Sax ‘n Wedge: A Life Goal

This last week I was so preoccupied with chasing storms that I hardly blogged at all. When I did, naturally it was about weather. Jazz, music, and the saxophone have languished in the background, at least blogically speaking.

Not, however, in practice. When I headed out west for some dryline action, my horn went with me. It always does. My chase partners know that when I head for any chase over a day in duration, the sax is as much a part of my travel gear as my suitcase, laptop, and camera. Some folks toss a baseball or football while waiting for storm initiation; I practice my saxophone. Any time is a good time to get in a few licks.

I have several reasons for bringing my horn along on chases, all of them having to do with eventualities. The most likely scenario is, as I’ve just said, that I’ll get a chance to woodshed my instrument. Far less likely–but still, ya never know–is the possibility of winding up in some restaurant where a band is playing, and it’s the kind of band that makes me wish I could sit in for a tune or two. Like I said, unlikely; most Great Plains towns aren’t exactly jazz hotbeds. Still, as I learned back in the Boy Scouts, it pays to be prepared.

My main reason for taking my saxophone with me on storm chases, though, is because of a particular life goal of mine: I want to get a good photo, or maybe some video, or even both, of me jamming on my sax while a monster wedge churns away in the distance. For that matter, I’ll settle for just a nice, photogenic tornado of any shape or size. I just want some kind of visual record that captures the raison d’etre of Stormhorn and the essence of who I am as a storm chaser and jazz saxophonist.

Assuming that a storm is moving slowly enough to make a photo shoot practical, my preparations once towers start muscling up are:

* Rain-X windows

* Remove camera from case and make sure it’s ready for action

* Get tripod out of trunk

* Assemble saxophone

Just a handy checklist. Reasonable enough, wouldn’t you say?

So cross your fingers for me, or better still, pray. This season could be the one where I fulfill an ambition and get some very cool photos to show for it.

I’m a maniac, you say? Of course I am. A maniac is just someone with a different kind of dream.

April 28, 2010 by
Filed Under: Jazz, Life, Saxophone, Storm Chasing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Tornado Fest That Wasn’t

Now that Sunday’s brouhaha in Tornado Alley is over and done, the big question seems to be, where were all the tornadoes? The turnout was there, the fans were waiting, but besides the rope and the wedge/multivortex/stovepipe that my buddies Bill and Tom witnessed near Crawford, Oklahoma, in company with a multitude of other chasers, there just wasn’t anything to make postcards out of. The big show never showed. Even the lone supercell that wandered north out of Texas into Oklahoma’s higher helicities never produced, despite its lack of competition. Oh, there were a couple of twisters in Kansas, and with a tally of four, Iowa had the most reports of all. Ironically,  it wasn’t even in the PDS high risk area.

This is by no means to criticize the crew at the SPC; those are some highly adept meteorological minds, the finest in the world. No, it’s just to muse at the vagaries of the weather. Rudimentary as my own forecasting skills are, I’ve nevertheless come to realize that no matter how good a forecaster one becomes, the weather is still the weather. Capricious. Subject to subtleties that no one gives weight to until after the fact. The butterfly beats its wings and a tornado fires up in Texas–or a seemingly volatile setup falls apart.

Judging from the YouTube videos and the photos posted on Stormtrack, a lot of people managed to be in the right place at the right time for the one storm in Oklahoma that did produce a couple very photogenic tornadoes. But the event was a far cry from high-risk mayhem.

Guess I can’t feel bad about that, since I was sitting at home nursing a chest cold while my mates were out there roaming the Plains. The cold now seems finally poised to start breaking up, and hopefully in another day or two I’ll feel halfway human again. It’s just as well that I get this nonsense out of the way now, so I’m up to snuff physically in a couple weeks when my buds and I head out to the Alley for an extended tour. I hope that by then, there won’t be any lack of the right ingredients in the atmospheric brew to make the trip worthwhile.

April 28, 2009 by
Filed Under: Life, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wedging into Tornado Season

Bill called to say that he and the crew just saw a wedge out there in western Oklahoma. The LSR gives the town of Crawford, near the Texas panhandle border, as the location.

Good for the lads–and the lass, as I understand there’s a new female member of the crew. As for me, sitting here in my La-Z-Boy sofa, nursing a chest cold and watching the radar, naturally I feel like shooting myself through the head. A wedge on a PDS day–and the show is just getting started. And I’m not there! AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!

If there’s any consolation, it’s knowing that I’ve been able to make myself useful doing a little nowcasting. And it sounds like the team got some cool footage. Can’t wait to see it.

Mostly, though, I can’t wait to kick whatever is causing this blasted chest congestion and get out to take some video of my own. Tornado season 2009 is underway!

Shifting gears, last night’s gig at One Trick Pony with Francesca and Friends was a blast, even if I was feeling under the weather. Wright McCargar and I had a discussion about the impact of musicians on each other’s playing. In my experience, one bad musician can drag a whole group of good musicians down; and, conversely, one great musician can kick good players up to the next level. There’s nothing like being with really good musicians, and Francesca and her rhythm section are exactly that.

Moving back to storm chasing, it’s time for me to publish this post and then check out the radar. The storms bumping off of the dryline look to be going tornadic, and I’m thinkin’ that my buddies will have their hands full for the next five or six hours. Sure wish I was with them. But GR2AE ought to keep me entertained; maybe I can capture a few radar grabs to correspond with the photos that I’m sure will be coming back from out west.

April 26, 2009 by
Filed Under: Band, Entertainment, Jazz, Nature, Saxophone, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Wisdom of Not Chasing Storms in February (or, Gee, I’m Glad I Practiced My Sax Instead!)

When it comes to chasing early-season severe systems, I’m getting better about reining myself in. Today was the big test. With a whopper of an H5 jet max–upwards of 120 knots–pushing through northern Kentucky into southern Indiana and Ohio, it was tempting to make the drive down to Xenia and parts thereabouts. True, the whole thing looked to be a massive straight-line wind event, but you never know, right? Particularly when you’ve been cooped up all winter with a nasty case of SDS (Supercell Deficiency Syndrome).

I’m patting myself on the back for not going. In fact, I didn’t chase squat today, not even the grunge that was drifting north from the border and offered at least the possibility of a little lightning. That would have been nice to see in February, but I just couldn’t muster the enthusiasm, and now I’m congratulating myself for my restraint.  The wind event did in fact materialize, but way to the south, down in southern Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and on to the east, and not a solitary tornado report do I see in the whole batch of SPC storm reports. So I’m very glad I managed to ward off the temptation to grasp at straws. Not only am I not presently driving the long 350 miles home, wondering what on earth I was thinking that brought me down there in the first place, but I invested my time into practicing my saxophone, a much more profitable activity.

I worked with my new copy of Emile and Laura De Cosmo’s book The Diatonic Cycle, which arrived today in the mail. It’s fun to work with a practice book again. These days, I do so much of my practicing straight out of my head, and the De Cosmos‘ well-conceived, organized, and interesting approach comes as a welcome new way to work on my scales and keys. It should keep me occupied for a few months as I work my way through all twenty-four major and harmonic minor scales as presented in the book.

Opting for practicing my horn over chasing storms was a smart move today. Yesterday, on the other hand…well, if I lived 500 miles closer to Oklahoma, I’d have been all over yesterday’s severe weather. Sadly, that weather marked the year’s first tornado fatalities. It appears that the sirens weren’t working as a large, violent wedge rototilled the town of Lone Grove, Oklahoma, west of Ardmore, doing EF4 damage and taking fifteen lives. According to reports, some people were caught out in a parking lot. How awful. February is not a time when folks in the Great Plains expect such things, and I’d imagine that many people were caught off guard.

Looking ahead, the Gulf of Mexico appears to be opening up for business in Dixie Alley, but we won’t be seeing any of that moisture this far north again in the foreseeable future.  Tonight we plunge back into snowy conditions. This is, after all, February in Michigan.

February 11, 2009 by
Filed Under: Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Music, Saxophone, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,