Tourblogging 3

What I said up on stage last night -- I was not kidding. Jon Wikan played our entire IAJE set without a single drum part in front of him. Those parts you saw on his music stand were piano parts -- Gordon Webster didn't need the "regular" piano book because he had printed his own parts from the PDFs I sent him. So Jon wasn't flying completely blind, but this situation was, ah, somewhat less than ideal, for a number of reasons that you can probably imagine.

Here's what happened: at the conclusion of the afternoon ASCAP/IAJE performances (which, incidentally, you can listen to here, thanks to WBGO's Josh Jackson), I asked everyone to hold on to their own music folders for the next three hours. This turned out to be a terrible idea, for reasons that are, in hindsight, all too obvious.

The fault is entirely mine -- normally, I am totally anal about making sure I know where everyone's music folder is at all times, but I am seriously running on fumes here. I had so many other things on my mind (mainly wanting to go catch at least some of the Altsys set with Donny McCaslin) that I forgot to sweep the stage afterwards to ensure that no one had left their music behind.

Jon wasn't the only one who didn't fully absorb my request for everyone to please hold on to their folders. (We are all very, very tired.) A few other guys in the band saved my ass by grabbing up all the stray books they could find -- but as fate would have it, the drum book was not among them. Further efforts to locate it proved fruitless -- we put out an APB for the folder, but no one seems to know what happened to it. I could have printed them from my laptop if I'd had it with me, but I didn't bring it to the conference today because I was instead carrying 18 fucking music folders on my back, you see. (They are extremely heavy.)

So Jon played our set almost entirely by memory. He was virtually flawless. I will post the recording so you can see for yourself, but you will not believe it.

Did I mention Jon is the most awesomest drummer ever?

If you missed the conference gig, you can catch us at Tranzac tonight (i.e., Friday -- not Sunday, as the Globe and Mail unfortunately has it) -- this time with freshly printed drum parts. Also, I am on a jazz+blog panel at 3 PM -- should be fun.

Gregory Dudzienski (The Ear of the Mind) is blogging The Madness. His writeup of our hit is all too kind.

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