Night Beat

Wendy DeWitt has an unbelievable left hand for the piano. While the left is playing a driving bass line, the right is drawing out a melody. All the while, the voice is singing and sometimes shouting. With Joe Tate laying down some guitar riffs, Lonnie Walter mends it all together with a rhythmic tattoo. Also sitting in was Kurt Harwood who brought his congo drums. These added a nice bass spectrum to the percussion. He also doubled on tamborine and some other small gadgets.

Wendy and Joe took turns on vocals every two songs. Starting off with some New Orleans sounds, the genre drifts to rock, country and a little Hawaiian. Joe sang “Over The Rainbow” while Wendy peeked over his shoulder at the chart. For this, Betty the bartender came out and stuffed money in the tip jar. Others followed her, though it’s not clear why except it’s clear people love this song.

It was a cold and rainy night and the tourists came in shivering. Quite a few Irish Coffees disappeared and there was quite a bit of merriment. There may have been some intoxication too. In spite of this the mood was upbeat with plenty of laughter.

DeWitt’s playing was spectacular as usual. Lonnie Walter played a few bongo solos that were extraordinary. Tate held the middle together as well as possible between the staccato drums and the piano orchestrations.

The evening ended with Joe’s rendition of Minnie The Moocher to which the audience sang along.

Myron Mu was there to pick up Lonnie and he told us that Johnny Nitro had died about an hour earlier. Lonnie, who was really upset, told us we would have to find someone else for March 19 when Nitro was schedule to play at the No Name bar.

Check out Joe Tate’s “Ukulele Baby Songbook” at

http://www.theredlegs.com/JoeTate.html

You can also download a PDF of “Last Voyage Of The Redlegs” from this site.

This entry was posted on February 21, 2011 at 5:34 am and is filed under Bay Area Music, Night Beat, Sausalito After Dark, Sausalito night life, Uncategorized with tags acoustic blues, boogie woogie piano, chamber blues, guitar blues, No Name bar, san francisco music, Sausalito After Dark, Sausalito music, UFO, Ukulele music, waterfront, wendy DeWitt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.