Oh, what a night.

Not sure where to even start.  Thursday’s night’s final Buckhead Music Project at Velvet Underground rocked.  Rudy Vaughn, James David Carter, and Jamie JAMM Portee all killed.

 

Rudy had a new bass player onstage with him, a good dude/good player named Wes Flowers, who plays for Butch Walker as well.  

 

(Sidenote: Butch Walker has a new record coming out and is playing at The Loft in Atlanta on November 10.  Read all about it here.  Many of you remember the Atlanta band he fronted, The Marvelous Three.  The other two-thirds of the Three (Jayce and Slug) are buddies of ours.  And my son is in the band Second Wave with bassist Holden Fincher; his dad is Jayce, Marvelous Three’s bassist.)

 

Rudy’s set ranged from Michael Jackson’s Beat It to original songs; also, for the first time, I saw Rudy play sax and he destroyed it - in a good way.  James David Carter was excellent, as usual.  Dude has insane falsetto.  JAMM and his band, complete with horns, capped the night off with some great funk/jazz/r&b fusion, or whatever they call it.  Chantae Cann joined him; she’s a background singer for India Arie and is an amazing, new voice on the Atlanta scene.  JAMM also brought both his wife Joni (also known as INOJ) and James David up on stage to do some guest vocals.  

 

Other friends of ONE Atlanta that were there: Michael Johnston of Smalltown Poets, a surprise attendance by original Smalltown Poets drummer Byron Goggin who lives in North Carolina, Moxie Davis with wife Clarissa, Big Snow (on turntables in between bands, doing his thang), Ryan Fitzgerald of theAMP, Casey Darnell, too many amazing musician friends to name, and a bunch of Buckhead Church staff - not the least of which is ‘Los Whittaker (thanks for the pics dude!)

 

 

Visiting Safehouse

     Tonight’s visit to Safehouse Outreach in downtown Atlanta will not be our last.  My Iphone took blurrier pics than usual, but take a look anyway.  We took a group of about a dozen people including  Joni “INOJ” Portee, some Second Wave members and parents (including my wife and son and the Woffords) and other friends (like Adam, Bill, Will, and Nancy).  Also ran into (recent Dove winner) Seth Condrey there.

     We first walked into a worship service geared towards Atlanta’s homeless.  The band 1-A-Chord was playing and they were ridiculous - tight vocals and nasty funk; these guys were for real and were great to hang out with as well.  Then we took the Safehouse tour and learned about opportunities to serve, in ways both musical and non-musical.  One of these ways is the Convoy of Hope event August 9th in the World Congress Center parking lot.  Safehouse needs 3000 volunteers to help pass out groceries, among other things.  We will be there!  Will you?