Jazz at the Merc with Jon Mayer

If you happen to live or work near Old Town Temecula, mark your calendar for Thursday, October 3. I'm thrilled to be joining jazz giant Jon Mayer on piano and the wonderful bassist Chris Conner.

Sherry Williams hosts "Jazz at the Merc" each Thursday in this intimate jazz setting, which I have never seen but it sounds fabulous. The Mercantile is one of Temecula's original buildings  and it has been completely restored and acoustically it's supposed to be pretty awesome. 

 
Tickets are $15, and we play 2 sets. 

The Merc

42051 Main Street

Temecula, CA  92590

866-653-8696

www.temeculatheater.org

Thursday, Oct 3

7:30 pm

Bad Hair Blues

I have bad hair. I mean, really bad, over-processed, dry hair. Which is now turning prematurely gray. (Not exactly prematurely, but hey, cut me some slack.)

This means, I can’t just let it go, leave it alone and let it grow out the healthy way. I’ll end up looking like Barbara Bush. Or Anderson Cooper.

What makes this even worse is that my day job is in Beverly Hills, on Rodeo Drive, in fact. Where I am surrounded by dozens and dozens of industry types, actresses, executives and models, all sporting their perfect silky golden or amber tresses. (For the record guys, nobody is born with hair like that.) I tell myself that these goddess-like locks are actually thousand dollar hair extensions purchased at Umberto, Giuseppe, or Cristophe Salon.

This doesn’t help my plight, however.

Over the past 20 years, I have changed the color of my hair the way women change nail polish. It started with the theater.

I got the lead role in a play, and this character was known for her long black hair. Was I content to just go purchase a black wig? Of course not. I had to dye my hair black. This way, the roots of my hair would blend in with the synthetic wig the theater purchased, and the hair would look seamless. The critics would be truly impressed – no, transcended - by my perfect black hair. (Maybe they were. I did win a Dramalogue Award for that show.)

However, I didn’t realize when I applied the store bought semi-permanent dye that leaving it in my hair for 2 hours might actually lock it in for life. My mother came to town to see me in the play and told me I looked like a witch on Halloween.

After fruitless bleaching and treating, it took 3 years for the Sharpie pen black in my hair to finally grow out, at which point my hair was so dry from all the treatments, I should have just shaved my head.

A few years later, I recorded an album. The producers hired a marketing girl who thought it would be really great if I were a redhead. It would set me apart from everyone else. Sure, why not? I thought. I’d never done red before.

What I didn’t know is that once you dye your hair red, you have to constantly go back to the salon to have it “refreshed” so that you don’t end up looking like a rusty nail. (This involved lifting the base tone a few shades and then adding color.)

6 or 7 “refreshments” later, my hair now resembled brassy barbed wire. The only place to go from here was blonde. If I tried to return to brunette (which I think was my original hair color – I honestly don’t remember), the brassy undertones would remain. So blonde it was.

That particular transformation was a bit shocking. I remember going to a temp job at a law firm the next day, and the attorney I was working for didn’t recognize me. When he finally did, he started laughing, and that’s never a good sign.

I spent the next few years trying to find a balance between blonde and brown, and I think I finally reached it for a glorious 2 or 3 years. Then the gray (white, actually) started to appear.

At first I wasn’t sure what those albino streaks were. I fantasized that my hair was actually turning blonde. Or maybe the sun by the lake that summer simply bleached my hair. I ignored it.

Until I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

So now, every 5 weeks, it’s back to the hair salon, to get my “roots done”, hoping that the color matches the rest of my hair. Which it rarely does. And every couple of months, I have to add highlights, so my hair won’t look like a one-tone Chevrolet.

God, it’s endless.

This morning, I decided to wash my hair and let it air dry naturally, just leave it alone, let the September air do its magic.

You really don’t want to see what I look like right now.

"Living the Dream"

My good friend Monica Carrera said to me 2 years ago,

 "I'm going to write a play about 3 women. I'm going to do this."

I said, "Great!"

She said, "No, you don't understand. I'm really going to do this. I am going to finish something I start this time, and I'm making a promise to YOU that I am going to have this play finished in 6 months."

Of course I encouraged her, but I didn't take this promise too seriously because:

a) she had a 3-year old;
b) she had a full-time job; and
c) she had never written a play before. This was probably one of those things that would burn out in a few weeks, when the very real demands of being a full time working mom would douse the flame.

We all have dreams, but life gets in the way.

Boy, was I wrong.

In 6 months, her play about 3 women in their 40's navigating the world of LA was written, re-written, cast, and staged for 3 sold-out nights at the BANG Theater in Hollywood.

3 months later, one more re-write and then a staged reading of this re-write. It was a smashing success.

Now what?

"I'm going to make this a web series," she said.

"A what?"

"A web series. That's the next place this has to go. I have to write another script and shoot a trailer. That's apparently what you do."

I have to say, I've known Monica for years, and I'd never pegged her as the "I'm jumping head first into the fire" kind of person. She had been in the theater world and done some acting in the 90's, but she got married and now had a house and a kid and a normal job and seemed to be living a safe life.

This was an altogether new persona.

She began to dive into the world of film making with tenacity, curiosity, resourcefulness, eagerness, and her entire savings account. I don't know of anyone who would do such a thing at this stage of her life. She hired a director, a crew, a location scout. She held casting sessions. She hired makeup and wardrobe. She took no shortcuts. It was utter madness.

She cast me as "Sara", one of the leads, and for the first time in 13 years, I was acting in front of a camera again.

We shot for 2 days and ended up with so much footage, there was enough not only for the trailer, but also an episode. Behold the pilot episode for "Living the Dream":

I can't begin to express how proud I am of my friend Monica. She took an idea, a desire to write about 3 women - the kind of women we all know here in the Land of Make-Believe, and she created what is now hopefully an ongoing series about these characters.

To keep it going she mounted a funding campaign on IndieGoGo, so that we can continue filming more episodes. It's a long haul, but we're gonna do it!  See the trailer (which started it all) below, with the link for donating:

"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"

Merry Christmas! I hope you enjoy this track from my Christmas CD, "That's What Christmas Used to Be". This CD was recorded at the legendary Bradley's Barn in Nashville, TN under the direction of Rusty Higgins. It features the talents of some of the best musicians I know, including my Dad, Bill Pursell, who arranged and played on 2 tracks. Enjoy!

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

Live Jazz at Robano's

We are still going strong at Robano's, the new hang for live jazz on Wednesday nights..Only now, we are outside in the beautiful Italian courtyard.  I play with guitar greats Barry Zweig and Ron Anthony. Barry  played regularly with Buddy Rich, Dinah Shore, Sammy Davis, Jr, Keely Smith and more.  Ron played with Frank Sinatra for 9 years, and before that, he played with the George Shearing Quintet. I learn from these guys every night we play together and consider myself so lucky to be with them....
Come join us! There's no cover, free parking, a full menu and bar, and Happy Hour has been extended until 8 pm, just for us...

Robano's is located at 10057 Riverside Drive, in Toluca Lake, CA. 

Wednesday Nights at Robano's

Guitarists Barry Zweig, Ron Anthony and I have had a great month of Wednesdays so far, at Robano's in Toluca Lake. Please stop by and enjoy the live jazz! We've had some incredible jazz luminaries stop by and sit in, and you just never know who you'll run into... Robano's is a great Italian neighborhood hang, with a beautiful open courtyard and an indoor stage, which is here you'll find us doing our thing.  We start at 7 pm amd play til 10 pm.

Robano's

10057 Riverside Drive

Toluca Lake, CA  91602

(818) 761-6613

Great food, full bar, no cover, lots of free parking

Singing with "It's Always 4 AM" with Ron Anthony

Ron Kalina on harmonica, backed by Ron Anthony (guitar), Adam Cohen (bass) and Barry Zweig (guitar)

John Pisano sitting in with Barry Zweig





Losing Marty

Since moving to LA in the early 90's, I've been so blessed to meet and work with so many legendary musicians and performers. Being a fanatic for jazz, I always gravitated to the older cats, artists who've been around the block more than a few times, and they have been like mentors to me. Beginning with Leonard Reed, then Earl Palmer, George Gafney, Ross Tomkins, Ron Anthony, Tony Russell (to name a few). I can't begin to recount how much I've learned from all of them over the past 15-20 years. You hang out with a group like this, you end up meeting, hanging out with, and playing with some of the best, hippest talent in the world.

The downside to all of this is that I tend to lose them entirely too soon, and last week's passing of Marty Harris has saddened me beyond words. I can't remember when I first met Marty; he was just always around, backing up wonderful singers and playing with the best groups in town. I ran into him everywhere, and I ended up playing with him at Micelli's, The Money Tree, Monteleone's, Barone's, private parties, casuals, etc. He was so opinionated about singers, I considered it a huge honor that he would want to play with me. We never used charts, never had to. Charts got in the way, and for the kind of music we were doing, we all knew the basic roadmap anyway, and every night was magical.

Marty could play anything. Anything. He had played with Anita O'Day (my hero! He loved telling stories about Anita O'Day), Woody Herman, Clark Terry, Diana Ross and Tom Jones. He could make anyone sound good, even me when I completely lost my voice before a show last year. He didn't feel well and he was in pain, but he played like the monster he was, making up for my deficiencies that night.

One thing about Marty - To play with Marty, you had to have ears. And you'd better know what you're doing. The women in the two stories below shall remain nameless.

A few years ago, I was asked to sing at a birthday party for an actress' mother, and I called Marty for the job. It was just the two of us. This particular celebrity wanted me to sing "Stardust", and she wanted to dedicate it to her mother. I'm sure she wanted a lovely ballad. I had written up a chart (which of course Marty ignored). After I sang the verse rubato, Marty broke into a wonderful swinging stride which brought the tune to life, and everyone started dancing. A few songs and a couple of glasses of wine later, our celebrity host wanted to sing a song (a standard) to her mother. She wasn't a singer, per se, and she had probably learned the tune listening to someone's recording of it. When she stood up in front of Marty, she became completely thrown by his chord changes and inversions, and it was pretty disastrous. Not used to being caught with her pants down, she blamed it on Marty. He wasn't "playing it right". (You gotta love it when singers blame the musicians. It gives the rest of us "chick singers" a bad name.)

Another time, I walked into Micelli's, where Marty was playing with a flamboyant French diva. It was the same thing. This poor woman clearly wasn't used to singing with a pianist of Marty's caliber. She came in at the wrong places, forgot where she was, and hit some very questionable notes. Marty trudged on, playing through it, trying to help her find her place.

"Terrible!" she furiously whispered to me during the break. "I have NEVER had such a night! This pianist does not know what he is doing!" " She retreated to the bar.

"Terrible!!" an exhasperated Marty said. "This woman's got no idea what she's doing! Hey, you want to get up and sing a song?"

A few times during our shows, after I finished singing, he'd say, "You know, Laura, a better ending would be this...." and he'd play it for me. He was always right. I hope I still remember those endings.

Right up until the very end, Marty played with a full heart. He looked great and never lost his chops. He was truly one-of-a-kind, and there will never be another Marty. We're all getting older, and I'm no spring chicken any more. I know, it's life. But it's just getting harder and harder to lose my friends.

 

                                                             Marty Harris, 1933 - 2011