A few weeks ago I took the ferry with Marisa, Jack, Sian and Max to Whidbey island, WA,the location of annual Northwest Djangofests. I expected some ‘festival,’ replete with vendors selling cds, black berets, gypsy guitars, old Django Reinhardt vinyls aligned in a dusty fairground sprinkled with snocone and cupcake carts. Instead, it was a series of little concerts played each day of the week in the small community’s middle school theatre by mostly men playing to each other. I think 50% of the audience was itself gypsy jazz musician folk. My personal discovery of Django Reinhart dawned in 1998 walking through Amsterdam with my friend Jana when we encountered a most lovely group playing a music that stopped me in my tracks and infused total joy into my til-then-gypsy-jazz-empty brain. They were the Robin Nolan trio who all cheerfully signed a CD I bought.
We all enjoyed watching baby Max absorb his first concert on a Saturday
afternoon (Mark Atkinson trio and Stephane Wrembel - The Django Experiment). I think our averaged ages made us the youngest group in the room, but we were Django-ites nonetheless. Back at the B&B, we made vodka drinks and watched Jack manipulate all species of electronic dvd vhs cable satellite display devices and move furniture to setup some evening babysitting couchside entertainment.
After watching the first part of the Matrix on VHS with Jack and Sian, Marisa and I got ourselves into some black-accented clothing to cruise the town for jazz-jam happenings that we had heard were not to be missed. We cruised through the rufous-hued town, so cute and lively in the daytime with family diners and coffee bakeries, but that night hanging with with crickets sounds and industrial street light. We went around a sleepy block (some cars are here!) to see a large white light with a central orange glory hole pouring out of a big garage. We had the feeling we might be finding the whole point of the evening. It was a retired firehouse, now a glassblowing art-display space. One side displayed sidesitting wavy nested bowl sets and other glass vessels. The other side was the activity side. A guy who might've just stepped out of the City of Lost Children wearing little metal round black-lensed glasses and a long stiff leather coat peered cheerily at us from his barber’s chair below a gypsy-naked-girl painting with his feet on the electric foot massager. Two gypsy jazz guitarists were chatting with the skinny lizard-energy glassblower. After Marisa got her own feet massaged, we wandered around the art objects as Callahan McVay began to circle in on us. We got to chatting about his glass-making and paintings around the place (is Madrid by the ocean?). Then he asked if we liked graphing. We happily reported that we liked plotting data and could help him out, we're scientists! Peering at his guestbook, he an
alyzed his last signatory’s message and explained an obvious lack of family and friends, and sexual frustration (because she crossed parts of letters?!). No! Her note was so nice, happy and friendly! Finally after he told us about his mother’s personal priorities as indicated by her capitalization habits in email, we were invited to the old hose tower (a stark, steep, diabolical vertical space). We gracefully made our way out past the 2 happy jamming gypsy guitarists leaving Callahan with his wine and foundry.
We drove the 3 blocks to the Cliffside tavern that had a circle of chairs waiting for the 8pm concertgoers to come jam together (see this 2008 Cliffside video of such a scene) and hang out with their co-gypsy devotees. We took posession of a primo spot at the bar and saw the guitarplayers at the glass blowing place. Mark called to Pat, “Hey, it’s the Glassblowing Girls!” We mingled... Here you can see Marisa enjoying her time in the jam circle. Marisa
is one of the most comfortable-around-anyone-anyplace people you’ll ever want to meet who really enjoys people-nuances and can really laugh (at me, her or them). We checked out a second jam session outside with the black/grey-clad crowd of middle-aged guys with fingernails, rattling pockets and euro-hats. We spoke to a woman about her purse made from her favorite Prince vinyl (expensive, but the website let’s you pick the record). We strolled away from the lights, leather jackets and cigarettes to the cliff and the water. It seemed natural to ask, “Hey, do you want to make out?” but we decided to just get in the car and drive back to our yellow B&B with plums and apples in the backyard.
P.S. In the airport I ran into Pat Ciliberto, the guitarplayer at the glass firehouse. He is a gypsy guitarist in an L.A. jazz band called Noto D (as in ‘notorious Django’). Later I found out that Noto Swing is this cool song by Lulu Reinhardt.
We all enjoyed watching baby Max absorb his first concert on a Saturday
afternoon (Mark Atkinson trio and Stephane Wrembel - The Django Experiment). I think our averaged ages made us the youngest group in the room, but we were Django-ites nonetheless. Back at the B&B, we made vodka drinks and watched Jack manipulate all species of electronic dvd vhs cable satellite display devices and move furniture to setup some evening babysitting couchside entertainment.After watching the first part of the Matrix on VHS with Jack and Sian, Marisa and I got ourselves into some black-accented clothing to cruise the town for jazz-jam happenings that we had heard were not to be missed. We cruised through the rufous-hued town, so cute and lively in the daytime with family diners and coffee bakeries, but that night hanging with with crickets sounds and industrial street light. We went around a sleepy block (some cars are here!) to see a large white light with a central orange glory hole pouring out of a big garage. We had the feeling we might be finding the whole point of the evening. It was a retired firehouse, now a glassblowing art-display space. One side displayed sidesitting wavy nested bowl sets and other glass vessels. The other side was the activity side. A guy who might've just stepped out of the City of Lost Children wearing little metal round black-lensed glasses and a long stiff leather coat peered cheerily at us from his barber’s chair below a gypsy-naked-girl painting with his feet on the electric foot massager. Two gypsy jazz guitarists were chatting with the skinny lizard-energy glassblower. After Marisa got her own feet massaged, we wandered around the art objects as Callahan McVay began to circle in on us. We got to chatting about his glass-making and paintings around the place (is Madrid by the ocean?). Then he asked if we liked graphing. We happily reported that we liked plotting data and could help him out, we're scientists! Peering at his guestbook, he an
alyzed his last signatory’s message and explained an obvious lack of family and friends, and sexual frustration (because she crossed parts of letters?!). No! Her note was so nice, happy and friendly! Finally after he told us about his mother’s personal priorities as indicated by her capitalization habits in email, we were invited to the old hose tower (a stark, steep, diabolical vertical space). We gracefully made our way out past the 2 happy jamming gypsy guitarists leaving Callahan with his wine and foundry.We drove the 3 blocks to the Cliffside tavern that had a circle of chairs waiting for the 8pm concertgoers to come jam together (see this 2008 Cliffside video of such a scene) and hang out with their co-gypsy devotees. We took posession of a primo spot at the bar and saw the guitarplayers at the glass blowing place. Mark called to Pat, “Hey, it’s the Glassblowing Girls!” We mingled... Here you can see Marisa enjoying her time in the jam circle. Marisa
is one of the most comfortable-around-anyone-anyplace people you’ll ever want to meet who really enjoys people-nuances and can really laugh (at me, her or them). We checked out a second jam session outside with the black/grey-clad crowd of middle-aged guys with fingernails, rattling pockets and euro-hats. We spoke to a woman about her purse made from her favorite Prince vinyl (expensive, but the website let’s you pick the record). We strolled away from the lights, leather jackets and cigarettes to the cliff and the water. It seemed natural to ask, “Hey, do you want to make out?” but we decided to just get in the car and drive back to our yellow B&B with plums and apples in the backyard.P.S. In the airport I ran into Pat Ciliberto, the guitarplayer at the glass firehouse. He is a gypsy guitarist in an L.A. jazz band called Noto D (as in ‘notorious Django’). Later I found out that Noto Swing is this cool song by Lulu Reinhardt.
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