I played the last of my month-long Sunday afternoon gigs at Crossroads Cafe in Philly today. No, it wasn’t a pace-setting big ticket booking (I knew that when I booked it) but it gave me a unique opportunity to bring my music out to the same environment each week and tweak it and take chances with it that I usually won’t do. I also recorded each date which gives me a lot of music to review, consider and sweat over. I would like to release a live solo CD and this has worked exactly as I wished.

This is a great setting for acoustic-based music — singer/songwriters are usually featured, so I did manage to change the pace a bit. The staff is very accommodating and they have a great menu and superb dark roast coffee (Forbidden Drive Dark, named after an actual stretch of graveled footpath along the Wissahickon Creek). I would like to book there again, possibly in May for another month of Sundays. These are sort of opportunities that Philly sorely lacks and I’d like to cultivate this (and others) not only for myself but for other solo instrumental players so the listening public can be further acquainted with the capabilities of solo guitar.

Now I get to shift gears a bit and PLUG IN for my show with the Matt Richards Group at Chris’ Jazz Cafe on April 5th. Yes, I did type PLUG IN….. it’s time for another step in the development of this trio. The archtop will be at home….