2 Gigs in 3 Days
January 21, 2004

The last few days have been cool for playing. Sunday night I got one of those classic subbing calls from my friend Serginho. "Hey man, do you want to play at gig tonight at Mistura Fina's downstairs bar"? "Sure, Serginho", I said. "What time?". "7PM" (it was already 7:30 when he called me!). Ah, Brasil...

Anyway, it was a nice little trio gig ... pandeiro, 7 string guitar (my friend Marcello Goncalves from Trio Madeira Brasil) and sax/flute (Dani Spielmann, who's site I'm finishing up now). After Marcello got home he called me just to say how he enjoyed playing with me and wanted to get together to play more in the future (I still love getting this kind of feedback!).

Last night I played yet another CD release gig with Zé Paulo Becker. It was in front of a Brazilian music store called "Toca do Vinicius" in Ipanema and the whole street was packed with listeners. Oddly enough, the sound was really good and it was a lot of fun. For a change I played 3 tunes ... 2 baiãos and 1 samba. The band was Zé, Marcello Goncalves (7 string gtr.), Beto Cazes (perc) and Dirceu Leite (sax, flute, etc).

One nice little side note to this gig .... the owner of the store told me how cool he thought it was to have an American playing pandeiro with this top notch carioca musicians. Before I left I went to thank him for paying me as well and asked if he remembered me from several years ago. I had gone to his store to buy some of my first Brazilian CDs and spoke with him in English... asking for help in making my selections! He said he remembered, but was totally confused last night because I was playing with those guys and speaking portugues, etc...

On top of having fun playing, I got paid for both gigs (albeit very little)!!

Posted by Scott at 12:22 PM