The early part of this week was spent catching up on work and chores after Denny’s birthday weekend in San Miguel de Allende – piano tuner, car service, laundry (thanks McD) and the like.
On Friday I took the first of the piano lessons that Diana gave me for Christmas (thanks McD). Anthony has a music studio in a room of his bungalow in downtown McKinney and calls it the Piano Dojo. The lesson was very enjoyable as Anthony asked me to play scales and sight read (scales not so good after 40 years of neglect, sight reading not too bad). He also wants me to start learning basic drumming patterns so I’ve obtained drum sticks and a practice pad and might get started today. Apparently learning to drum teaches the brain to better manage right and left hand separation and is good for the type of blues/boogie piano that I’m hoping to learn. Anthony and I shared stories about jazz clubs in New York and musicians that we enjoy. I’m looking forward to getting my scales and drumming down so that I can schedule my next lesson.
We celebrated Patty’s birthday on Friday evening and started with a lovely dinner at Sachet in the very fancy Highland Park neighborhood just north of downtown Dallas. Sachet is a Mediterranean restaurant and was voted the best new restaurant of 2017 by the readers of D magazine. We started with several “meze” or small plates – the yellow beets, red beet hummus, oregano, labne dish was my favourite (tender and flavorful beets), followed by the spicy roasted eggplant, roasted peppers, garlic, tomato, and then the french Lentils, muhamarra, piquillo peppers, and walnuts. It’s always interesting how good fresh, well cooked vegetables can taste.
After the meze we enjoyed green fava falafel, radish salad, mint yogurt (my favourite dish of the evening with the best falafel I’ve tasted), charred octopus, Rancho Gordo beans, swiss chard, fennel, salmoriglio (not as good as the amazing grilled octopus in San Miguel de Allende), Casarecce, Turkish lamb ragu, pomegranate, labne (yummy lamb ragu), and finally squid ink spaghetti, lobster, tomato, white wine, and star anise.
Patty’s birthday was off to a great start but we had a surprise in store – John Oates at the Kessler theater (Dallas’ most redeeming quality). John Oates is one half of the best-selling duo of all time, Hall & Oates, as well as an accomplished solo artist. A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Oates embarked on his solo career in 1999. He has recorded six solo albums and his seventh project, “Arkansas”, was released in February. He featured 6 songs from this album to start his Kessler show.
In addition to his solo shows, Oates continues to tour with Daryl Hall, playing sold-out concerts around the world. You could tell he was relishing the very small venue as compared to the sports arenas he plays as part of Hall & Oates. At one point he mentioned an upcoming Hall & Oates show in Dallas in the summer and invited us to join 15,000 of our best friends to listen to it – quite different than the few hundred folks at the Kessler.
“Arkansas” is mostly a tribute to Mississippi John Hurt, an original bluesman who made his first recordings in the late 1920s, but also features some ragtime and Jimmie Rogers inspired pieces. Here’s a video of Oates performing “Make me a pallet on your floor” – the excellent Fender Telecaster work is by Guthrie Trapp. The video is followed by links to the original Mississippi John Hurt recording and the version from the “Arkansas” album.
Diana’s favorite song from the show was “Lose it in Louisiana”:
I’ve been enjoying “Manhattan Beach” by Jennifer Egan this week. The novel opens in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to the house of Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family.
Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that had always belonged to men. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. She is the sole provider for her mother, a farm girl who had a brief and glamorous career with the Ziegfeld Follies, and her lovely, severely disabled sister. At a nightclub, she chances to meet Dexter Styles again, and she begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, and the reasons he might have vanished.
That’s as far as I’ve reached in the story so far and it’s setting up for an interesting second half. The quality of the writing and story telling are excellent and I’m looking forward to trying some of Egan’s other novels.
On the musical front, I read about a new recording by Mary Gauthier called “Rifles and Rosary Beads”. This is an interesting album in that Gauthier composed it in writing workshops with soldiers that were designed to provide therapy by allowing them to share their stories and feelings. The songs are very good although, as you can imagine, quite melancholy and poignant.
You might remember my commentary on Gauthier’s amazing “Mercy Now” song in the June 26, 2016 edition of this blog – well worth a listen.
The musical lagniappe this week is from the 70s group Big Star – I heard it on the closing credits of an episode of the HBO series, “I’m Dying up Here”.