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BRINGING THE GROOVE TO BERKS
A couple of weekends ago, I hopped onboard a Bieber bus out of the Port Authority and spent an extraordinary couple of days at The Berks Jazz Festival in Reading, PA.
What sets Berks apart from other fests around the U.S. isn't just its length (ten days): it's also the number of shows offered (160), the variety of musical styles presented (from acoustic jazz to acid jazz), the diversity of the artists performing (from Pat Martino to Karl Denson), and the range of venues (intimate clubs, thousand seat auditoriums, and everything in between).
From March 16 through 25, the city of Reading was overrun with jazz fans, jazz musicians, jazz press, and vendors of jazz “tchotchkes” (hats, paintings, jewelry, lamps, clothing) from across the country and around the world. When not digging incredible sounds, attendees spent hang time at a vast selection of outlets, malls, fine restaurants, and other area attractions ( eastern PA is lovely in the late winter/early spring).
SATURDAY – PANIC AT THE JAZZFEST! 
I was booked to perform on Saturday, 3/24 as the opener, and host for, the Warren Hill/Nick Colionne afternoon concert at the Sheraton Reading Ballroom; and for the Chuck Loeb & Friends afternoon show on Sunday, 3/25, also at the Sheraton Reading Ballroom.
When I went downstairs for the Saturday morning soundcheck (I happened to be staying at the Sheraton: clean room, excellent food, awesome selection of recently released in-room movies, and nice little exercise facility), Warren was there and he was bumming out bigtime – practically his entire band was stuck in the airport at Chicago and they were going to miss the show.
Thankfully, Warren is an extremely prepared dood: he travels with the full sheet music for all of his original songs. And fortunately for him, Nick's band was willing to take a look at the arrangements, do a quick rehearsal, and wing it!
Talk about stress: Warren was gearing up to hit the stage for a hall of 900+ eager fans with a band comprised of him, his bass player, and three replacement players (guitar, keyboards, and drums) who'd never seen or played his music in their lives.
If you didn't know the specifics of the situation, you never would have guessed how tenuously Warren's show was stitched together. But because they're top notch cats who've all got it goin' on, the fellas meshed their chops together seamlessly, and there wasn't a head in the house who wouldn't have believed that Warren & co. hadn't been gigging together for years.
Big crowd pleasers: Warren's “Spooky”-ified spin on “Light My Fire” and his interactive rendition of “Play That Funky Music”. (No stage dive on that one, but lots of up close and personal physical interaction with the audience.)
Crazy respect to Mr. Hill and the outstanding clutch players who made his room-rocking show a mega mondo mucho hit!
SUNDAY – CHILLIN' WITH THE CHUCKSTER
My interaction with the Chuck Loeb & Friends gig on Sunday afternoon actually got started in the Sheraton restaurant at breakfast.
I had never met Chuck before, although I'd been spinning his tracks for years on The Groove Boutique mix show (my fave Chuck CD: eBop ). So when I saw him munching on French toast and nursing a tanker of coffee at 8:30 in the morning, I thought “Wonderful! Perfect time to say hello!”
Chuck apparently didn't mind having his breakfast interrupted and couldn't have been friendlier. He actually was familiar with me and my radio show (or he was being REALLY polite), and he had an idea: would I be willing to jam with him during his performance?
We tossed some ideas around but we left it kinda loose: figured we'd make it happen at the time of the show. Onstage. In front of almost 1,000 people. With no rehearsal.
HEY, NO PROBLEM!
See, the Rafeter likes to live extremely dangerously, so the plan (or non-plan) was set (or not really set).
SHOW TIME
I smooved a slammin' mix of jazzified walk-in music before Chuck's show and then kicked a short blast between his sets. Just before he was supposed to start his second set, Chuck sneaked over and asked me if I had any uptempo house tracks that he and his squad could jam to as they took the stage.
Given the Rafester's voluminous and varied traveling library of music (hey, is this referring to myself in the third person thang getting ridick or WHAT?!), I had the perfect song for Chuck's needs: the Motown Remixed version of “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” by The Temptations.
I tossed the track into the deck and cranked the volume. The intro slid in and the groove was moving. I told the crowd that what they were about to witness would either be an unmitigated disaster or sheer genius. Their whoops told me that they were down for the experiment.
One by one, Chuck and Friends (Friends = Jeff Kashiwa + Kim Waters + Steve Cole, aka The Sax Pack) took the stage and added lines to the Temptations' classic. When the chorus rolled in, the crowd sang along, and with a head nod from Mr. Loeb, I pulled out the track and the band took over!
When the band's set was almost complete, Chuck motioned me back onstage to join them on percussion (I use a Roland Handsonic HPD15 . It's cuh-razy fun!!!) for their final number. I have no idea what the name of the song was that we were playing, but it was a blast, and it sounded great, and Chuck was the man for including me in his clique. MAD PROPS TO CHUCK L, BAY-BEE!!!
BACK TO THE CITY
Aside from the woman sitting next to me who was suffering from influenza or TB or some other highly contagious, hack-inducing, expectorant-spewing ailment, the three-hour bus ride back to Manhattan on Sunday was fairly relaxing. Back at the Port Authority, I then hopped a DeCamp to NJ, unpacked, and got ready for my next big road trip: the Seabreeze Jazz Festival in April!
Details, stories, and cool inside info to come on that one very soon…
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