Blues (sort of) in Leipzig

I never found places to play in Osan, Korea, or Okinawa, Japan. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough. Or maybe there wasn’t much going on. When I started doing a lot of Anchorage flying, I didn’t immediately go find places to play. But eventually I did and it became my favorite thing to do on a layover. I even bid around the various jazz gigs sometimes.

And then there was Shanghai. And New York. And Cologne. And Frankfurt. And Chicago. And Atlanta. And so on and so forth. It’s not that I never went to find jazz before, but I didn’t seem to put as much effort into it until I thought I’d be going someplace long enough to make it worthwhile. In fact, I think that’s not just the case with jazz, but with many things, like making friends (locals), getting to know the staff at the hotels, finding different favorite restaurants (as opposed to the typical World hangouts), and sometimes even the local co-workers (ops reps and so on). I guess I think it’s a lot of work to learn all of that stuff and who knows when I’ll be back.

And so it was, I suppose, with Leipzig. To be fair, I haven’t come here much until recently. I think I was one of the the last people in the company to come here. I came once for a short layover and didn’t even stay in the city. Then I came back later a few times (hit the opera) but never found the jazz. Now that I’m on the DC-10 and am likely to be a near resident of Leipzig, I guess it was inevitable that I’d go find the jazz.

On previous layovers I had walked by a place that said something about being a jazz bar but didn’t appear to have any music. A few nights ago, the F/O and I ate there. Before we left, I asked if they ever have live music. The waitress told me the next night they’d have piano jazz downstairs in the club. It didn’t occur to me that the music would be downstairs. My bad.

So the next night, we went back. Dinner on the sidewalk, jazz downstairs. It was.. well.. good that we went. The location is fabulous, but that’s kinda what it’s got going for it. But I manage to ask a drummer there about other places around town to hear jazz. Fortunately, he knew. He told me about two different places, one of which had a blues night the next night… which was last night.

Yesterday we worked (a round trip to Adana, Turkey) and when we got back, hit the ground running and went to find this place. It’s called Tonelli’s, but isn’t, as I thought it would be, an Italian restaurant. It’s really just a live music bar kinda place. They did have a little bit of food (soups mainly). The Tomato was decent. Turns out they have jam sessions two nights per week, Jazz Wednesdays and Blues Thursdays.

Blues, however, isn’t necessarily blues. Seems it also includes classic rock and even hard rock. Interestingly, though, the blues and classic rock all came served in English. To be fair, I think they did at least understand some of it, which is probably more than can be said for many Filipino bands who sing in perfect English but don’t understand a word of it.

There was a house band that did a variety of things. It consisted of a drummer, bass player, keyboard player and guitarist / vocalist. The keyboard player stood out with some cool organ stuff and seemed to really be pretty good. Over all, it was great music for a fun, social bar focused more on fun and social than great music… if ya know what I mean. Then there was a quartet (guitar, bass, drums, female vocalist) that did a few harder rock tunes. They were actually quite good, all of them. I enjoyed their playing (even if it’s not my favorite style), the music felt good, but dang were they ever loud for that room. Then there was, as they put it, a mish mash of things that happened (vocalists, german soccer fans, and so on).

Later, after I thought everything was over and then a bass player and guitar player went up to the stage. I offered to sit in on drums not having any idea if they could play or if it’d be fun. Turned out to be a good time. I thought it might work out when I heard the bass player, as he was warming up, play a line of Chameleon. We played a few tunes I didn’t know (but it’s blues, how easy is that?). We wound up closing with Chameleon, which the guitar player didn’t know, but that worked out okay.

The F/O was pretty impressed, and a few other people (including one of the other drummers there that night) were suddenly interested in talking to me. It kinda got the evening rolling I suppose, even though, by that time, it was pretty late (after 1:00 a.m). Between the late playing, and then the post-playing conversation, we wound up not leaving until almost 4:00 a.m.

The club itself had one big advantage over countless other jazz venues I’ve been in lately: no poles / posts / supports / etc. The main room was totally open. It was small, though, and there was a second room behind it that had partial views, but also partial blockage. The setup though, was intriguing.

So next week, if the timing works out, hopefully I can catch jazz night. For now, I’m off to Bahrain. Guessing there’s no jazz there 😉

V-