First Full Ben Lucero Jam of 2009

What a nice way to kick off the new year: we had a packed house last night for the first Tin Star Wednesday night jam of the new year.

Click any picture to enlarge, click the play button to listen to a music link.

Warning: this is going to be a long, photograph-rich post, because so many people showed up last night. There was, not coincidentally, lots of good music. It is a real challenge to cherry-pick from 3 hours and 45 minutes of recordings to select just the few sound bites that capture the evening. I suspect that I usually don't do sufficient justice to the musicians each week in my attempts to grab a few bits and pieces that capture what the jam was like. Expect no less from this post, but down at the bottom of this post you will find some of what I was able to extract from the recordings from last night.


We had a whole bunch of musicians come out. Here are some of them:

I guess everybody wanted to make up for not having had a jam over the holidays. Happily, the music was pretty good all evening. We were helped by folks like ex-Soul Deacon Estephan on sax and flute:

Wild Man Craig Small

The Avila bunch with their band members


Ric Lloyd

Tony Buford (hey, Tony, I know you didn't sing last night because there so many other musicians waiting for their turn, but you add presence just by showing up)
Kenny Skywolf


Not to mention all of the other fine musicians who came out last night to help celebrate music. Here's one:

During the course of a jam, things happen. Microphones tip over. Artistic differences of opinion occur. Guitar pics vanish into the 7th dimension. Saxophone reeds wear out.
Strings break.
But the jam proceeds on.

Last night the bar folks were grooving:

Naturally, when we're up there on stage playing and we look out on a group of folks having a smooth good time, we feel pretty good too.

Can't ignore the bartenders: Parker! Welcome to the Tin Star!

Some of my favorite things:

Obligatory artsy photo:

The unknown bassist (there's probably a good reason)

The unknown saxophonists (ditto)


And so,

Here's what passed for music last night. Opening stuff. Closing Stuff. Stuff in between: some Johnny Be Good. Some Frank Zappa.

Hope to see you next week.


--Doug