We had a great time last night at Benton's. After spending a few minutes oohing and aahing over Nino's new baby, we managed to get our gear set up in time to have a tasty meal. Benton makes the best New Orleans style food in the Woodlands, without a doubt - his Mac & Cheese is my particular favorite, though the Crab & Shrimp au gratin is pretty damn tasty too.

And it was excellent to get a chance to play a couple sets with Nino! He proved that it's just like riding a bike - we had a couple great sets. Unfortunately our recorder crapped out on us for the first two, so we didn't get an archive of them. :( But we at least got a tape of the third set.

One of the highlights of the evening was when a student of Mike's, Alex (aka "the funky kid"), got up on stage and played "Wreck Of The Zephyr" with us. He totally nailed it - if he were old enough to get into all the bars we play at, Mike would have to worry about his job. ;) We also had a couple fellas from New Orleans sit in on bass & trumpet - they're from a band called Three Straight Up, and they killed a couple blues tunes. Very nice.

So now we rest up for next weekend, where we're back at Brasil for funk jazz fridays.
 

¶ posted by Ian Varley at 11:20 AM

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