A quick note to those of you who don”t follow my events calendar but do read this blog: I will not be playing with Ed Englerth and the band at The Intersection tonight. We were supposed to open for Monte Montgomery, but I got word that Monte is sick and the concert has been postponed.\r\n\r\nA new date will be scheduled. I will post an announcement as soon as I learn more.

Anyone who has followed music and entertainment in the West Michigan area for any length of time is familiar with Francesca Amari. She”s an immensely talented vocalist/song stylist, cabaret performer, and front woman. She”s also one of the sweetest gals you”ll ever run into. Francesca is as genuinely, flat-out nice as she is lovely, which is to say that she”s a very nice person indeed.\r\n\r\nShe is also richly rewarding to work with in a musical context. So when she asked me to do a vocal-saxophone duet with her on her debut solo CD, Better Days, I felt singularly blessed. The tune, “Good Morning, Heartache,” is the first of eleven on an album that reflects the broad range of Francesca”s musical interests and influences. The selections range from jazz to show tunes to pop, and, besides Francesca”s vocals, they feature the keyboard artistry of producer Wright McCargar.\r\n\r\nVocally, Francesca is superb, and her personality and humor shine through. This is more than a well-crafted, tightly produced CD–it”s fun! From the melancholy irony of “Stars and the Moon,” to the sassy, blues-dipped “The Best Is Yet to Come,” to the hauntingly lovely title cut, “Better Days,” Francesca has served up an engaging and rewarding fare. Spotlighting Wright on piano as the primary accompaniment, the CD is a superb example–and, in this age of overproduced studio gloss, a rare one–of how less is more, and of how a minimalist approach can maximize creativity and musicality.\r\n\r\nFrancesca is in New York as I write these words. I hope she”s having a blast. I”m pretty sure that at some point, she”ll read this post, so I”ll just personalize it here and say, “Well done, Lady Day.”\r\n\r\nAnd to the rest of you: If you live in West Michigan, come to Francesca”s CD breakout gig on October 14 at One Trick Pony in downtown Grand Rapids. Hope to see you there!

As the remnants of Ike kept the South occupied Saturday, a stalled warm front and a sixty-knot 500 millibar jet max brought ample shear and helicities to lower Michigan and northern Indiana. My friend Kurt Hulst and I decided not to waste the opportunity. I don”t think either of us had high expectations, so I”m glad we took the risk of a late-season storm chase, because our decision was rewarded with a couple of very nice supercells.\r\n\r\nOur initial plan was to head down US 131 to northern Indiana, but a line of storms moving across Lake Michigan changed our minds. Watching the southernmost storm intensify on the radar, we did an about-face south of Constantine and headed back north. Good move, that. The storm developed a nice little hook with pronounced rotation, then backbuilt into a second storm which also went supercellular as the first one put down a confirmed tornado in Paw Paw.\r\n\r\nAs Kurt and I neared the new tail-end cell, we could see a nice wall cloud. This produced a squat, grayish-white funnel southeast of Portage as we tracked with it to the northeast. \r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nThe storm eventually crapped out around Battle Creek, at which point I was having connection problems and couldn”t access data.\r\n\r\nWe decided to abandon that storm and hook up with fellow-chaser Dave Diehl. We rendezvoused with him north of Coldwater, then headed south to intercept a new line of storms. By now, I had my data issues resolved, and I liked what I saw on GR3. Tail-end Charlie first showed rotation over–ironically (see my September 4 post)–Dunlap, Indiana, and it was heading into an area of progressively higher shear and helicity. Indications looked good that the storm would continue to organize.\r\n\r\nDropping south on I-69, we headed west on Route 120 for a few miles, and intercepted the storm east of Orland. It had a nice wall cloud and an elephant”s trunk funnel that extended about halfway to the ground. In the following shots, you can see what”s left of the funnel as the vigorously rotating meso starts wrapping in precipitation.\r\n\r\n

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\r\n\r\nWe wound up backtracking ahead of the meso eastward to Clear Lake, at which point the storm gusted out.\r\n\r\nAll in all, a very enjoyable mid-September chase–late in the season, but hopefully not the last chase of 2008.

I just got home from a gig a little while ago, and as I write, Hurricane Ike is making landfall, with Houston the dead bullseye. I”ve spoken several times today with my friend Adele, who lives there and has weathered many a hurricane. It”s reassuring to know that she”s in a good, sturdy new home. She tells me that at her location is beyond the reach of the storm surge, and her most serious concern is hurricane-spawned tornadoes.\r\n\r\nHere is a GR2 image of Ike, taken at 3:30 a.m. EST.\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nGalveston faces a far more imminent danger than tornadoes as the eye passes overhead and the storm surge breaches the sea wall. My understanding is that around 35 percent of the island”s inhabitants have ignored the evacuation orders and remained on the island. After Katrina, this news leaves me feeling stunned and incredulous. Granted a certain percentage of extenuating circumstances, still, with all the strongly worded advance warning and well-organized evacuation efforts, how can that many people be so incredibly stupid? The loss of life is sure to be enormous.\r\n\r\nI just don”t know what to think. I feel angry, sick, and not ready yet to believe that a catastrophe is happening as I write. I hope that”s not the case. Many prayers are being said for the Texas coast. I add mine to them. God help the residents of Galveston, and preserve the lives of the emergency personnel and other authorities who do have business still being there.

He”s been rated one of the “Top 50 Greatest Guitar Players of All Time” by Guitar Player Magazine. He does things with an acoustic guitar that you simply won”t believe. He”s Monte Montgomery, and if you”ve never heard him play, you owe yourself an earful without further delay. Check out Monte”s version of Jimi Hendrix”s “Little Wing.” You”ll be more than convinced–you”ll be mesmerized.\r\n\r\nMonte Montgomery is appearing at The Intersection in downtown Grand Rapids on Tuesday, September 23, at 6:30 p.m. It”s a concert you won”t want to miss if you live anywhere in the West Michigan area.\r\n\r\nAs a member of the Ed Englerth Band, I”ll have the honor of opening for Monte. Please make it if you can. I flatter myself in thinking that our little unit is worth hearing. And as for Monte Montgomery…well, if you”ve clicked on the link and remain unmoved by “Little Wing,” you”re either deaf, depressed, or dead. Do come. It”ll be the best $10 you spend that week.\r\n\r\nSee you at the show!

This is the view to the west of the Palm Sunday Tornado memorial in Dunlap, Indiana. With the little cedar tree spotlighting itself in the foreground, the photo may be lacking compositionally, but it”s true to what you actually see as you walk down Cole Street.

At 6:45 on April 11, 1965, the view was much darker. One hundred feet away, in a place now occupied by a large commemorative stone, seven-year-old Debbie Forsythe huddled in the basement with her mother and brother Stevie as F5 winds swept away her home and her neighborhood.

In the golden sunlight of a late August afternoon, it’s hard to fathom the horror that visited this area on that fateful Palm Sunday forty-three years ago. Debbie lost her brother in the storm. Entire families perished.

Life continued after the disaster, as life must. Yet over four decades later, the wounds still persist deep in the hearts of those who lost loved ones in the storms. Located south of Elkhart, the tiny park was created by Debbie on the site of her childhood home, not only in loving memory of the dead, but also, in particular, as a place of healing for the living.

I have made several visits to the park since 2004. The place exerts a strange pull on me. Both geographically and spiritually, it is the epicenter of that terrible day. Stories are etched into the soil of this little community; voices whisper from the earth, and here is where they find their expression. The memorial is an altar of faith and hope that endure the very worst life can inflict. I know this not only because of what I experience when I visit the memorial, but also because Debbie Forsythe, today Debbie Watters, is my friend. She is an amazing woman, gifted with a heart of gold and an earthy, very real faith in God’s love and wisdom in the face of things that make no sense. Through Debbie, I have a personal understanding of how deep the roots of this tiny parcel in the Sunnyside neighborhood of Dunlap, Indiana, really go.

At the eastern edge of the park stands a plaque bearing the image of the infamous twin funnels that became the icon of the 1965 Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak. While I”ve heard one story that insisted this freakish tornado was in fact the Dunlap F5, the eyewitness account of the actual photographer, Elkhart Truth reporter Paul Huffman, places it in the Midway Trailer Court south of town down US 33.

It was here that another friend of mine, Pat McIntosh, lost her toddler, Chris. This is the other location I always feel compelled to visit whenever I make a pilgrimage to the area–for that is what it is: a pilgrimage. Over the months, the elastic bands of Dunlap begin to pull on me, and I sense that it is time for me to make the trip.

The old trailer park is now no more than a shady grove of large trees and overgrown tarmac, bordered to the south by a new overpass. On previous occasions, I was never quite certain that I had the right location. All I had to go by were a general sense of the area and a few visual clues, including a scattered handful of old utility hookups which suggested the prior existence of a mobile home community. Pulling into the site last Saturday evening, I discovered that now even these were gone. But this time I wasn’t alone. Pat was on the cell phone with me, and with her serving as my guide, I walked at length through the long-gone trailer park, strolling down rows of mature shade trees that lined the vanishing remnants of old drives. I explored the boundaries of the site, poked around the woods edge to the north, and managed to locate a crumbling cement foundation near the center that had to have belonged to the cellar where a number of residents took life-saving shelter.

Sorry, I have no pictures of the old Midway Trailer Park. The sun was setting, and the light had grown too dim for photos. Perhaps another time. For now, I”m left with my thoughts, gleaned from my thorough exploration of the site with Pat on the phone. Being uniquely linked with her story, I find it hard to describe how this place affects me, and I won”t attempt it here.

I will say, though, that the tale of how I came to know Pat, and through her, Debbie, is a most unusual one. God is real, prayer is powerful, and the results of prayer, while unpredictable, can occasionally be mind-boggling and wonderful. My friendships with Pat and Debbie are an example. They remind me that, when the winds of circumstance turn our lives into a desolation, an even greater, life-giving wind will visit our souls if we will let it. It is the wind of God”s Spirit, which in its own time causes wildflowers to grow on blasted landscapes and beckons us to look upward into the face of hope. That is at least a part of the message of the memorial park, and one of the reasons why Midway and Dunlap call to me over the miles and across the years.

Can”t believe I”ve let an entire month slip past me without posting something. This summer has been a busy one, and rather than try to cover it all here, I”m going to just toss out a couple items of interest.\r\n\r\nOn the musical front, I”ve done a number of big band and small combo gigs with Paul Sherwood et al, and I just returned from a couple Labor Day weekend gigs in Alpena, Michigan, and Kalida, Ohio, with accordionist Dave Slivinski. Those who have read my previous account of my three-day gig with Dave at the Hofbrauhaus in Panama City Beach, Florida, have gotten a little of my take on the place of jazz saxophone in polka music. Stylistically, the two genres are worlds apart, but in terms of technique, interpretation, and form, I have to say that polkas are as demanding as anything I”ve come across.\r\n\r\nNot that we played purely polkas. Rather than just Dave and me, this time we had a foursome, with Dave”s son Aaron playing drums and, alternately, a guitarist and another accordionist/trumpeter rounding out the sound and expanding the musical options. Tim, the guitarist, was simply superb, and brought in a whole new sound for the variety crowd in Alpena. And down in Ohio, for an older audience, Chris provided the lead horn lines and I filled in behind him.\r\n\r\nBut enough about music. Let”s talk about storms. While Gustav bruised the Gulf Coast and gave New Orleans a scare, there hasn”t been any weather action to speak of here in Michigan lately. Harkening back a couple months, though, the following is a little incident I”ve been meaning to write about.\r\n\r\nThe SWODY1 update issued at 12:06 EST for June 13, 2008, read as follows:\r\n\r\n…OH VALLEY INTO GREAT LAKES…\r\n AREA AHEAD OF OUTFLOW BOUNDARIES FROM IND INTO SRN MI IS RAPIDLY\r\n DESTABILIZING AHEAD OF MID LEVEL WIND MAX WITH LITTLE REMAINING\r\n CINH. THUNDERSTORMS WILL INCREASE IN NUMBER AND INTENSITY ALONG AND\r\n AHEAD OF SURFACE CONVERGENCE FROM CENTRAL IL NEWD INTO SRN LOWER MI\r\n THRU EARLY/MID AFTERNOON. DEEP LAYER SHEAR OF 35-40KT WILL SUPPORT\r\n PRIMARY MULTICELLULAR STORMS EVOLVING INTO LINE SEGMENTS/BOWS AS\r\n COLD POOLS DEVELOP DURING THE AFTERNOON. HOWEVER WITH MLCAPES AOA\r\n 2000 J/KG THERE WILL BE POTENTIAL FOR SUPERCELLS WITH AN ENHANCED\r\n SEVERE THREAT OF BOTH WINDS/HAIL AND ISOLATED TORNADOES INTO THE\r\n EVENING HOURS. WHILE STRONG THUNDERSTORMS WILL CONTINUE INTO THE\r\n NIGHT EWD ACROSS THE OH AND TN VALLEYS…SEVERE THREAT WILL\r\n GRADUALLY DIMINISH BY LATE EVENING WITH LOSS OF SURFACE HEATING.\r\n\r\nStorms were in the area, as I recall, and steamy, gray turrets of cloud were visible from my window to the southeast. Not expecting much out of the system–which, indeed, wound up offering little more than a sneeze in Michigan–I was dinging away on my computer when I happened to glance out the window and saw this.\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nZooming in for a closer look…\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nThis shear funnel persisted for several minutes. It was pretty cool, and a nice bonus on an otherwise bland day.\r\n\r\nThe funnel turned out to be the first of two almost-severe-weather-related vortices I”ve seen this year. I spotted the second a month or so later as my best friend and homebrewing buddy, Duane, and I were heading east down M-6. Beneath the updraft base of a small, very low-topped storm (if you could even properly call it a storm) hung a distinct funnel cloud. We pulled aside and watched it, and I snapped a couple photos with my cell phone, which unfortunately didn”t turn out. The funnel weakened to the point where I thought it was going to dissipate. But it got its second wind and strengthened into a fairly stout, robust vortex that descended maybe a sixth of the way to the ground and lasted another minute or two before finally disappearing.\r\n\r\nAt no time did I ever think the funnel posed a danger. I would have been extremely surprised had it evolved into an actual tornado, as ground-level conditions didn”t seem conducive to surface-based storms. My guess is, the funnel was a product of adequate helicity interacting with the updraft near the cloud base. Not particularly dramatic, but unusual, pretty, and fun to watch.