I’m going to the 2007 convention for the Society for the Preservation and Advancement of the Harmonica (SPAH) in Milwuakee tomorrow.   SPAH is an unusual event.  It’s insipring and nerdy, brilliant and silly.  Let me give you an analogy.  Suppose that you’re a guitar…

One of my very favorite players, Brendan Power, has posted clips from his new swing jazz album to his site at http://www.brendan-power.com.

Because one isn’t enough. Seriously, when every piece of music played in the world uses the same scale and chords, I’ll stick to one harmonica tuning.  Maybe.  In the meantime, I need at least six different tunings to express my music.  (Joni Mitchell uses 31…

I mentioned in my blog about the Dragonfly gig that I used a few effects, including my Digitech RP200, a Boss OC2 octave divider, an Akai Intelliphase, and an Akai Headrush delay.  Here are a few comments on what these things do. First of all,…

I played with Spinning Plates, the ambient improvised electronica band, last night.  Three sets of nonstop improvising and playing.  It was fun and very different, and pretty demanding mentally and physically, since I had no idea at any given point in  time what I was…

First of all, my wife’s not dead.  But a careless doctor nearly killed her 5 years ago.  A couple of caring doctors had to put her back together again. It took a long time, and she nearly died on several occasions while it was underway….

This is my first blog entry, and I’ll use it for a statement of intentions. I play the harmonica. I have been playing harmonica for over 40 years. In that time, I have written the world’s best-selling method for jazz and rock harmonica players, released…

This is a brief summary of personal highlights from SPAH 1998. This event, the 35th anniversary convention for SPAH, was held in Detroit, MI, USA from August 26-30, 1998. There was far too much going on at this show for any individual to provide a…