Bay Area Jewels at the Tower of London

Tuesday I was given amazing seats/backstage passes by my friend renowned Bay Area based drummer Scott Amendola to see him back the stunning Madeline Peyroux at The Tower of London music Festival. Scott has come up quickly in the Bay Area music world and also plays with his own eponymous titled band, the jazz sensation trio 'Play Monk' and Wilco's astounding Nels Cline in the 'Nels Cline Trio.'
www.scottamendola.com
One of my best memories from this past spring was watching the er uh 'comeback' of Sly Stone at this year's Grammy awards with Nels and Scott.
Scott likes everything from Ac Dc to Peter Gabriel to Weather Report to Van Halen to The Meters to John Coltrane. Discussing great music with him as well as talking shit about some of the more soulless commercial and accountant sponsored acts that have appeared on Bay Area stages was always fun too.


I really miss Scott and his wife Ari as they were such good friends to me over the past year. Scott's almost off the road and it was great to see him perform-he is a true artist and thankfully one that can do what he loves professionally.
I know Madeline's Peyroux's work from KFOG and her strong following in the UK and Europe is well deserved (there were a few thousand people there last night) she's mint original lady chanteuse par excellence.
Finally, my life in Shoreditch has become very exciting as I now know so many locals and I'm building some great friendships. How to acheive my goal of being well known in the UK is starting to become clearer. Like Ruby Wax before me I plan on being a Yank who knows her Brit culture inside out. And as I was recently refered
to as a 'salt' (apparently this is the highest cockney compliment you can pay a woman by comparing her to the world's most indespensible condiment...) the persona of the Princess of Shoreditch is starting to take shape.