Jim Vick: News

This Saturday, September 30, I'll be playing on the mainstage at 9:15 PM with Junior, Carter, and special guests at the ArteVive Festival in Puerto Viejo. The festival will be featuring some of the best and most innovative music acts in Costa Rica, including Papaya Music keyboardist and musical director Manuel Obregon and contemporary calypso legend Manuel Monestel. Sunday night's highlights include a concert celebrating the release of Papaya Music Records' new "Calypso Limon Legends" CD, which features Junior and 4 other south Carribean music veterans in a fusion of Calypso and jazz. Later that evening we'll all take the stage together for the Puerto Sunsplash jam that will be the finale of a very full weekend of great music. For more details on the festival and artists, check out: http://www.arteviva-puertoviejo.com and http://www.papayamusic.com.

PERFORMANCE UPDATE
Like much of our transition from our busy life in the USA to the slower, but surprise laden pura vida of the sub-equatorial tropics, returning to life as a performing musician has been somewhat of a whirlwind experience since I took out my guitar in public for the first time here a few short months ago. One of our first ventures out into the local music scene here was to attend an annual 3 weekend music festival back in March that's held just down the road from us. I was eager to check out more of the region's music, but I actually ended up sitting in for most of the second set of one of the concerts with one of the latin jazz bands at that festival, Plan B, when their guitarist wasn't able to make the gig. That turned out to be the kickoff of a great season of playing for me. Since mid-April, music has been keeping me very busy - so much so that I'm very much enjoying a break this week from the intensity of my playing schedule the last 6 weeks, cutting back to 3 nights instead of 4 or 5. No, I'm no longer on "permanent vacation." The opportunity came along for me to plug into the local music scene, and suddenly I was playing 4 - 5 nights a week here at 3 or 4 different venues for 2 solid months.

Puerto Viejo offers a unique opportunity for a musician like me who is comfortable and reasonably competent playing in a variety of styles and genres. Being the primary ecotourism destination on this coast, the town gets a regular flow of travelers from North America and Europe coming through, so there is almost always a good share of new listeners in the audience, many of whom are interested in the local culture as well as some contact with their own usual musical leanings. Another plus about my main performance venue here, El Loco Natural, which is our favorite eating and drinking spot, is its emphasis on natural foods and a very comfortable atmosphere for both listening and just relaxing and hanging out with friends, which has made it a popular local ex-pat hangout as well. I now play at the Loco 2-3 nights a week, with each night offering a different musical combination and flavor. So currently, if you should come to Puerto soon, you'll find me playing a variety of styles ranging from the local Calypso, reggae rock, Latin pop and Bossa, to straight ahead jazz, blues, funk, and even some hiphop, along with my originals and jazzed up acoustic instrumental arrangements of a growing repertoire of my favorite cover tunes.

On Thursdays I'm the lead guitarist with a semi-traditional Limonese Calypso group led by Junior Alvarez, a 62 year old AfriCaribean guitarist/vocalist from Nicaragua who also played bass for a few years in Jamaica with a lot of big names in the reggae world. The Bluefields style Calypso that we do is great fun music for dancing and a lot of fun to play. Then on Saturdays the Loco house band, the Playa Negra Social Club, does a repertoire that includes some of my songs, some newer tunes by Michael Franti I've brought in, along with new arrangements we've put together of old blues, R & B and rock covers from the 60's and 70's - everything from the Beatles to Hendrix, and of course, a dose of Santana and Bob Marley, along with some original reggae stuff the other 2 guys have been doing here for years. The core group is a trio, with Junior Alvarez on bass and Carter V (house percussionist and venue co-owner) on drums & congas, but we're frequently joined by percussionists Sandro Anderson and Jeff Et, as well as other special guests. And Sundays I've been doing an all acoustic duo or trio with Carter on congas and most recently, young Argentinian guitarist Luciano Gomez - a nice change and a chance to do more jazz and guitar instrumentals - something I've always wanted to get into more. And, oh yeah, I've also been doing some solo nights at another club on Tuesdays on an occasional basis, and a coffeehouse concert night at another cool venue is in the planning stages.

RECORDING
Something I never anticipated was to so quickly get back into recording again after arriving in this new environment, but like the gigs, opportunities to do just that presented themselves almost immediately as well. In late June I began engineering and playing lead guitar on a recording of Junior Alvarez, who has been an integral part of the regional music scene here for years, and his Calypso band that I sometimes play with here. We've made the recording to demo songs for Papaya Records, a great independent label based in San Jose that has interest in releasing an album of Junior's music. This has been not only a lot of fun, but also pretty exciting for me, since Papaya Music is an outstanding and very artist-oriented label with international distribution (check out their website at papayamusic.com.)

Beyond my now ongoing music schedule, since early May I've also been recording and performing with Jasmin, a really talented 25 year old singer from Australia who was in town for just a 6 month stay that just ended this month. It's been great fun working with her though, and a completely unexpected opportunity that has reconnected me with the current reggae scene a bit - much of which is, to my ear, more like hiphop with a Jamaican flavor - as well as some great retro-soul covers ranging from Stevie Wonder to Jill Scott. This got me back into doing some computer based tracks with live guitar and voice - also a lot of fun for me. Jasmin is now back in Australia finishing her degree in environmental science, but plans to return and prepare to record a CD in Jamaica early next year.

And finally, now that things have slowed down to a more manageable level in the performance schedule, my next recording project is going to be an all-or-mostly acoustic collection of originals, culling from my newer material along with some favorites that didn't make it onto the dotcombo CD. I'll start posting tracks here on the website as they are completed, along with some previously unreleased older tracks I discovered in my archive collections during the digital transfer I completed during the move preparation. I'll let you know when that happens. 'Til then . . .

Elisa is coming into town this weekend from her current home in Ashland, OR, to join us for two shows on Saturday.

The dotcombo plays an acoustic set at the NW Folklife Festival at 1:00 p.m. on the Fisher Green Stage.
Then later that very evening at 8:30 p.m., the full band returns to the birthplace of our collective performance career for a full evening show at Madison's! (Yes, in case you haven't heard, the singer-songwriter haven of the 90's has reopened, newly remodeled with a full menu and beverage selection, and is once again presenting live music in a very comfortable smoke-free environment.) We are excited to be back to celebrate with 2 sets of tunes for you. And special guest trombonist extraordinaire Marc Smason will join us for the last half of the evening to help kick out the jams that night!

Come celebrate with us!

On Saturday May 14, I'll be performing at an exciting show that's part of a larger event that's happening all weekend: the Art of Resistance Conference. The conference is in a great and much more accessible venue this year, the Capitol Hill Arts Center. On Saturday night, I'll be hosting an evening of music and spoken word in the Center's theater featuring some of the NW's finest artists, along with a couple of very special guests. Celebrated actor and speaker Ed Asner will be appearing to speak on artists and activism. I'll be playing a solo set, joined by several of Seattle's finest social/political songwriters, including the great Jim Page and Heliotrope bard Danny Kelly. There will be Islamic hiphop by Sons of Hagar, acoustic soul and spoken word by Forgotten Sol's amazing Cristina Orbe, folk noire and art rock by the always enthralling Grace and Savage, and original music by composer/songwriter/filmmaker Michael Bade and revered slide guitarist Joel Tepp, who has recorded and performed with Bonnie Raitt, Jerry Garcia, Little Feat, Danny O’Keefe, Spencer Davis, Linda Ronstadt, and Ian Matthews.

Hope you'll join us for what promises to be a very memorable evening. See the Calendar page for the details. And be sure to check out the rest of the conference, which will feature exhibits offering a diverse selection of political art, other arts performances, and a variety of workshops on art making and art as activism.

With Spring already in full bloom in the Northwest, we're celebrating Earth Day (April 22) this month with the release of 3 of my environmentally-focused songs that have long been at rest in the JV Archives. You can hear and download these tracks for free on the Listen page. One of these songs, RADIANT WATER, appeared on my first album, IN THE GARDEN, but the other 2, LIVING LIGHTLY and JUNGLE COMING DOWN, are being released here for the very first time. (Scroll down to the bottom of the Listen page to find all 3 of these tracks.) With King George pushing for the drilling of the Artic Wildlife Refuge and with the Peak Oil story being published in mainstream zines like Rolling Stone, it's the least I can do to revive a suggestion from one of these tracks from the 80's: "If we're to see ourselves through this plight, we must live lightly!"

I'll be hosting and performing at Seattle Thunder's Earth Day Celebration on Saturday April 23 in south Seattle, joined by masterful singer-songwriters Reggie Garrett and Sheryl Wiser. You'll find more details are on the Calendar page and at www.seattlethunder.net.

The new year is already a busy one for me, with several shows coming up in February and March. The first one on the horizon is a benefit concert for Tsunami Relief on February 6th that I've helped stellar singer-songwriter Kathryn Mostow put together. It will feature 15 performing songwriters, including some of the Northwest's finest. (More details on the Calendar page.) I'm also hosting the January 22 Seattle Thunder Democracy Festival, as well as our monthly Thunder Music in Fremont Series, held the first Saturday of the month through May at Essential Chocolate Factory's community living room. Those shows feature incredible acts every month, including the best of Seattle's contemporary acoustic music, along with occasional jazz, hiphop, rock, and world music. Check out the Links page to visit the Seattle Thunder site for more details on the series and our upcoming Thunder Music shows.

The Calendar page has info on my own March 5th Thunder Music show. You can also check out that page for details on all our upcoming performances. And the Listen page for mp3s of several tracks from our new CD, plus a free downloadable mp3 of "Freedom Fries," our most recent recording, which wasn't recorded in time to be on the album. Coming soon will be some long lost cuts from my older recordings and some new stuff that's not available anywhere else. And of course, the Photos page has shots from our album shoot, with more coming soon from our CD release concert last October.

One last thing before you go: please DO join the mailing list so we can keep you informed on our upcoming adventures and whereabouts and let you know when there's new music available for listening on the site.
Hope you enjoy your visit. (And let us know your thoughts!)

Peace,

Jim