Deja Blooze House Band for Kitsch 'n Bitch Series

The Deja Blooze Band will be the house band for the Whidbey Island Center for the Arts' new monthly live program "Kitsch 'n Bitch" featuring the Island's own Sue Frause as the Mistress of Ceremonies.  This live program will feature celebrity foodies (both local and regional), good food, great company, signature drinks, lively music and a lot of laughs! The show debuts Wednesday September 7th at 7:30 pm on the WICA stage with the theme being “Directors Who Cook” featuring Whidbey Island film directors Richard Evans, Andrew Grenier, Vito Zingarelli. The series will continue every month through June 0f 2012.   The dates for the series are:
WEDNESDAYS@ 7.30pm
“Directors Who Cook” Sep 07, 2011

“Carnage Cooking”
Oct 05, 2011

“Turkey Talk”
Nov 16, 2011
“Big, Sweet Holidays”
Dec 14, 2011
“Seattle Bites”Jan 11, 2012

“Girls Who Dish”Feb 01, 2012

“Slocals”Mar 07, 2012

“The Yolks on You”Apr 11, 2012

“Let’s Do Brunch”May 16, 2012

“The Full Monty BBQ”Jun 13, 2012

For more information and to buy tickets please visit WICA online at:
http://www.wicaonline.com/2011-2012/WEDNESDAYSATWICA/KITSCHNBITCH.html
WEDNESDAYS@ 7.30pm
Make plans to join us

  Here we are at the July 2011 Langley Festival of the Arts--Choochokham--with the addition this year of drummer Dave Malony.  Malony has and continues to play with some of the best musicians on Whidbey Island and around the Northwest.  He also owns and operates Blue Ewe Recording Studio here on the island where we have recorded three times.  We went on at 3 pm and delivered a solid 45 minute set of original blues material written by David Gregor and arranged by the band.  It was great to play with Malony, something I've wanted to do since I first heard him play with Tommy and the Sharks.  He is the consumate professional and easily stepped in to provide the backbeat for our Choochokam gig which has totally spoiled us.  As someone pointed out...once you have a drummer you never go back.  All I can say is the band looks forward to future opportunities to have Malony on the stage with us.

All in all the gig was great fun and we surprised a lot of people who thought they knew what we do.  It's always good to shake things up and show folks another side of who and what you are.    

Photo credit: Sharon Heath.

On Thursday May 26th, Langley sound engineer and cutting edge photographer Robbie Cribbs stopped by our weekly rehearsal with some of his gear and captured a bit of us working on a relatively new original tune.  The song is Down by the River written by David Gregor.  The sound quality is not high quality or well balanced, since we were not planning on recording anything, but it does give you a sense of the song and the process.  Hope you enjoy.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1906627939996&comments

Deja caught live in rehearsal

Last night, Langley recording engineer and cutting edge photographer Robbie Cribbs stopped by our weekly rehearsal with his cameras and caught the night's activities.  The following link is a test run though a David Gregor original called Down by the River where we are warming up and getting bassman Russell Sparkman's recently injured wrist a test run. The sound quality is rudimentary at best but then we weren't planning on recording anything at practice.  Robbie just hit record on his hand-held video camera and the camera mic is all that caught the sound.  But Robbie has a keen eye for making the ordinary...visually interesting. 
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1906627939996&comments

The History of the name "Deja Blooze"

In the summer of 2007, I was looking to put a blues duo together with a guitar player and singer I had met at a local jam night at the Smilin' Dog Restaurant. We got together a couple of times and played some old blues numbers to get a feel for how we fit together. This fellow was renting a little cabin on the water at Possession Beach on the south end of Whidbey Island, and one night we were just talking about the effect blues music had on us and I commented that the old Delta blues gave me the deja-vu's...kind of like the deja-blues. I immediately liked the sound of the two words together and the play on Deja Vu. There was also the connotation of revisiting something that one may have previously experienced.

Unfortunately, the fellow couldn't find work on the island and he and his wife packed up a week after our last get together and moved back to New England. I had just found a like-minded aficionado of the blues, a guy who could both play and sing the blues and just like that he was gone. I was back where I had started, but the name Deja Blues came out of brief friendship.
It seemed to summarize how I felt about blues music...my deep connection with the basic forms of the music style and the heartfelt experiences captured in the song lyrics of the old blues pioneers from the Mississippi Delta region. The more I sat with the name the more connected I felt to it and then I decided to play further with the name and changed 'blues' to 'blooze'. It made the name unusual yet musically recognizable so that the name identified the style of music I wanted to play. The name stuck with me and I kept it on the back burner until a short while later I found another guitar player to team up with. As soon as that pairing jelled, I brought out the name Deja Blooze and in November of 2007 my original blues duo made its first public appearance at a now defunct coffee shop in Clinton, Washington. The duo became a trio a year later when we added a bass player.

In the Fall of 2009, that original trio dissolved and once again I endeavored to reform the Deja Blooze experience.  After playing several gigs as a solo act, I enlisted an occassional sit-in artist--Dave Gignac on harp--to join me.  We subsequently added Russell on bass and most recently Scott on drums.  Deja Blooze continues today as a "blues experiment" whether I'm working as a solo act or with other configuarations of the band, always exploring the possibilities that this original American genre has to offer.

Hollywood 1976 Re-Visited

That winter 1976 junket to Los Angeles where I spent two days in the company of Tom Waits was a jam-packed week of non-stop celebrity events. My host was a talent agent with whom I had been in contact with in Seattle regarding my reporting work at the UW Daily, and his list of clients was impressive. In addition to Mr. Waits, his talent list included Stevie Wonder, Frank Zappa, and singer/comedian Gary Mule Deer. I had never heard of Gary but agreed to get together with him and find out more. I don't believe I ever wrote anything on Gary but I do remember that we spent probably an hour together and he was extremely cordial and funny. I have not followed his career over the years but according to other sources he's opened shows for a lot of major acts, performed at corporate gatherings, played Las Vegas and made a ton of TV appearances including Jay Leno and David Letterman. But in 1976, I couldn't connect him with UW students or a Seattle audience so nothing came of our interview though I remember his off-beat humor.

I was staying at a Ramada Inn (long gone) on Sunset Boulevard just up the street from the famous Tower Records store (also long gone) when I got an impromptu call from my local guide. It was his job to fill my week with as much "client contact" as possible. I was asked if I wanted to go to a Frank Zappa press gathering. I was game though I wasn't really a "fan" of Frank's musical endeavors and was taken to a snazzy hotel in Beverly Hills. We took an elevator up to a beautiful suite that was full of people milling around and to this day I have no recollection what the event was for other than it had something to do with a Zappa film project. I didn't receive a press packet or any information but I was immediately upon arrival greeted by the maestro himself; the wild mane of hair and signature soul patch under his lip were unmistakable. We shook hands and he gave us directions to the bar. My guide and I spent about an hour in the suite. We helped ourselves to the liquor and I was introduced to numerous people I was told were industry heavies. I met a couple of writers from Rolling Stone Magazine whose names I knew from various articles I had read but no one was interested in talking to anyone they didn't know. For someone interested in the entertainment world (especially music) this was where the action was...all in one room but it was impossible to penetrate the walls of separation. We soon left as unceremoniously as we had entered. I wanted to go find Tom Waits and get real. Instead I just had my guide take me back to the Ramada. I was reminded of the surprise birthday party for Stevie Wonder on Friday night and that my guide would pick me up and together we would go to the restaurant. What had already been a busy day and evening was still not over; I was about to meet one of the developers of the hologram and discover world traveler Burton Holmes.

My 1976 Tom Waits Interview

For my last two years in the journalism program at the University of Washington, I wrote for the Entertainment Section of UW Daily Newspaper. I had a piece in most every issue from a photo essay, jazz review, rock concert, an interview with a visiting musician to any event with some entertainment value. During my winter break in 1976, I accepted an invitation from an artist's manager in L.A. to visit the southland and spend a week meeting and interviewing some of his clients. His roster of talent included Stevie Wonder, Frank Zappa and a rising talent named Tom Waits. Tom's third album Nighthawks at the Diner had recently been released on the heels of The Heart of Saturday Night. I loved both efforts and jumped at the opportunity to spend some time with the singer with the gravelly voice. The result was a long piece in the February issue of The Daily, which I have linked below. I spent time with Mr. Waits on two occasions: he invited me to join him for a taping of his appearance on the Dinah Shore Show and then I met him in a bar on Hollywood Blvd where we just talked one-on-one. No attitude, no entourage, no handlers, no bullshit. Just a breath of fresh air. Enjoy.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/44992205/Tom-Waits-Daily-Article-Pt-1

http://www.scribd.com/doc/44992197/Tom-Waits-Daily-Article-Pt-2