Jacofest @ Iridium 11/21/08

Iridium is doing 4 nights of Jacofest, which celebrates Jaco Pastorius, one of the greatest bassists of all time. This was put together by Kenwood Dennard, who plays drums and keyboards. It looks like each set would be very different. Many people on Fri stayed over at Iridium from the first set for an additional $10 minimum.

There were a lot of people up there. In addition to Dennard, there was an Indian singer, Falu, Delmar Brown on synthesizer, pianos, keyboard that you strap on, etc., Lew Soloff on trumpet, David Gilmore on guitar, Matt Garrison on bass, Miles Evans on trumpet (Soloff referred to him as "the shredder"), Alex Foster and Butch Thomas on sax, and David Bargeron on trombone and tuba. There was another bassist up there as well.

Kenwood told us he put words to some of the songs. Being anti-singer, I wasn't too thrilled with that. If it didn't have vocals before, it certainly doesn't need them now. But, Falu sounded good singing with them, she has a nice voice. I didn't like it when Kenwood sang, I doubt he's really a singer. It wasn't as annoying as it often is for me, because we had plenty of great musicians up there and very little singing in general.

After the first piece, which was pretty grooving, it got more grooving. I had to get up and dance for a while, over by the wait station, but not in anyone's way. I was so very glad I did get up because at some point Delmar came out and played in the crowd with his keyboard. I really don't like that, so I'm glad I wasn't down there for it. That was also the only time he did it, during that period I was up in the back dancing. Whew.

Then, everyone leaves the stage and they announce Charnet Moffett is coming out to play the Star Spangled Banner. Yeah!!!! I really wanted to see him, and I got to! He did not disappoint. He did a duo with Kenwood. This was the experimental portion of the show and it was awesome. Charnet didn't want to leave and I was certainly happy about that. After a very long jam, Bargeron came back up and played tuba with them and it was awesome. Then the tenor came back up. They did something else. Charnet realized he had to give up his spot back to Garrison, so he did.

Then Bergeron did something on trombone with his daughter on flute. It was great. It was still pretty grooving even though it wasn't as intense.

Then they added T.M. Stephens to the mix, who was very P-funky. He also had a great singing voice. That's when we started P-Funking It Up. TM had us all up dancing, which I was very happy about. I didn't have to move.

Next, the core large band did something great, more rockish I think.

Then, David Gilmore has to leave, it's after 12 now. Charnet wants to play and everyone helps him get up there because we all want Charnet to play, especially the bandmates. It did take a while every time to change bassists for some reason. There was always an issue with getting sound.

While Charnet was getting plugged in they did a quick great thing. Right before that, they were told they had to wrap it up and make it quick. I'm happy to say they didn't listen all that well.

They finished up with Havana.

It was an awesome 1.5 hour Fest. Now I know why they were calling it Jaco"fest" and not "tribute show" or something. I also want to mention I love what Matt Garrison was doing playing the arm of his bass. He is very talented as was everyone up there. Oh, and Charnet knew Jaco when he was 14 and they used to play basketball together. He said Jaco was one of the nicest people ever.

As a disclaimer, I'm a little mixed up and really don't remember exactly how it went down. That's the jist of it, but I'm sure I'm forgetting things.