Weekend music images from Brian's camera

JoAnn Riedl

Brian (Powell) always takes some great pictures of musicians and other Stumpjack happenings when he and Darla are here. Here are a few great shots of JoAnn, Chelsea and Lea from Friday and Saturday nights. Check out Brian's Flickr site; he's got a whole collection of great sets of images from music nights at Stumpjack.

Chelsea Z.

JoAnn

Lea Holz

Flickr sets of recent music nights

Image by Nate Walkner

I'm up editing and loading images and videos from the last couple weeks. Still have a bunch to load from a few months ago when I was wrestling with computer demons and had to transfer a lot of stuff onto Kim's laptop...I'll get to those sometime soon I hope. But for now here are some Flickr sets from me, Nate Walkner and Brian Powell (Nate and Brian have other sets that I'm not listing here...check out their Flickr sites) from the past couple weeks. I'll add the YouTube video links to this same post once I get those uploaded onto YouTube.

I don't have the time to do reviews of all these performances. Suffice to say that each and every one was great fun. We've been very blessed to have such talented musicians play the Stump, and every single one of them has been unbelievably thoughtful and a joy to work with. Click the various links below to see the pix.

Brian's Flickr set of Dan Walkner

Lillie Lemon. Image by Brian.

Brian's set of Lillie Lemon

West of East (Tim and Sara). Image by Brian.

Brian's set of West of East

Dan. Image by Nate.

Nate's Flickr set of Dan Walkner

My set of West of East

Ethan Keller by Eric Vandeveld. Check out Eric's photography here.

Ethan Keller & Kelly Underwood

Matt, Steph & Orly say Happy Birthday to Cheyenne. Image by Brian.

Matt & Steph Davies and Orly Bendavid

Hopscotch Wonder packs the place.

Hopscotch Wonder

dankennedy (yessir, that's how he spells it) and Joseph O'Seph belt it out in downtown TR.

Dan Kennedy & Joseph O'Seph

Lillie Lemon

Dan Walkner

That's a lot of pictures. I've been loading for several hours and now it's past 2:00am. As the great Red Skelton used to say, "Goodnight and may God bless."

Pat DiNizio follow-up/Hopscotch Wonder/Madison

Ok, we're back from Madison and am trying to get caught up now on all of the blogging, Flickr, YouTube, Scat, online updating that needs doing.

Pat DiNizio at Stumpjack. photo by Nate Walkner

A brief follow-up to Pat DiNizio's performance here last Friday night. In a word, it was fabulous. Another word: fun. Another: fantastic. You get the idea. Check out some of the comments on the other, earlier post "Dinizio is the real deal" from people who were here. I haven't seen a guy put as much of himself into singing songs like Pat does. The guy sang his guts out and was just freaking amazing with his passion, sincerity, and ability to connect with people. Maria was talking about it this morning, about how Pat made her feel like he was singing to her. He's both a showman and a regular joe who truly cares about doing the very best he can and giving people something to remember.

Pat under the spotlight. Image by Nate Walkner.

We're hoping to catch the whole band, The Smithereens, in Naperville (outside Chicago) in June, and Pat asked that we get ahold of him beforehand if we do and that we may be able to hook up for dinner or something. I'm hopeful of being able to get The Smithereens here to perform. It'd be more than the shop itself could handle but Greg (Buckley, TR City Mgr) has expressed his support for events like that and I'm sure we would have city support and may even be able to block off main street for a full blown street party. Keep your fingers crossed. Like my friend Brian Powell said to me the other day about getting to meet Pat and have him perform here, "You realized one of your dreams. Make sure to enjoy the moment." Truth. Thanks, Pat, for a totally awesome performance, giving us all something to yack about for a while, and for being a good bloke all around. What a trip.

Signing a CD for Maria. Image by Nate again.

And thanks to all of our friends who came and helped make the night fun too! I'll have some Flickr pics and a youtube video or two up soon. Marty and Nate also each have a set of images from the night on their own Flickr sites:
Nate Walkner Flickr Set
Marty's Planet Neon Flickr Set
Stumpjack Flickr Set

Pat also signed some CDs for us to sell, his solo work and a couple of Smithereens albums. We've got 20 left. They're brand new but we had to remove the outer wrap so that he could sign the sleeves. Get 'em while we got 'em.

Saturday Night

Busy Saturday night w/ Hopscotch Wonder

Crazy busy night with Bethany and Hope from Hopscotch Wonder. Man, it was like a couple busloads of folks pulled up in front and everyone just piled into the shop. For an hour and a half Kim and I were like coffee makin'/beer poppin'/wine pourin' cyborgs. Unbelievable, and it was all due to those two super-sweet and talented young ladies Beth and Hope. We didn't really even get to enjoy their performance because we were sweating it behind the counter up until they finished...so I called for an encore and heard at least one tune. Very, very nice. Gotta have them back soon.

Hopscotch Wonder (Hope & Bethany Lindemann). Image by Brian Powell

Click here for Brian's Flickr set

Madison
I'm going to post with images our little two-day trip to Madison over on the Stumptoons blog, which you can also access at the top of the page by clicking on that link.

Recent music pics and videos

I've got a whole bunch of images and videos to load onto Flickr and YouTube, and that's what I'm mostly working on today. Some are from last night and the past couple weeks, and some are from several weeks ago when I was having my computer problems. Should get them all up in the next couple of days. Put a few of Kelly Underwood on from last night, am loading video of Bill Walkner and Lloyd Rohr as I type this, and in the cue is Ethan Keller from last night.

Ethan Keller

Last night was a blast with Ethan and Kelly perfoming together (alternating sets). Kelly was great. She continues to impress and and gets better by leaps and bounds every time she plays. I have to tell you again, and persuade you, to check out Ethan Keller if you haven't already, should you ever get a chance to see him perform (here at the Stump, in Milwaukee or wherever). This guy is just way too good to not have a big time recording contract.

His songwriting is better than most anything you'll find in any record store racks, both musically and lyrically, and his inventiveness with technology and instrumentation makes watching him perform a real treat. Every time Ethan has performed here there is always someone in the joint who says to me something like "Man, this guy is awesome!" And each time he's here he always plays stuff we haven't heard him play before, it's always fresh. Do yourself a favor and check him out if you get the chance, and pick up one of his CDs - you can get them here or from Ethan by sending him a message via his myspace site (www.myspace.com/ethankeller), where you can also have him put you on his mailing list to get updates on where he's performing next.

Our pal Nick Weiland is finishing up a new CD too. I'm doing the cover art for it, which I'm very honored to do. Nick and Brian Sanchez will be coming back to the Stump pretty soon. Can't wait, those guys do the blues right.

Hey, an actual update!

Derek & Dan

Here's some Flickr sets from the last couple of weekends: Adam Morantez 10/3; Bill Martell 10/4; Dan Walkner with Derek Pritzl 10/10; Kelly Underwood 10/11.

Adam Morantez & Bill Martell - weekend of Oct 3&4.

Dan Walkner with Derek Pritzl & Kelly Underwood - weekend of Oct 10&11.

The Usual Suspects

I'm having a bit of trouble loading video onto YouTube. Will give it another try later (getting weary of it not loading already!). Have a great vid of Dan & Derek performing together, and a fun one of Kelly (I think she's flipping me the bird). Dan and Derek were freaking awesome together, and Kelly was a blast the next night, making up a bunch of off-the-cuff silly songs directed at people in the audience (including my daughter, Jesse, which was very fun).

Product placement, baby!