X-Session, Unfiltered

This is my first attempt at a blog entry as opposed to the “Weekly Updates” that I usually send out.  If this ends up in everyone’s e-mail inbox than I’ve done something terribly wrong and I apologize.

My reason for writing is to mention that we had a great time this past Saturday night at the John Lennon Birthday concert.  The crowd was a near sellout and there was a lot of energy in the building.  We performed second-to-last, playing Lennon’s “Oh Yoko.” Jim stood up front with Ed and I - he sang lead - and played what we call his “cocktail kit,” a stand-up set-up with a snare drum, cymbal, and a rubber pad at his feet that acts as a bass drum — so called because we commonly use it when we play cocktail hours and other low volume gigs.  Ed played electric bass and I used my old number 1 - the Takamine acoustic that I played for ten years almost exclusively until switching to a Taylor T5 this past summer.

Also, thanks to (Wonderous Stories’) Kenny Forgione’s organizational skills, a finale was planned with most of the performers taking part.  We decided to do “Instant Karma” - ironically a song X-Session had considered doing instead of “Oh Yoko.”  Jim sat behind the house drum kit, Eddie played bass, Frank Walker played piano and sang, Kenny Forgione and I played guitars and sang, and Ed Ryan, Tom Sanfillipo, Steve Lee, and Bob Koenig sang also.  All in all it made for a wonderful evening and we thank those of you in the audience for making it thus.

Welcome to the new (and hopefully improved) X-Session web site. Please look around and drop us a note - we’d like to know what you think.