A good night for art & music

Early in the night, that's Nate in the lower left.

Last night was a lot of fun. Nate's exhibition went over very well, with a lot of compliments for his photos. The pieces look great on the wall, have a very peacefully eerie nighttime vibe to them, and the colors fortuitously go very well with the colors and lighting of the gallery space.

Dancing and hooty-hooting.

Lloyd Rohr performed the music for the night, with Bill Walkner sitting in for much of Lloyd's set. The two of them were on fire last night, helped along by an extremely enthusiastic cheering section (I think they were actually groupies of a sort...dancing, hollering, clapping and whistling). Lloyd and Bill looked like they were having a blast ripping into their tunes and responding to the crowd.

Tonight at 7:00pm: snorb!
Be here or live in shame.

Friday the 13th & Valentine's Day

Another very cool poster from Tina Kugler...Tina rocks it, no doubt.

Friday night at 7:00 we have a double-header of sorts. Lloyd Rohr will be performing. If you've seen Lloyd before you know that his music makes for a very mellow and enjoyable evening. He's an accomplished guitar player and plays songs that just about anyone and everyone enjoys, with a mix of his own songs and familiar favorites.

Lloyd Rohr

Also, Friday is the opening reception for "Local Color: A Panorama-o-rama," featuring photographs by Nate Walkner. Click here to go to the HTR Lakeshore Update page with a nice description of Nate's photography for this show.

Nate Walkner photo

Saturday, the 14th, is Valentine's Day. We're having a very nice wine and specialty pizza thing that you can participate in if you RSVP. Click here to see Kim's blog with the details. And then at 7:00 we're excited to have snorb! performing their brand of jazz and fusion. I've been listening to these guys via their myspace site. They are good, real good. They hail from West Lafayette, Indiana and apparently have won all of the cool music awards a band can win in that region. It'll be a great way to spend Valentine's evening.

snorb!

Spillin' da beaners

BTW, here's my column from this past Wednesday: http://www.htrnews.com/article/20090204/MAN04/902040702. The link is good for a week or so (I don't know why they make articles accessible online without having to purchase them for such a short period). I'll be accumulating all of my newspaper columns and putting them on one of the tab links above fairly soon. I know you're dying to read them all...right...

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.

Weekend notes

Check out Kim's Wine All You Want blog for info on the Stumpjack Valentine's Day special wine and gourmet pizza event. Yum yum yummy.

It's getting to be that time again...gardening time. This Saturday (Feb 7) the Urban Gardening Gang will be meeting here at the Stump at 10:00 a.m.. Seed catalogs are one of my favorite things to peruse. Check out their blog here for details.

Friday night is going to be a blast, if you dig great music. We'll have Ethan Keller and Kelly Underwood teaming up for what promises to be a very cool and maybe a little unusual night of fun.