My Picks: Grapefruit Moon – Southside Johnny With LaBamba’s Big Band
Grapefruit Moon – Southside Johnny With LaBamba’s Big BandI was very fortunate to be involved in this amazing recording a few years back. My colleague and good friend, the insanely talented Richie “LaBamba” Rosenberg, had the idea of doing a big band recording with Southside Johnny. Southside is friends with Tom Waits and loves his music. So they decided to do an entire recording of select Tom Waits songs – arranged for a big band by LaBamba – and featuring Southside on vocals and harmonica. I was thrilled to be involved from the beginning and throughout the entire process.
There are far too many incredible musicians to be listed here, but all of my bandmates from The Coalition – Scott Healy, Shawn Pelton and Michael Merritt – participated in these sessions, as did my colleagues and great friends, Mark Pender and Michael Mancini, along with a host of other cats .
If you don’t have this CD, I encourage you to pick it up at www.southsidejohnny.com or iTunes or wherever you can find it, as it is pretty incredible.
On the title cut, I was called on to play an intro on nylon string guitar, as well as an archtop throughout for chords and solo fills. I hope you dig it.
were leaving after the show to go west to do Leno with Labamba and the Mambo-men. The bssaist and keyboard looked young enough to be his kids, but played great and looked like they were having a ball. Guitarist was a slick player with a cowboy hat who hailed from Pittsburgh. Last time I saw the Jukes live, Miami Steve vanZant was still on guitar, before he changed into Lil’ Steven and joined the E Street Band. Thanks for the link to your site. I had no idea there were so many Jukes fans in Europe.