Trombonicle 69 / Combo – Trombone Poetry

New ventures for old trios: The Blowpipes Trombone Trio was reconstructed in Hull with the help of Jonny Enright and Paul Sharpless.

We played Zenoria, Louis, B’s Bounce, Stout, Bukowski Blues, Peckham Roy, Pass The Mustard, South of the River, Confucius.

Then Click Beetle came to life with Gary Hammond on percussion and Dan Edwards on guitar: great, creative, sensitive playing all evening.

We played Blue Lemon, Boot, Drinking in the Dark, Heft, Lobster.

To give a trombonist a break, Paul Sharpless played Cater Canter and Jonny Enright played Park Peace.

For the first time ever, the trios then combined in a neat feat of slippery arithmetic:

3 + 3 = 5

The Combo played Bobbin, Jug, El Cuchillo, Pearson Poke, Ahora Sí, Rum Bar Rumba, So You Say.

There were four world premiere performances in the course of the evening.

All of this happened at the Goodfellowship Inn, thanks to Dave Ellis at Jazz in Hull. Thanks also to Mike Horne for photos.

This combo, with the optional extra feature of Trombone Poetry, should happen again, somewhere and often, though somebody will have to do some more scheming.

Two days later, the new book, Marinets, with wonderful photos by Hilary Morton, was launched at Ground Gallery, a venue last mentioned here in Trombonicle 10, February 2017.

Gary Hammond rattled around in a box of ironmongery while I tried to explain why I’d written a book of aquatic poetry.

Then we played free duo versions of Drinking in the Dark and Rum Bar Rumba.

Jim Higo gave us a strong set of spoken word poetry and we were also blessed by an unexpected poetry set (including a couple of marinets!) from John Robinson who hadn’t yet absconded to sunnier islands.

This was a Hearing Things combo that was last heard at Humber Street Gallery in November. Where next?

It was a real pleasure to play again with The Jazzmakers Collective at the Lairgate Hotel in Beverley, to ramble through a selection of original tunes:

Child’s Play, Big Thursday, Glodwick, June Tune, Cruise Blues, Bernie’s Time, Cold Story, Drinking in the Dark, Headin’ Out, Jog, One for the Road, Perspective, Still, Redriff, Stepney Grin, Brown Ale Blues

Jenni Molloy on bass and Chris Sykes on drums were joined by Alec Robinson on keyboards, making an amazing job of unfamiliar tunes.

More!

The album Freedom Pass by improvising crew, A Bigger MOUTH is available from Practise Music as a download (on Amazon, Spotify, Soundcloud, Apple Music, etc) and as a CD. A vinyl LP will emerge in August.

The band plays again on the 12th June: see below.

June brings an early Bath, a return to Scaledown, and (probably) a Book Party in Kingston, which is not quite clinched at the time of writing this post. There will be an update here and on the inanely-renamed Twitter, which has now lost its verb.

The first Trombone Poetry performance at Scaledown was as long ago as 2004, the year all this nonsense started. See Chronicle No.7 – October 2004.

GIGS