A Memorial Day Set for LizFest 2010

LizFest is an All-day Garden Benefit Concert for the Elizabeth Weedmark Memorial Fund, held over Memorial Day Weekend to raise funds for the School of Creative and Performing Arts and instruments for the San Diego Children's School. Grammy winner Lori Bell, jazz players Jamie, Chuck Perrin and Carla Bizzet and a lot of other pros all showed up. We were asked to do a set for them, thanks to Nathan and Anita Weedmark for inviting us! This was the quickest thrown together session we've ever done, but the Nikbeats (in their regular street clothes) pulled through.

Valentine sang a quick version of Summertime, with a real tasty acoustic jazzy-bluesy solo by Curly Max -



Our opening number was the good old reliable Bossa Dorado with Max & Max, and those audience toes started tapping real good...



I practiced this all day, have never played Bron-Y-Aur Stomp before in front of any audience. They seemed to like it...



Valentine played two of her newest songs, these were giant hits with the audience, they kept asking her about how she wrote them, where she went to school, if she has a CD they can buy, if she could sign their posters,
she was...
ONE POPULAR LADY.



The audience wanted another one, so after more questions she let them have it with this, and I think this is exactly the way a big black grand piano should be played:



Thanks again to Nathan And Anita!

A.R.T.S. Guitar Class And It's $5 Burger Night at the Corvette Diner

The A.R.T.S. Guitar Classes that Varsity Strings started back in January are getting bigger every week! Andy is doing a great job with the kids and right now we're learning to transition between some basic chords, so we can finally start playing some songs. Yay!

Mr. Smile E. Face -

A lesson about tuning: "Tuning a guitar is like tuning a piano; you can tune a guitar but you can't tunafish. Wait... what?"

This is our pal Mario. He's also a student teacher. I mean the guy with the guitar and black hair, not the Mario on Smiley's beanie.

This room is the epitome of chill! Instruments in every cranny, big leather couches, and two big posters of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead in one corner.

The guitar is bigger than she is!

Danny Riley is the guy the whole music room is dedicated to - this photo looks like it was taken in the acoustic room at 'The Blue Guitar' shop -

As soon as Andy's supervising eyes left the room, I jumped at the chance to teach the kids how to play the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil." Quote of the day: "That song sounds very holy!"

"Any more questions about theory? Yes, Billy? Yeah, Billy, I'll get your pick out from the inside of your guitar."

On our break I found this really really old record. It's not even called a record, its called a "Re-Creation", which turned into the name "Re-cording" or "Record" later. I looked these up on the internet and they were made by Edison around 1914-1918? No, I'm not making this up!

It's about 1/4" thick -

This would make a great t-shirt!

Finally its time for $5 BURGER NIGHT at the CORVETTE DINER, right down the street!



Gotta go, there's more burgers to be chomped.

Voices For Children - Night of the Nikbeats

We did a Nikbeat Classic Jazz set at Voices For Children, that actually made us $48 for for our charity Fresh Start, which is exactly $48 more than what we expected to make this night! Most of the money was donated by the audience after we nailed Miles Davis's "All Blues" and Valentine sang a hauntingly beautiful rendition of "Summertime." With an added spotlight solo of Curly Max's.

Somebody looks a little fed up with Dark Max's "camera-friendly" personality!

"Alright, you wannna-be jazzers. Let's give these guys a first-class ticket to Strayhorn's A-Train".

Here's our appetizer: a bossa-laden acoustic set boiling with bongos, spiced up with some snazzy snare work, marinated in jazzitude, and flamed to a crisp with red-hot finger-blistering licks. And if that don't sound hip enough for ya, there's a McDonald's down the corner, square.

Unfortunately for her piano fans, all Valentine wants to do now is DRUM.

She's actually pretty good! We're gonna keep working with her until she can pull off the intro for Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher."

Thanks to Susan and Megan at Voices For Children for a great night! These folks are really hard working, good people who run San Diego's biggest organization devoted to legally representing abused, neglected and abandoned children. They make sure these kids will have a safe and permanent home. We really loved helping them and played one of the best nights we've had all year, they really appreciated our music and Valentine singing. We'd love to do ANY event they throw at us!

Here they are at ...             Voices4Children.com

WOW! How Coolsville is this?

I can't believe we actually got certificates for playing jazz!

"Certificate of Appreciation for Contributions To Playing Jazz in a Way That Doesn't Annoy the Audience or Make Dogs Howl or Babies Scream, at Least During the Acoustic Set." Signed and dated.

So there.

After everybody went home, here's the very last song we did. This is the dreaded Midnight Set.



Bye! Thanks for Looking!

the Nikbeats... are here.

Meet the Nikbeats!

First practice jam session - Valentine DRUMS!



More session work -

and more -

Coolsville!

My only friends!

Ready for the big night, we got our threads and Wes and Miles said they might make it too, maybe we'll let them sit in on a jam if they buy us an espresso.