Greetings thou splendid Creatures!
I’ve given you a month or two off, but Februarious is upon us and another Year of Green Monkey Glory is rolling through the muck and flow. Viscosity be damned!
So square one. We are putting out our first Oly Jazz release in over a year. And not one. Two. Hey, we never planned this to be a regular thing, okay? Just an occasional jab at past glory. Today, we feature bass player extraordinaire Steve Luceno, the mighty low-end machine that much/most of Olympia jazz has been built on: Obrador (1977-2006), Bert Wilson (Rebirth:1980-1990), Chuck Stentz and Jack Perciful (Bebop Revisited:1980-1990), Ocho Pies (1995-2012), Joe Baque (The New York Trio: 1986-2022), Maia Søntøll (House Blend: 2008 – recent), Mark Lewis (The Cool Jazz Trio: 2012 – present). His Smucho Gusto duo plays every Wednesday at Cascadia on 4th.
I met Steve when I was making my “Olympia” album. I knew nothing about all the jazz that happened in Oly while I was away for 25+ years. Steve knows everything and has a prodigious memory. He was my first and most important resource in writing “Jazz In Olympia”. Besides that, he is a super nice, generous human with extraordinary eyebrows.
So what are these two albums? “Get Up and beat the Blues” (2002) and “Constant Conversation” (2003). Steve lists these influences on his composition: Ellington, Strayhorn, Mingus, Cole Porter, Joe Baque, Bill Evans and Coltrane. That gives you a fair idea where he is coming from. Where he gets to, he is driven by the core band that he kept together for these two albums: Steven Bentley – drums; Ryan Burns – keys; Tony Grasso – trumpet; Dan Blunk and Ryan Burns – saxes. Solid. A nice taste of what was a thriving small-town jazz scene that still echoes around town a bit twenty years later. If you want to see jazz in Oly town nowadays, you must get thee to The Eagles at 4th and Plum on Monday nights for the ongoing Oly Jazz Central shows (https://www.facebook.com/groups/olympiajazzcentral/).
This is the first time these albums have been available for streaming online. Before you had to buy them from Steve in person. Get ‘em. Both CDs are available on our bandcamp page. And in case you missed the “Jazz In Olympia” track, it’s right here: https://tomdyerandthetrueolympians.bandcamp.com/track/jazz-in-olympia
Next, all new to GMR, are former Olympians and current Portlanders, Dead Air Fresheners, an experimental and post-punk musical group with a somewhat fluctuating membership. Their new album is “Moon”, a collaboration with noted P-town author (and vocalist) Jennifer Robin. This is their 19th release since 1999, their first on GMR and it is probably their best, right? We are hoping CDs will be on hand for their record release party Saturday, March 1 at McCoy’s Tavern right here in Olytown. It is unclear at this time if Jennifer will be at the March 1 show, but I will let ya know.
I first ran into the Freshners a couple years back when I world-premiered their Noise + Air – Noir on my FreeForm NW show on KAOS 89.3FM Olympia. Pretty great.
(FYI: My show has moved to 4-6:00 pm Wednesdays. You can stream it here: https://www.kaosradio.org/listen
Next up, let’s talk about Capping Day, shall we? The last time I mentioned them, I said October or November release, right? Oops. Hey, I’ve been saying for a while it was gonna happen – well guess what? It’s really happening.
They posted the following on Facebook on Christmas Eve:
There’s no going back now! Capping Day has sent all the elements of our new record to Waxxy Poodle Record Pressing Plant and now all that’s left is the pressing and printing.
The aforementioned record is a 12″ EP with 6 songs on it. The songs themselves were recorded nearly 1,000 years ago at Gary King’s House of Leisure Studio, which subsequently burned down after we laid our tracks down. (We assure you there was no connection between those two events.) Our tapes survived the fire, but for technical reasons that we don’t care to comment on, we could not mix the songs. A thousand years later, in 2024, someone finally figured out how to transfer the tapes to a digital format!!! So off we went to Jack Endino to finish what Gary King had started.
This resulted in six never-before-released epic Capping Day songs from the Golden Age of our career, featuring the angelic voices of Bonnie and Laura, and the killer rhythm section known as Joe and Scott. There are guitars and keyboards as well. We are very proud of these recordings, so we are releasing them as a LIMITED EDITION 12″ vinyl masterpiece called WHO DOES ANYWAY: The King Endino Sessions
Purchase of this record will include some sort of code or symbol that entitles the bearer to download all of the songs from Bandcamp, of which there are 15. That’s because in this modern era in which most people don’t want CDs and others don’t want vinyl, a band from the 90’s might just find themselves selling their songs online in download form. This feels scary and foreign to us, but we are nothing if not adaptive.
SO, to recap:
1. 12″ ep with 6 songs is being manufactured AS WE SPEAK
2. A digital download with 15 songs on it will also be a thing, probably on Bandcamp
3. Buy the record, get the download free
4. Buy the record at one of our upcoming gigs, which will happen in March or April 2025.
Tom Sez: We should be receiving records in early March. Our official release date will be Friday, April 4. They have an Easy Street instore performance booked for Saturday, April 5 – yahoo! They are going to book a Tim’s Tavern show sometime after the Easy Street show but haven’t worked that out yet, and also have a sort of top secret “dress rehearsal house show” at somebody’s house on (90% sure) March 21. If you know “band insiders” and want to attend, you’d best be hitting them up.To get you warmed up, they now have a Bandcamp page where you can currently buy their Post No Bills CD from 1998.
Richard Peterson is looking for more piano gigs. Got any? Let me know and I’ll send the info his way.
Me? I’ve mostly been finishing up a sorta book project that I’ve been working on for a year, which will include a soundtrack titled “Songs With Purpose: Birthday Songs & Orphans“, with 20 previously unreleased recordings going back to my recording debut in 1958. More about that later.
I have also re-started the True Olympian sessions for “History of Northwest Rock Vol 2: 1970-1980” after having let it fester for a while. It will appear sometime this year.
Like Vol. 1, these are my reinterpretations of my favorite songs from that era. I released two of the songs as a single a year ago, The Telepaths’ “Frozen Darling“ and Heart’s “Crazy On You“. Like those two, don’t expect this next batch to sound like the originals. The rest of the lineup: TheAdults – The Thinker; The Accident – True Detective; Ballin’Jack – Found A Child; Jim Basnight – Live In The Sun; Chinas Comidas – For The Rich; The Enemy – Bang Bang Your Dead; The Heats – Have An Idea; Jim Hendrix – Peace In Mississippi; The Macs – Walking Down The Street; Red Dress – Pterodactyl Teenagers (or Bob); Student Nurse – Lies; Westside Lockers – Fuschia Rayon. And maybe Rail – Hello.
That it for the moment.
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