The Big Jim West Live Performance Topic

[Orthography Enthusiast]

It was fun. Vikki's friend Tina was there too, since it was local for her. Pretty laid-back, but Jim managed to fill the room he was given, and the sound was good. He was doing it as a kind of concert/lecture, talking about what slack key is. It went over very well, I thought. We got one of the Christmas songs and the Kona Coffee song too.

[ludovica64]

That sounds really great I love hearing Jim talking about his music. Its so sort of organic (I dunno if you know what I mean) but his enthusiasm is so infectious, and as a (very poor) guitar player myself I think I would have found that all really enjoyable and inspirational

[Elvis]

That sparked conversation of various other fans, including Dave.

Couldn't you find more interesting things to talk about?! Well, I'm glad I could take part in the evening one way or the other (unless you're talking about some other Dave, then never mind. ). Thanks for the detailed review!

Dave

[algonacchick]

Thanks for the review, Kristine. So cool that you got to talk to Rubén, and to Kimo.

[like_im_27again]

In Santa Monica at a place called "Typhoon" last night Jim played live with Makana, a young slack key artist who is amazingly versatile and talented. It was a great show, and speaking of versatile and talented, you should have heard Jim playing the bass! I think Steve would have been proud.

Vikki

[Kristine]

He played with Makana? And I missed it? Darn.

I love Makana- he's a sweet guy, and a freaking A-MA-ZING musician.

[like_im_27again]

Is he sweet? That's good to hear. He's also freaking adorable. (did I type that out loud? )

[Wizzerkat]

Jim won a Hawaii Music Award for Kimo's Hawaiian Slack Key Christmas!

[Lauren]

Jim won a Hawaii Music Award for Kimo's Hawaiian Slack Key Christmas!

Cool!

Thanks for the reviews everyone, i wished i coulda gone.

[Orthography Enthusiast]

It was a wonderful show last night with Jim and his pal T Dan Hofstedt at the Coffee Gallery in Altadena. It's a smallish room in back of the coffee house, decorated to look like a coffee plantation loading dock. You can hear well and see well from anywhere in it.

T Dan (who is, it turns out, a lead animator for Disney-- he's in the credits for "The Princess and the Frog" currently) opened the show, playing some holiday songs by other people (Christmas Island) and some original Christmas songs. Jim played with him on a great slack key version of the Vince Guaraldi jazz instrumental from the Charlie Brown Christmas special.

Jim's set was pretty much evenly divided between Christmas songs (the ones off his Christmas CD) and non-holiday slack key, all his own except for "Little Grass Shack," "Hula Blues" and "Imagine." Lovely. We made him do an encore even though he didn't have one prepared. That's how we got "Hula Blues."

The proprietor of the Coffee Gallery Backstage recently turned 75, and a friend gave him a fork in the road for his birthday. An 18 foot tall wood-and-steel fork that was surreptitiously installed on a median strip in town (they wore fake Caltrans uniforms and helmets, and installed it late at night). The best part is that Caltrans and Altadena had a sense of humor about the whole thing. They inspected it, decided it was safe, and issued it a permit for temporary street art. It'll be up until June. I need to go by in daylight and get a picture.

Mark your calendars: Jim will be doing a free gig at the Manhattan Beach public library on Jan. 13. A little bit of warm up for the slack key festival, I guess. Hey, I'll take it.