This Saturday marked the start of a new project that I’ve been asked to be involved with, namely the New Jersey Jukebox, which is a tribute to the music of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.
It goes without saying that the songs are fantastic, and it is a privilege to be involved to perform them.
The band has several guises – the four singers with either backing tracks, four piece or seven piece bands – and the outfit is incredibly professional with personal mixers and in-ear monitoring and bespoke arrangements and tracks.
Signed to a production company, we will be touring major venues throughout the UK (and possibly beyond!), so keep an eye out for us, as this promises to be a brilliant show with wonderful music at it’s core!
I’ve just come to the end of a run of Sweet Charity at the Amey Theatre with the Abingdon Operatic Society. This is the second time I’ve done the show, and I had a real blast doing it.
The music is really interesting, and in many ways quite unlike any other show that I’ve done. The pad is quite unhelpful, really, since it has some directions for the guitarist (such as ‘no amp’ or ‘all on highs’) which aren’t straightforward to interpret! Having said that there are a variety of different styles (big band and tango are the highlights for me) that you have to cover, as well as interesting time signature changes.
A lot of the show is in 2, so quite rapid for much of it, and this requires a good knowledge of lots of chord shapes in each area of the neck.
I mainly used my Les Paul and Raimundo classical for the run, and these guitars did a great job to cover the disciplines required. Playing the Raimundo with a Tango feel was great fun, and sounded pretty raunchy to my ears!
The theatre appeared to be packed every night which was exciting to see, and all appeared to enjoy the production.
It’s now time for me to concentrate my energies into a completely different show, as next week I’ll be playing in Avenue Q at the Court Theatre in Tring. The writing and instrumentation is very different to Charity, so it’s going to be good fun and a good challenge.
