One short week of music and pix

Mary Jane Farmer | December 19, 2014 | Reply

Fritz Schultz

Short blurb and pix by Mary Jane Farmer, except the last few grafs, written by a CSB fan! For more photos, click on the link below.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights, the week before Christmas, was filled with lots of great music and great friends. Here’s three of those events, in a tiny little nutshell.

Tuesday, Dec. 16, El Patio Escondido in Van Alstyne hosted Fritz Schultz in a two-hour acoustic set; during which time Ray White sat in for a few songs, too. Lots of kids out that night, and Fritz sang “Here Comes Santa Claus” twice to the kids, evoking huge smiles. It’s nice to hear a musician/singer/songwriter who plays to his crowd and whose songs are always good for any crowd. That’s Fritz Schultz for you! El Patio has live music every Tuesday (6:30-8:30 p.m.) and Saturday (7:30-9:30 p.m.), except for those times that the owner, William, closes and gives everyone the holidays off to be with their families.

Jim Littleton

Wednesday, Dec. 17, Nolan’s “Whachamacallit” Bar & Grill in Richardson, has open mics, actually Ed McGory hosts open mics there every Wednesday, beginning around 7:30 p.m.-ish. The sound system is great — Ed provides al that — and nice friendly wait staff has as much fun with the music as do the patrons. This week, “Lonesome” Jim Littleton opened it up, and next were Brad Haefner and Jason Lovell (of Buffalo Ruckus), followed by Meia Borden. (Sorry, got no usable pix of Meia!)

Thursday, Dec. 18, Hank’s Texas Grill hosted The Chase Sanford Band in their last show of 2014. Opening was Trever Carico, who presented a great solo, acoustic set of his songs. Chase on vocals, guitar and harmonica; Sevans Henderson on keyboards, Garry Moore on lead guitar and vocals; Jason (Fuzzy) Smith on bass and back-up vocals; and Corbett Potter on drums — together, they presented some of their crowd-favorites and a couple off their upcoming EP, to be titled The One You Want, being released in late January.

An old friend of Chase’s, Sherilyn Marie, wrote, “It’s been close to 4 years since I got to see my friend Chase Sanford’s band play. A lot of changes have been made to that rag-tag group of back road, beer drinking hooligans that frequented the local dive bar I DJ’d at in the sticks and graciously agreed to play at one of my charity gigs. (You know me….bleeding damn heart.) I gotta tell ya…I dig the changes.

“Typically, I extol the virtues of a good pair of rocker/cowboy jeans and a purty face, but let’s take a minute to talk about the new

Chase Sanford

sound (to me it’s new…shut up.) While The Chase Sanford Band still has that gritty, southern rock-influenced sound, the blues element is stronger and their sound is cleaner. Whoever’s idea it was to cover Bill Wither’s “Aint no Sunshine” is a genius – they need to keep him around. The addition of keyboard player (that seriously should be carded – he looks like he might be a child prodigy) gives their songs a lot of depth – even if some of them ARE about Fannin County! Chase still has that “devil may care” stage presence, but the smiling good-natured “Ryan Seacrest looking mother f**#3r” (not my words! HA!) balances out that feeling that this ride might end up in handcuffs with enough shots of whiskey!

“I’m super proud of Chase! He’s worked hard and his little Red Dirt Dream Team is going places! You guys should seriously take the opportunity to see them play if you get the chance! Whether or not you are a fan of country music I’m certain that you will find something to love about them! Even if it’s that they all seem pretty adept at picking out damn fine jeans!

Click here for links to the photos from this week.

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