Thursday, February 23, 2017

Baby Dee is Coming to Town!!!!

Friends! Please accept my apologies for the recent radio silence.... I will work on doing better, especially in these distressingly troubling times, at maintaining communication. The Book of Face and the Tweeter and the 'Gram are excellent tools for reaching out and connecting with your audience, old and new, but it can get really overwhelming to us old heads who still blog and read entire emails. While I am pretty masterful at expressing intricate concepts in 140 characters and square imagery, I am a musical poet. I like descriptive language and full sentences. If you have read this far, I am guessing you're in that crazy boat of folks who like to read as well!!!!

So.....I am extremely excited to announce a wonderful event I have worked VERY hard to put together these last few months. My beautiful friend Baby Dee is coming to sing and play accordion for us with Allysen Callery, at The Funhouse at Mr Smalls, and ALL the proceeds from the door got to benefit Proud Haven, a new LBGTQIA youth shelter. I am very excited to say I am co-presenting this wonderful evening with the newly formed Steel City Sisters, a local mission house of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The evening is sponsored by the Positive Health Clinic. I will open the evening and sing with my friend Howie Alexander, a fellow instructor with whom I work at Afro-American Music Institute, and then......

The GLORIOUS AND WONDERFUL BABY DEE will enchant us with her incredible songs! She and I toured together with the Bindlestiff Family Circkus in 1996 and I must say, I fell quite in love with her everything. She moved away to Holland some years ago and I was mightily afeared she would never return, but return she has and with a new record on Tin Angel Records called "I Am A Stick". So I sincerely hope to see your beautiful face in person at the Funhouse at Mr Smalls next Wednesday March 1. Doors at 7, show at 8 and tickets are $15 suggested donation.

Here is the interview Bill O'Driscoll from Pittsburgh City Paper did of Baby Dee last week!
http://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/short-list-feb-22-mar-1/Content?oid=2059596

I must repeat myself, my friends, please come support this wonderful event, on Wednesday March 1, 2017 at the Funhouse at Mr Smalls in Millvale!
Buy tickets here: http://www.ticketfly.com/event/1424870-evening-baby-dee-phat-man-millvale/
Facebook event page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/348067445592242/
I want to sing to you!  And I want you to hear my old friend, she is so beautiful and her music so hauntingly ethereal!

Also, this Saturday February 25, I will be making an appearance at the Anti-Valentines Hafla Bellydance party at Bodiography Center for Movement at 5824 Forbes Ave, in Squirrel Hill, 6:30 - 9:30 pm! I will be singing for the beautiful sword dancer Angela Mitchell! $10 admission goes to benefit Animal Friends! Many wonderful dancers will be there!
More info:
https://www.facebook.com/events/246459549104065/

And for my final thought today, here is a video of me singing at the Winter Moe Down at Maureen's Jazz Cellar in Nyack, NY. I went up the first weekend of January to sit in with the musicians who came to pay homage to the late, great and truly missed vocalist Maureen Budway. Her brother Dave and his wife Brianne opened a club to honor his sister and I was honored to attend the evening. I sat in with Mike Murray, Jeff Grubbs and Tom Wendt and we played "You Are Special" written by Mr. Fred Rogers.


Stay strong friends, there is much hate and much bigotry happening right now, hold your friends and family close and stay strong against the bigotry. We shall overcome. Write your congressperson and stalk your senator. 

Cogitationally and constituently yours,
Phat Man Dee