[Dixielandjazz] Marshall Square Park Concert - guitar style

[Stephen G Barbone]

You are quite welcome Peter. As Eddie Condon might say today if he  
were alive, "That's modern Dixieland". <grin>

It is my vision as a bandleader to make OKOM acceptable, or even  
sought after, by new audiences, especially young people. And so we  
have loosened up the rhythm, emphasized swinging, and feature a lot of  
double entendre songs. Works well for us.

Our next "new audience" gigs are Saturday Oct. 15. Three hours on the  
banks of a stream in Westtown PA, a fundraiser for the local Rotary  
Club featuring rubber duck races, prizes etc. Usual audience is about  
250 people of which 100 are children under the age of 13. No double  
entendre songs here, just Mardi Gras beads to the kids who dance in  
front of us. Been doing it annually for 8 years.

Then a 75 mile drive to Dover Delaware for a Gourmet Gala, New Orleans  
Jazz Fund Raiser for Delaware Tech College. Students, plus movers and  
shakers who help fund the endowment. Three hours, this time in Tuxes,  
complete with Mardi Gras beads and double entendre songs. (This gig,  
generated originally a decade ago when "Jazz" by Ken Burns was all the  
rage has been an annual event for us ever since.)

I think how and what jazz a band plays depends upon what the leader is  
trying to accomplish. If the end result is what the band leader wants,  
fine, go with it. For us it is new audience and high paying gigs. The  
earnings on that day will exceed what sidemen earn for 12 sets at a 3  
day jazz festival, 2000 miles from home with 2 additional days spent  
traveling.  We are a "working" band, not particularly concerned with  
artistic music, or with praise or criticism of what we present.  
Because we know what we set out to do, are doing it, and the results  
both audience wise and jazz wise, speak for themselves.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband



On Oct 5, 2011, at 12:33 AM, Peter Dann wrote:

> Steve,
>
> Thanks very much for directing me to these highly stimulating  
> examples, where the guitar is very clearly audible. As you say, the  
> guitar is anything but 4/4 strumming here. It's also very clean,  
> sophisticated and spare. To my ear, the music sounds like a  
> fascinating hybrid of older and newer influences, and the  
> performances are outstanding.