I recently had a chance to work with Robbie Krieger (of the Doors) through my association with my colleague Brandino.  Brandino and Mr. Krieger were collaborating on a composition ( I hope to post a link to it here soon) and I was asked to record some of the duet material at Brandino's home.  I was very pleased to make the legendary Mr. Krieger's acquaintance and record him playing some wonderful flamenco-style guitar.  He's very nice and not at all the "rock star" one might have expected.  I hope to work with him again sometime.

Here's a picture of Mr Robbie Kreiger and yours truly:

Saturday evening May 3rd at TAIX (http://www.taixfrench.com/) which is a great French restaurant that hosts the 321 lounge.  I'm appearing with FREEHEAD and BAG:THEORY again, so come on down. 

TAIX is at 1911 north Sunset Blvd, close to Glendale Ave.

A few weeks ago, Los Angeles lost one of it's finest local musicians, and one of its nicest people.  Richie Haas, multi-instrumentalist and composer, was always a fixture on the music scene.  He played bass, drums, vibraphone, and for all I know every other instrument, and had a fine and droll wit to go along with his prodigious musicality.  I will miss his gentle and unassuming smile, and his creativitiy, and the support he always showed me and the bands I played with.  He was a true gentleman and one could do far worse than emulate the example of his life.

There has been a memorial benefit organized in his honor, and here is the information for that event.  I will be appearing with both Bag:Theory in a rare appearance, and I will be attempting to do justice to playing Richie's bass parts, subbing in his band FreeHead,

Celebrating the life and music of Richie Hass

FRIENDS OF RICHIE II

A BENEFIT CONCERT

Proceeds will be contributed to the International Myeloma Foundation

SUNDAY, APRIL 27^TH 

@ THE ECHOPLEX

1154 Glendale Blvd. Echo Park, CA.

From 4:30pm to 11:00pm, in order of appearance

(in Club terms, which differs from reality)…

The Probe

ChromoSphere with Marc Mylar

Poets Jack Brewer, S.A. Griffin and

THE LOFTY CANAANITES

Bag: Theory

With fellow improvisers Tony Fate & Vince Martinez

DOS with Mike Watt and Kira Roessler

SACCHARINE TRUST

THE AMADANS

  FREEHEAD 

 Jim Smith, M. Segal, George Radai 

Nels Cline

FATSO JETSON

The evening will end with a stage-filled improv session in celebration of our talented & unforgettable friend.

DOORS OPEN AT 4pm  $7.00 admission ALL AGES INFO: (213) 413-8200

http://www.attheecho.com/

 --I've started doing occasional gigs with the very excellent RAY JAY BAND, a blues/funk/r&b project that plays in and around Ventura county on weekends.  This trio has as it's drummer the very fine and talented Don Medina, formerly of Death&Taxe$ and Shut Up Marie, and has the equally fine and talented Ray Jay on guitar and vocals.  If you like that style of music, you owe it to yourselves to check out this band whether I am sitting in with them or not.

Check out their MySpace page for gig details: http://www.myspace.com/therayjayband

The first gig with BUILDING 7 at Steamers was lots of fun.  We were well recieved by those that attended, and even made some fans!

Here's a couple of snapshots from the show.

From L>R:  Eduardo Poyart, David Robin, GR, Scott Heustis

GR laying it down...

(10/29) I've begun working with a new band, just named "Building 7" which is made up of Scott Heustis on guitar, Eduardo Poyart on keyboards(both fine musicians formerly of Instagon, Gizmo, Potion Box, and other bands) and the excellent David Robin on drums (formerly with Toyah Wilcox) -- we're playing a prog-rock breakfast at Steamer's in the south bay in a couple of weeks--should be fun.  The music is prog-industrial-funk-jazz, if I had to classify it loosely, and pretty interesting and energetic.

(10/07)  Some recent things:  I did a cool gig with LEVELER (me, Vince Martinez on guitar, Dean McCall on drums) that was well-recieved.  Check out some of those tunes here: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=75299787

I've been doing some emgineering and mixing for a friend and client who is a Grammy-winning super jazz bassist named Brandino, and I will have some examples of mixes I have done for him here posted here soon.  Check out his website at www.brandino.com

Greg Segal's Phantom Airship records has just released two more Cold Sky compilations.  Cold Sky had a brief life back in the late 80's-early 90's, but did some slammin' prog-hard-rock jams and pop-ey songs, and  there's some good bass work on there by me.  The two forthcoming releases are called "In Process", and "The King of Illusion Variations."

Besides that, I began working on a three-album compilation that is the best of me...seems pretty self-indulgent, but what the heck.  I've been doing this a long time, and I am proud of some of the work I have done with and for various artists, so I thought to collect it all and remaster the cuts, and it'll be called 'Dwellings Below".

Here's the artwork for the three front covers:

Also Kenny Ryman (of PaperBag and Points of Friction fame) and I have gotten all the basic work done for the remix and remaster of VICTIMLESS CRIME, which was PaperBag's infamous release that gained them the attention of SST Records, and got them signed.   This will be a re-release with massively improved sound reproduction and it ought to knock some people's socks off!

I've been working on my first ever solo release, which I've titled "Low Hanging Fruits"...I hope to have this done and released by the end of 2008.  I'm not going to say much about it here, except that it's been a lot of fun to make, and I think it will appeal to everybody, even folks who don't play the bass!

For more info on my gigs and events, see further down this page,
and for links to the various associated websites, click the link names...