Shake Off The Cold!

The Vendettas' long winter hibernation is over. We spent the time after our second annual Rock and Roll Christmas Spectacular, to learn new material grow patchy beards, ( that was mostly me)  and come up with new dance steps.

We will be playing a fundraiser in Bay Port Saturday April 20th with several other bands at the
Parrot Bar. We should be hitting the stage around 4PM but come early, there will be a lot of great performers there. We can't wait to get back in front of people, we hope to see you there.

Rock and Roll Christmas Show!

Well, after taking a bit of a break to expand my family by one, The Vendettas are returning to the stage December 4th at the Sachem Library! This will be our biggest show yet with many special guests sharing the stage.

The Program will include Rock and Roll Christmas classics from Elvis, Chuck Berry and The Brian Setzer Orchestra, along with many hit songs from our Rockabilly repertoire.

Start off the holiday season with off The Vendettas' 8 Piece Rock and Roll Christmas Band!

Jay

The Vendettas

photo by Theodore W. Lee

Vendettas Return to Rocky Point

The Vendettas will be bringing their Roots Rock and Roll and Rockabilly sound back to Fatty Beltbuckles in Rocky Point this Friday, September 11th at 10:00PM The place has great BBQ and is one of the best places locally that one can go to hear live music. Please support all of the bands that play there, but if you can only come to see one band, well, it should be us.

As we enter the beginning of Fall of 2009 we come up on a year that the Vendettas have been playing as a trio. Although it was a bit of a job to loose Lenny's rhythm guitar (he switched to drums) and Jerry's piano, the band was able to make the adjustment within a few shows. Lenny and Chin did outstanding jobs, changing their rolls, taking up the slack and generally keeping their sense of humor during the transition. In a way it makes total sense as many of the bands that we hold in such high regard and try like hell to emulate were trios too. You can't argue with success, have been playing more, learning the songs that the audience has been requesting and finding Rockabilly fans!

Checking out the hits on our website shows that we have people looking at the site and reading the blog from all over the country and all over the world: Ireland, France, South America and so on.

Sign up for our mailing list on our main page, book us, talk to us. Let us know if you have ideas about venues, songs, or other bands we should know about.

Jaybone

Vendettas in the Studio, Brian Setzer, Next Show

This Saturday We will be back where we started at East Enders Coffee House on Main St. in Riverhead, NY. Showtime will be 8:00 PM. We will also have a special guest for the evening, the most talented harmonica player I have ever had the good fortune to play with: Frank Latorre of the King Bees. He wll be sitting in for Jerry the Dish who has an out of state court appearance. Please join us on the 19th for an evening of rockabilly and rock and roll as it can only be played when fueled espresso and cake. http://eastenderscoffeehouse.com/

The Vendettas are now working on a new recording. We have recorded the basic tracks, the old school way live, with no tricky stuff. We will be adding the finishing touches and mixing in the next few weeks. We found a great studio http://www.suffolkrecordingstudios.com/ and had excellent experience with Allen and Dan there. They understood what we were going for and helped us get the authentic vibe we were looking for.

A few weeks ago I was in Minneapolis for a professional conference and happened to eat dinner at a Jazz club called Rossi's. To my surprise Leon Redbone was appearing there that night. Needless to say I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see him. So as my colleagues left for the evening (they had no idea who he was) I headed toward the performance area to take my seat. I made a quick stop in the men's room and while washing my hands I turned my head to see standing there, freaking Brian Setzer!

Now I don't have to explain as a guitar player in a rockabilly band how important this guy is to me. When I was in the 8th grade the Stray Cats played in my middle school gym on Long Island. This was right before they went to England. It was a pretty influential moment in my life, it is one of the reasons I picked up the guitar in the first place.

It can be sort of terrifying when you get to meet your heros, there are many ways they might not live up to your expectations, not the least of which is they may turn out to be jerks. That happened to me once. It was a real disappointment. I knew I had to chance it though and say something (even though I was kind of star struck) so I eked out something along the lines of "I love your work". There were about a million things I wanted to say but I didn't want to seem like a freak. I have to say Brian was very friendly and gracious. He took some time to talk with me and even stayed to see Leon Redbone on my suggestion. We had another brief exchange on the way out. It was a very cool experience.