I had a fabulous, whirlwind trip to Portland last week in November for 5 days.

It came about from a job opportunity to perform at the retirement party of an old friend/colleague with the stage name Joe Strong. I took the opportunity to schedule "reunion shows" for 2 bands I used to lead: the Hot Club of Hawthorne (gypsy jazz/vintage swing), and Train River (bluegrass). I was fortunate to get to stay in the house of my old housemate/bandmate Rob Roy, and I had a fun jam with him and old buds/bandmate Andrew Clapp and Dave Nicolardi; the 3 of them have a cool improv synth band now. How fun to catch up with these folks, up to 20+ years later!

Back in the aughts, I used to help Joe Strong chart out his songs to facilitate playing at the "Sonic Forum" live-band-open-mike at the Goodfoot Lounge, hosted by Scott Pemberton and Ji Tanzer. Later there were 2 CDs produced in Scott's studio, to which I contributed tracks -- the albums are excellent, so I recommend finding them streaming online -- and in 2010 did a CD release party performance at the Goodfoot. The recent party performance was ambitious: we had to fill a large ballroom with sound, and we included some backing tracks in the mix, which requires careful logistics and practice. We did well. Joe is actually a renowned structural engineer and professor with a long and celebrated history of teaching at PSU; his colleagues in attendance did not know he was a musician, so they were blown away! To be a part of that was an honor and delight.

The Train River show took place at a new venue called Covert Cafe on 82nd; it's co-managed by my old friend/bandmate Joe Mishkin. It's a great little space and they have excellent facilities with instruments, a sound system, and audio/video recording capability. You can find the videos of the whole show on their YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@CovertCafe
Especially fun was that several folks who used to hang -- and probably first met -- at the old Snake & Weasel circa 2000, were in attendance!

The Hot Club of Hawthorne show took place at Mississippi Pizza, which was perhaps the venue I've performed at more than anywhere else. We packed in over 12 musicians over the show, in two sets, and soundman champion Carter Hill heroically hooked us up, and recorded the whole thing too (audio forthcoming soon!) There was a perfect sized crowd, including swing dancers, and lots of old friends and fans. There are some audience videos we'll get on YouTube and the FB page soon. Big thanks to Dave Brooks for loaning me my old gypsy guitar, which I sold to him before leaving for Mexico! (He's husband of my oldest friend in the world, from kindergarten, Kori; we had a lovely visit and catchup too.)

I also enjoyed bussing around Portland and seeing the sights again. I do miss the place -- but, I would rather not live there! It seems too big now...and expensive, of course. I love my sunny, friendly, artsy Mexican new life.

Sorry I couldn't spend more time with all the friends that came out! Running the shows required much attention. And for the friends that didn't get the memos, I'll try to do better. It's hard when contact info is so discombobulated these days.

The whole trip was pretty late-booked -- I was on the fence about going at all for a time... -- and it could have been better planned, but things came together magically. I'm emboldened to do it again at a future date; maybe even annually or something!