notems
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1 Sep, 2026
In my first year of college, in Elmira, New York, back in the early '80s, a friend and I used to slip into a hole-in-the-wall rock club near campus. Most nights blur together now, but one doesn't. A band I'd never heard of — whose name I've long since lost — played a rendition of a Spooky Tooth song that stopped me cold. It wasn't a cover. It was theirs. If I could find a recording ...
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27 Aug, 2026
I went to dinner during a Christmas parade and heard a saxophonist I had never heard of. I didn't know that evening would eventually lead to a four-hour conversation, an unexpected friendship, and one of those glorious accidents that occasionally make life considerably richer.I met Keith Oxman almost entirely by accident.It was during the Christmas ...
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Nearly thirty years after a guitar solo stopped me in my tracks, I found my way back to the musician who played it—and rediscovered some of the joy that made me pick up a guitar in the first place.I first encountered Mitch Chmara sometime in the late 1990s at City Park Jazz in Denver.I say encountered because I didn't actually see him at first. ...
