Central Park – Elizabeth Dotson-Westphalen – trombone, Cassidy Holden – Bass, Clifton Hyde – guitar, Jesse Selengut – trumpet / vocals.
We started off on the poets walk but were asked to move by the Central Park Conservancy crew who were about to prune a huge tree right above “our” bench. They mentioned that there was a documentary film crew to film them at work. No worries, we moved down a little further South along the walk and had set up again.
We were doing alright. Eve and Carl Nelson showed up to dance and they brought a fun, joyous, dust-kickin’ vibe to the party. Eventually a very pleasant young man stood right in front of us for a whole tune and smiled at us. When we were done he mentioned that the director of the documentary needed us to move again as the horns were interfering with his mics. He bent over backwards to tell us how much he was enjoying the music and mentioned that he could see that we had a goood crowd. He started peeling off twenty dollar bills and gave us 40 or 60 bucks to move. He was so polite about it too. That’s the best I’ve ever been treated by a film crew. Thanks for the respect!!
So, necessity being the mother of invention, we wandered North. Summer stage had just started tuning up their sound system and was cranking out Sting’s “Dream of the Blue Turtles” album. We had to leave the environs. We wound up over by the Alice in Wonderland statue at the north side of the boat basin. I think its called the boat basin; that area where folks come out to sail their little motored sail boats. Anyway, lots of kids crawling around, hot sun shining us for the first time and a lot of stone which was helping the sound of the bass and guitar a lot. We had some fun their and did pretty well starting to sell CD’s.
We’re going to try that same spot tomorrow. Wish us luck.