo hoo!
• Crash SXSW and demand a showcase!
• Go Bowling
• Quit music and pretend that I am a normal adjusted individual… quickly leading to a “Who am I God!!!” moment.

I think he pretty much pegged it. A-Is-For-Aric (the band’s inimitable keyboardist) particularly endorsed SXSW and bowling.

What’s the next step?

I’ve been wanting to blog about last week’s Schubas gig. But, frankly, it left me a bit speechless (not easy to do). This will sound ridiculous, but the gig has put me in a quandary. It wasn’t just good… it was too good.

Hear me out. I’m not saying that it was perfect, and I’m certainly not saying that I was perfect. I’m sure the other performers, too, could name things they’d have done differently.

But it was everything I would want from a gig. From the booking of the gig to the actual performance, everything just went like clockwork, and on January 30th, more than 150 of our friends packed into the best venue in Chicago to enjoy one of the most musical, entertaining, and balanced bills I’ve ever been a part of. It was magical.

So now what? Simply repeat? And is it possible to? Comments are welcome!

One thing we in the band all agreed on: we need a bass player.

I love this shot I took of Evan the other night at our Schubas show. He’s playing Shakira. On a Guitar Hero controller.

Wow.

I’m still coming off the high from last night’s show at Schubas.

But it got me thinking about my boys back in Boston. Not just the fellas from Fooled By April, but also our rock brethren in Scamper, who this weekend are saying sayonara with a huge blow-out show at the Middle East Downstairs.

We’ve all come a looong way since I met Keith & Nate at the Kendall Cafe oh-so-many years ago playing as the Puzzlebusters. And our two bands seemed to mirror each other’s ups and downs over the years. The break-ups, the make-ups, the weddings, the births (although, fortunately, they never proved that was actually Jordan’s kid… :), and a bunch of solid, fun-as-hell rock shows.

Sadly, I’m missing the final one this weekend. There were even early rumors of an FXA reunion appearance, but alas. Fittingly, I’ll simply say my goodbye and good luck in my online diary.

Keith, Nate, Mike & Brendan, you’re some of the best friends, fans and rockers a band could have in this troubled biz. Rock on, boys.

Continued from Jazzy Jeff…

As usual, Stevie Wonder came to the rescue.

I was listening to Songs in the Key of Life one day, and trying to decide if I should be embarrassed by the fact that the ridiculously cheesy “Saturn” had brought me to tears. (Okay, well, just tear-filled eyes, not full-on crying or anything! Geez…) I had always held what I believed to be a high musical standard, dismissing the schlock of modern radio and cultivating and studying the classics.

But here was Stevie, a consummate musical genius, flaunting any notions of what distinguishes good music from bad, by earnestly singing, without a hint of irony, “Don’t need cars cause we’ve learned to fly on Saturn.” And it only got worse when I saw Stevie attest in an interview that his favorite of his own compositions was by far his most saccharine and overplayed: “I Just Called to Say I Love You.”

My first conclusion was that Stevie simultaneously had immense talent and horrible taste. But I realized the common strain in his music was, quite simply, love. And then it hit me: if music was love, then all music was beauty, in all its forms.

Suddenly, the assimilated boy bands of top 40 and the auto-tuned twangers of modern country offered new horizons of lush pop brilliance. Up to this point, I had shunned the use of jazz as merely a backdrop, and insisted it be listened to, not just heard. But now I saw that music in any form held some sort of magic, and rather than seeming duplicitous, jazz seemed many-splendored.

In my new Wonderesque view of the world, jazz had become the paragon of music as love. In jazz, a simple folk song could be iterated into a dark and complex symphony. In jazz, peoples and cultures could be united through a seamless melding of Delta blues, Beethoven and a bossa nova beat. In jazz, one could console with the familiarity of an old tune and simultaneously confound with the distortion of a classic.

And, I finally concluded, jazz could just as easily brand your Starbucks as it could withstand scrutiny at Juilliard. The ability to be both neglected background and exposed foreground simply proves the strength of jazz.

And music.

And, well… shucks, love.