I won’t go see the Stones anymore.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t want to hang with those people, calcified, trying to relive a youth that in most cases they never had, being too scared of the English band in its prime, all the while being hawked overpriced merchandise as Jagger shouts the lyrics and the band plays and those of who were there the first time around puke.<\/p>\n
But to hear John Batdorf and James Lee Stanley reinterpret their classics…\u00c2\u00a0 For that I’ll drive deep into the heart of suburban California, to a location I never even knew EXISTED!<\/p>\n
A couple of years back, I got e-mail from James Lee Stanley asking me if I’d take a listen to his new album with John Batdorf, "All Wood And Stones", an acoustic reworking of Stones songs.<\/p>\n
Remember when the Beatles hit and everybody took up the guitar?\u00c2\u00a0 And you’d go to parties and sing the hits of the day?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what this album sounded like, if you took the best two guys you ever heard in high school and they rearranged the tracks, making something new out of what was in your DNA, that you’d heard a zillion times before.\u00c2\u00a0 The music was satisfying.\u00c2\u00a0 It was old, but new.\u00c2\u00a0 I felt it was a natural.<\/p>\n
Alas, "All Wood And Stones" never broke through.\u00c2\u00a0 It didn’t get the exposure it deserved.\u00c2\u00a0 Because rock radio is dead.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the purveyors think the audience is dead, and can’t listen to anything new.\u00c2\u00a0 Mike Marrone played the album on XM’s Loft, but one station on a service with a hundred odd channels that reaches far from everybody…\u00c2\u00a0 I tried to get Sirius on the bandwagon, I felt it was a one listen record, but I never got a response to my entreaty, even though I was doing it out of passion, with no pay involved.\u00c2\u00a0 The album languished.<\/p>\n
But when Russ Paris e-mailed to tell me that Batdorf & Stanley were going to appear in his living room on Saturday night, I said I was IN!\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, it was Felice who implored me, I’d put the album on her hard drive.<\/p>\n
So we go over Malibu Canyon, drive further out than I ever do unless I’m going to Santa Barbara, and exit the 101 in Westlake Village.\u00c2\u00a0 Who moves to Westlake Village?\u00c2\u00a0 Why?\u00c2\u00a0 I have no idea, but there are a ton of similar houses out there, don’t drive home drunk, you’ll never find your house!<\/p>\n
And after missing the turn-off, we finally made it to Russ Paris’ house.<\/p>\n
It’s hard for me to reach out and engage.\u00c2\u00a0 But I didn’t want to go to this gig and not introduce myself.\u00c2\u00a0 And figuring the dude at the door with the shirt with the musical notes on it must be Russ, I hovered until he finished detailing the agenda to a patron, and introduced myself.<\/p>\n
And that’s when I got Russ’ story.<\/p>\n
He went to college back east, at Brandeis.\u00c2\u00a0 But he missed California people.\u00c2\u00a0 Funny, I’ve heard of missing EAST COAST people, then again maybe what he was saying was he was sick of the stuffy underpinnings of the east.<\/p>\n
Anyway, he returned to L.A. and went to law school.\u00c2\u00a0 He passed the Bar, but never practiced.\u00c2\u00a0 He went into commercial real estate.\u00c2\u00a0 But then gave that up to start a graphics business with his ninth grade sweetheart, now his wife, out of his home.\u00c2\u00a0 This same home containing not only Russ & Julie, but their three children.<\/p>\n
Yes, Julie showed me the room of Macs, but that graphics business was secondary to Russ’ love for music.\u00c2\u00a0 He’d been surfing the Web and had made contact with Severin Browne, Jackson’s brother, and after convincing Severin that he truly DID have his two Motown albums, Severin invited him to a friend’s backyard, for an album release party, eleven years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 And experiencing this magical evening, Russ asked Severin, would he like to do a show at HIS house?<\/p>\n
And thus began Russ & Julie’s House Concerts<\/a>.<\/p>\n