Stormhorn Jazz at the Cobblestone Bistro (Or, The Difference a Bass Makes)

Saturday evening at the Cobblestone Bistro here in Caledonia was one of those very rewarding gigs that result from the combination of a stellar rhythm section, a beautiful setting, and an appreciative audience. I couldn’t ask for better guys to play with than Paul Lesinski and Dave DeVos. Each is a seasoned, top West Michigan veteran on his instrument, and both are just plain nice, down-to-earth guys with no attitudes to deal with. They’re responsible and easy to get along with, solid and intuitive musicians who’ve been around the block many times over, so I have confidence in them. That confidence in turn inspires my own creativity and willingness to take risks as a saxophonist.

Last Friday on New Years Eve, Steve Durst and I played for the dinner crowd as a piano-sax duo. With years of experience under his belt, Steve does a superb job, and we got some very nice compliments. But man, what a difference the addition of Dave on bass made this weekend!

I’m certain Steve would readily agree that having to fill in the bass part with the left hand greatly limits what a keyboard player can do. Good players can pull it off, but I don’t know of any pianist who wouldn’t much prefer having a bassist handle the bass part so his own left hand is free to do what it’s meant to do in a jazz context. The difference is huge–the groove, far better; the sound, fuller and richer; the creative options, much broader; and the energy, multiplied. All without any significant increase in volume that can distract from conversation in a restaurant setting.

The crowd certainly liked our sound. People were actually listening to us and applauding from tune to tune, and even for some of the solos. I stopped to chat with a few of the diners during break, thanking them for their responsiveness, and I got some glowing comments in return. It’s really gratifying to see the interest in jazz that exists in this rural neck of the woods, many miles from the urban center of Grand Rapids.

We play again at the Cobblestone this coming Saturday from 6:30-9:30 p.m., this time with Steve filling the piano chair. If you like live jazz, come on out and enjoy an evening of good food and world-class wines plus the Stormhorn Jazz trio, all in an ambience-rich setting that will warm you as soon as you set foot through the door. Here’s the info:

• Date & Time: Saturday, January 15, 6:30-9:30 p.m.

• Place: The Cobblestone Bistro & Banquet Center

• Address: 9818 Cherry Valley Ave. SE (M-37), Caledonia, MI

• Phone: (616) 588-3223

Reservations are recommended, but walk-ins are welcome.

I should mention the large and beautifully designed banquet hall in the back of the building, styled in the manner of a large, European sidewalk cafe. Ben, the owner, is contemplating special events, so keep your eyes open for jazz concerts in the future. I’ll keep you posted on this site and on my Stormhorn page on Facebook as brainstorms and good ideas become actual dates on the calendar.

Need I say, please come out and support the Cobblestone. It’s a great setting and has the potential to distinguish itself not only for destination dining, but also as a hotspot for jazz that’s located outside the urban clutter, yet close enough to be convenient.

January 10, 2011 by
Filed Under: Band, Entertainment, Event, Jazz, Michigan, Music, Saxophone Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, But the Band Played On

Happy New Year! Last year was tough but we made it through, didn’t we. I hope that 2011 will be a good year for you, for me, for us all.

Yeesh, I’m starting to talk like Tiny Tim. I’d better get on with this post, which is a summary of yesterday. Weatherwise, the last day of 2010 was a humdinger for convective connoisseurs, and jazz-wise, it was a fun evening for yours truly. While the two topics may seem unrelated, they are in fact integrally connected. It’s a well-known fact among my storm chasing buddies that any time I commit myself to a gig and am therefore unable to chase, tornadoes will drop out of the sky like confetti at a gala event. It’s a gift I have. Statistically, my powers hit their zenith the weekend of the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts in early June. But anytime of the year, all hell is liable to break loose when I’m booked to play somewhere.

Yesterday was a prime case in point. While Steve Durst and I played a thoroughly enjoyable piano-sax gig for the dinner crowd at the Cobblestone Bistro here in Caledonia, tornadoes mowed across Missouri, Illinois, and Mississippi. You could see the event shaping up earlier in the week, with forecast models depicting a potent longwave trough digging deep into the nation’s midsection on Friday; a surface low working its way northward through Missouri and Iowa; high-velocity mid- and upper-level jets generating massive shear; and, critically, a long and broad plume of unseasonably rich moisture juicing the atmosphere up into Illinois ahead of an advancing cold front.

If you want to get some great insights into yesterday’s setup compared with two other similar wintertime severe weather events, check out this superb article by Adam Lucio in Convective Addiction. Adam’s analysis was spot-on. Tornadoes began spinning up early yesterday morning in Oklahoma and Arkansas and continued on through the day in Missouri and Illinois, surprisingly far north. Rolla and Saint Louis, Missouri, got whacked pretty solidly. Later, as expected, the action shifted south, with severe storms firing in Louisiana and a batch of night-time tornadoes gnawing their way across central Mississippi. Yazoo City found itself in the crosshairs for the third time this year as a strong radar couplet grazed past it, but, mercifully, this time the town appears to have escaped yet another direct hit.

With yesterday’s dust finally settled, the SPC’s present tally shows 40 preliminary tornado reports. Sadly, there were some fatalities, not all of which the reports show. What an awful way for the families affected to end a year that has already been difficult enough for so many people.

And the show isn’t quite over. Today, on the first day of 2011, Tornado Watch #3 is in effect for the Florida panhandle and southern Alabama. If that’s any kind of augur for this year’s severe weather season, April through June could be an interesting time for storm chasers.

But enough about the weather already. Let’s talk about jazz.

The Cobblestone Bistro is a beautiful place to play. I can’t believe that something like it exists in Caledonia, a community not exactly renowned as either a jazz hot spot or a north star of destination dining. But here the bistro is, fully operational now that a long-forthcoming liquor license has put its winsome and comfortable bar in business, and with an owner who appreciates and supports live jazz.

Last night I played my first gig at the Cobblestone for the New Years Eve dinner crowd from 6:00-10:00 p.m. Steve Durst joined me on the keyboards, and we spent an enjoyable four hours playing jazz standards in as elegant and ambiance-rich a setting as you could hope to find.

In a restaurant, particularly in a smaller room, it’s important not to play too loudly. People want to talk, and the music needs to add to the mood, not subtract from it by being too intrusive. That can be tricky for a sax player. A saxophone is not by nature a shy, quiet instrument, and a lot of energy is required to play it softly. But with three tables positioned directly in front of Steve and me, both of us absolutely had to reign in our volume.

Evidently we succeeded. We got no complaints of playing too loudly, but we did get some very nice compliments on our sound.

I’ll be playing at the Cobblestone again next Saturday, January 8, from 6:30-9:30 p.m. with Dave DeVos on bass and Paul Lesinski on keyboards. The trio will be playing as well on the 15th and 22nd, with Steve occupying the keyboard seat on the 15th. If you’re looking for a great night out in a beautiful setting, come and check us out.

And with that, I’m signing off and getting this first afternoon of a brand new year underway. I wish you a very happy and prosperous 2011.

–Storm (aka Bob)

January 1, 2011 by
Filed Under: Band, Entertainment, Jazz, Life, Michigan, Saxophone, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Real Michigan Squall Line

Man, what a great storm we got last night here in Caledonia! Though actually, I can’t say exactly how it was in Caledonia because I was in my car tracking with the squall line, belting eastward down 100th St in a frenzied attempt to catch up with and outpace the gust front.

I didn’t succeed. Just west of Alden Nash Avenue, a large tree blocked both lanes of the road. Pulling into a driveway, I phoned in a report to KGRR, then managed to squeeze around the treetop and continue on.

Just south of Alto on Alden Nash, traffic was stopped where another large tree had fallen. I turned around and headed east on 76th St only to encounter yet another good sized tree lying on the road. I slid past this one as well, and then, after phoning in another report, completed the big block back into Alto and fueled up at the gas station.

At this point, I had my buddy Bill Oosterbaan on the phone. He was down in Tennessee, but he was following the storm on radar. Since I was chasing sans laptop, I wondered where the line was now located. With I-96 just a couple miles north of me, I had a half-cocked notion that I might still have a chance of catching up with the front of the storm once I hit the Interstate. But Bill informed me that the storm was already halfway to Lansing.

No real surprise there, but nevertheless, nuts. End of chase. Still, there was plenty of lightning crawling the clouds to enjoy. So with my fuel tank replenished, I caught 68th St east and soon found myself once again having to grease my way past a downed tree. Nasty, scraping sound–ugh!

My thoughts turned to Ben Holcomb. Oh, he’d be having a picnic with this system, I thought. Why he ever left this storm chaser’s paradise called Michigan for Oklahoma City I’ll just never understand. Might as well rub some salt into the wound. So I gave him a call, and he told me that he, like Bill, had been tracking the storm front on radar. He informed me that he’d observed base level winds of 88.5 knots on GR2AE. Over 100 mph! Zounds! That, if you please, is one sweet little zephyr. I doubt winds reached quite that speed anywhere on the ground, but we most certainly got one heck of a blow. I’ve encountered my share of trees blocking roads, but I’ve never had my progress consistently blocked by them. Driving through the Alto area last night was like navigating a maze and hitting dead end after dead end.

More weather is on the way later today as a warm front lifts north through Michigan. With 0-6km shear around 55 knots forecast, things could once again get interesting.

September 22, 2010 by
Filed Under: Michigan, Nature, Outdoors, Storm Chasing, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

While I Was Out Chasing Sunday’s Storms…

Win a few, lose a few, the saying goes. Maybe so, but when it comes to chasing storms in Michigan, sometimes the losses seem just flat-out absurd.

Take this last Sunday, for instance. Kurt Hulst and I traveled over a hundred miles in order to intercept a storm down by Plainwell and track with it through the jungles of Allegan and Barry Counties, searching for a decent location for viewing. Meanwhile, a cell blew up just to our north and put down a tornado just four miles southwest of my apartment in Caledonia. If that isn’t a swift kick in the pratt with the steel-toed boot of irony, I don’t know what is.

True, it was a weak tornado; and true, it was probably rain-wrapped and hard to see; and true, it lasted only a minute or so, and catching it would have been pure serendipity. But still…just four freeking miles away… In the words of the inimitable Charlie Brown, “AAAUUUGGHHHHH!!!”

Sunday wasn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened to me, either. A few years ago, I was heading back north through Indiana, homeward bound from a futile chase, when my buddy Bill Oosterbaan called to inform me that a tornado had just passed through Caledonia. If I had been home, I could have stepped outside my sliding door and watched it blow through a couple blocks to my east. But no, that would have been too simple. I had to go gallivanting all over the countryside in search of what, in my absence, was delivered gift-wrapped to my backyard.

Chase storms for a while and you’ll find yourself collecting flukes, ironies, hindsights, and head-banging experiences like some people collect porcelain animals. It just goes with the territory, particularly if you live in the Great Lakes, where picking a chase target is nine times out of ten just an educated crapshoot.

Well, what the heck–at least Kurt and I saw a fairly impressive wall cloud east of Plainwell, out near West Gilkey Lake. We were too far away to confirm rotation, but the cloud was morphing rapidly, displaying obvious rapid motion. For a minute I thought it might even be putting down a tornado, but at our distance, we couldn’t make out enough details to know one way or the other. I called in a report to KGRR, then watched the storm fizzle and die shortly after.

Here one second, gone the next–that’s how it goes here in Michigan, supercell heaven of the Midwest.

July 21, 2010 by
Filed Under: Michigan, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

More Winter Weather for the South? More Long-Range Musings from a Michigan Snow Grinch

There’s talk about another round of snow hitting the South toward the end of February. It’s a bit strange to see how much discussion goes on about snowfall as an anomaly when here in Michigan, it’s a way of life. Today, snow was in the forecast in the Grand Rapids area. But that’s the norm in February. I’m used to looking out the window and seeing snow in its various forms: big, fat, fluffy flakes; small, sharp, crystalline flakes; hard, dry graupel that bounces off the sidewalk like Styrofoam crumbs; frigid diamond-chips that barely qualify as snow, they’re so fine and so tremendously cold, cold, cold.

The snow du jour on this fine, wintry Monday has been the big stuff–merry, white clumps cascading by the billions out of the mid-February sky, twirling, diving, swooping, soaring, pirouetting on the wind–snow that looks as if God sliced open an enormous feather pillow and has been emptying its contents in fits and starts over my hometown of Caledonia. I grudgingly admit, snow Grinch that I am, that it has been a darn pretty sight.

Yes, you heard me say it. Even an avowed, long-time loather of snow such as I has his moments, times when the beauty of winter transcends its miseries and those dancing flakes warm my attitude with their frozen magic. It’s a bit easier to admit to toward the end of an El Nino winter that has been less snowy than usual.

Nevertheless, I’ve never taken the kind of interest in winter weather that I have in warm-weather convection. I don’t make a habit of following forecast models daily in February, I possess only a rudimentary understanding of their interpretation at this time of year, and I get caught by surprise by events that blizzard enthusiasts have been following with eager eyes. You maybe can’t understand my indifference unless you’ve lived in a place where the snow is going to come to you whether you look for it or not, and you will be scraping plenty of it, along with generous portions of ice, off your car windshield for four or five months.

So, is the South due for another round of snow in a week or so? I dunno. Out of curiosity, I ran a GFS snowfall totals loop out to 384 hours a little while ago, and it suggests a pretty good dumping, beginning in Pennsylvania and parts east–why am I not surprised?–and then spreading the joy to northern Oklahoma, Missouri, and Tennessee as another system moves through. That’s probably the system that folks are harping about. But as everyone knows and everyone is quick to say, it’s still a long way out, and nobody knows for sure what’s going to happen right now. That’s particularly true for someone like me, who hasn’t bothered to cultivate winter forecasting skills in a place where snow is as inevitable as death and taxes, and for many, only slightly more enjoyable.

A little dark humor there, folks. Don’t hold it against me if you’re one who loves snow. You’re welcome to remove as much of it as you wish from my vehicle for free, take it home with you, and enjoy it to your heart’s content. Come, ease your craving. I call that a generous offer. But act soon! It’s only good through April.

February 15, 2010 by
Filed Under: Humor, Life, Outdoors, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Of Sunset Calendars and Skunk Cabbage

February. Ah, February. From the beginning to the end of this month, we gain an hour and twelve minutes of daylight here in Caledonia, Michigan. That’s thirty-seven minutes in the morning and thirty-five minutes in the evening. Sunset on the 28th will be at 6:31p.m. I call that a pretty good deal, and I’m pleased to see warmer temperatures this weekend giving us a taste, however temporary, of longer, pleasanter days to come.

It’s amazing how much the sunrise/sunset times vary from north to south and east to west in a single state. I won’t cite examples, but if you’re curious enough to find out for yourself, here’s a link to the U.S. Naval Observatory chart to help you do so. Time is stated in military format for the time zone of the particular town you choose, whether EST for Shamokin, Pennsylvania, or MT for Denver, Colorado.

Anyway…the days really are getting longer. Believe it or not, the beginning of the spring wildflower parade isn’t all that far away. It starts subtly, though, and humbly, with the lowly skunk cabbage. I love this odd-looking little plant that sends up its mottled, marroon-and-green hoods in the swamps, often amid melting drifts of snow. Smell a broken piece from any part of the plant and the aroma of burnt rubber and raw onions will quickly tell you that the name skunk cabbage is an apt one. But the plant is nonetheless one of my favorites, both because of its quirky nature and because it is a true harbinger of spring.

As is true of most people, there’s far more to the skunk cabbage than meets the eye. In fact, I smell a post coming up for a future WaterlandLiving blog. Can’t wait to see this pioneer of the wildflowers start putting in its appearance, possibly as early as the end of this month and certainly by mid-March. Once I spot the skunk cabbage, I know that spring is underway at last. And I’m ready for spring, aren’t you?

February 3, 2009 by
Filed Under: Life, Nature, Outdoors, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,