From mate_stubb@yahoo.com Wed Feb 18 20:01:53 2004
Subject:Saw Joey D last night

I thought I'd post a few tidbits after catching Joey Defrancesco's
trio last night.

Since this is a tech list, I'll confine my musical review to the
following: WOW. Although his albums are fairly traditional jazz, the
trio ranges much further afield when playing live. It's a pleasure
to see a group of guys who are obviously comfortable playing
together communicating on stage.

Joey is travelling a little more upscale than the last time I saw
him. Whereas he was using local organs then (he played my organ that
night, in fact), now he is carrying his own rig. He is carrying a
new B-3 with two leslies. They looked like 122s but I couldn't be
sure. I deduced that they were new mainly by the cabinet
construction and (lack of) veneer quality. It seems likely that
Hammond is sponsoring him, since there was a big sign on the front
of the organ shouting "The NEW B-3". He also carried a Yamaha Motif
ES 7 which was on top, and was MIDIed to the B-3.

I sat directly to his left and slightly behind him, about six feet
from the outside leslie. When we talked "tech stuff" on a break, he
seemed genuinely happy with the solid state B-3. He mentioned its
consistency and reliability, and not having to worry about whether a
generator would start on a cold night. Coming from his touring
background, I can see his point. He took full advantage of the touch
sensitivity allowed by the traditional key contact stack - one of
the few players in the world with a sensitive enough technique to
make good musical use of this. We also talked about the new XK-3,
which he played at NAMM. He was very complimentary about it,
although when I pressed him on the chorus vib he allowed that it
needs to be improved.

My opinion of his organ sound was mostly favorable. When the leslie
was on slow or fast, there wasn't much to complain about. I didn't
notice anything bad about the chorus vib either. However, with no
chorus vib and leslies stopped, there seemed to be a certain lack of
vitality to the tone that is present when wheels are spinning.

He did some interesting things with the Motif's arpeggiator, too. At
certain points when things got unabashedly electronic, I almost
thought I was listening to Zawinul!