New Tour Press & Video!

Me: "This week's issue of The New Yorker calls me a keyboard wizard!"

My Wife: "Yes, but around here, you're just a guy in sweat pants."

That, of course, was followed by a request to clean the cat box. Which was fine with me - I miss all this when I'm away! And away I have been. First there was a three week arena and festival tour of Australia with John Fogerty, followed by a week with the Malone band in PA. MA, and NYC.

This coming Monday, I'll be playing WWOZ Piano Night at House Of Blues in New Orleans. It's been a long-time dream of mine to be a part of this Jazz Fest tradition - this year's show will feature sets by Marcia Ball, the seriously freakin' amazing Henry Butler, NOLA legend Joe Krown, and tons more. The following day I will be live on WWOZ around 3:00 Central (right after Little Anthony!) - if you don't live in NOLA, you can tune in online. Damn, if not for the aforementioned wife and cat box, I think I'd never come back from New Orleans!

Starting mid-May, I return to Australia for my own tour. Some shows with the band, and some sharing the bill with awesome Aussie piano player/singer/raconteur Pugsley Buzzard. All the dates are here. 

TOUR REVIEWS & VIDEO

Adelaide Now - I get a nice shout-out in this review of the John Fogerty show in Adeliade, Australia.

The New Yorker - It's just a blurb, but they do, as mentioned before, call me a "keyboard wizard." Not bad for a kid from New Jersey!

"Chinese Algebra" live at Sellersville Theatre. With the New York Malone band - new tune from my upcoming CD.

"Why Not Me" live at Sellersville Theatre. Shot in sexy black and white. WIth Rich Zukor, Ritt Henn, & Tommy Williams.

"Certain Distance" live at Sellersville Theatre. With Bob Malone stompin' on the Mississippi Drum Machine! That's a Peterman Stomp Box Pickup in a cigar box, by the way. 

Remember: you're never too old to rock and roll - it just takes longer to recover. See you out there!

Caffe & Zigarren

I wrote this in 2002, during a tour of Belgium and Germany, and never posted or published it. Since I'm too jet-lagged at the moment to write anything new, I instead offer this tale from the archives. Enjoy.

"Your seat cushion" the announcement went, "is also a flotation device. In the event of a water landing…"

"place your head between your legs and kiss your sorry ass goodbye!" I muttered.

This was the third time I was hearing the safety announcement on this flight, and we were yet to leave the ground. Granted, it was the first pass in English, but you don’t really need to understand the words to get the point, all you need to do is watch for the props: the disembodied seatbelt, the yellow cup, the elastic strap.

"If you are traveling with a child, first place the cup firmly over your mouth, and then..."

Grab the kid by the shoulders, shake the crap out of him, and scream: “we’re all gonna die, you little shit!”

This being a flight to Belguim, which is essentially a tri-lingual country, we got the saftey lecture in Flemish, French, and English. As if any of it would help if we went down in the North Atlantic. The folks on the Titanic had it all over us – at least some of them lived.

We had been grounded for the last three hours with a mechanical problem. The maintenance crew had gone for parts. That’s just how they announced it: "The maintenance crew has gone for parts.” That bothered me. “Parts” brought to my mind a discomforting scene in which one of the airport mechanics is standing at the counter at the local Pep Boys:

“Uh….yeah. You got a reverse-catalytic spetzer-valve for a ’93 Boeing 707?”

“Well, no…they’re back-ordered. But you know, you can substitute a valve from a ’88 Fokker 2000! Just file off this tab here and strip the threads. You may want to take along a couple a tubes of hot-glue, just to be safe.”

“Thanks!”

Parts.

Tomorrow I would be playing the Beersel Blues Rock Festival, just outside of Brussels, then heading to Germany for a week of shows. I say tomorrow, but it would really be today. When going to Europe, the pattern is always the same. Leave L.A. in the evening, arrive overseas the next morning. Sleeping on the plane is not an option. I’ve tried everything. Large amounts of alcohol. Small amounts of alcohol. Sleeping pills. Sleeping pills with alcohol. I’ve tried reading the sanitized, leaden prose in the in-flight magazines. The booze and pills made me high enough that the lack of sleep no longer bothered me, and the in-flight magazine made me want more booze and pills. Nothing made me sleep.

Now I just stay up all night. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

My motel room was out in the ‘burbs, near the festival grounds. I looked out the van window, fascinated, as always, by how Europe has all the same sort of roadside stuff we do – gas stations, cafés, refineries, office parks…but everything is smaller. And cleaner and tidier. Europe always makes me feel like I’ve been shrunk to HO scale and become the inhabitant of a model train layout.

After a few hours of unsuccessfully attempting to sleep off the jet-lag, the runner came to take me over to festival grounds. There was a crowd of about 3,000 under the mainstage tent. In the middle of the seething mass stood a giant screen projecting what was going on onstage for the people in the back. As I did my set, my eyes kept wandering to the giant TV screen. I would start watching the pixelated me in action, and almost forget to keep playing. One side of my brain yammering: "Hey look - you're on TV!" The other side saying: "It’s live, dumbass – keep playing!"

After the set, the schmoozing and the autograph scrawling, I wandered backstage to find some grub.

I located a couple of steak brochettes and a pile of fries and made my way to one of the backstage picnic tables. Condiment choices were only two: ketchup or mayo. The ketchup came in a container that looked as if it were designed to hold some sort of automotive product – brake fluid, perhaps. The cap was a perfect plastic representation of a lug-nut. My eyes saw imaginary grease stains on the thing. I knew it was purely psychological, but I could not bring myself to eat the ketchup. That left only the Mayo.

They’re big on mayo here in Belgium. Salad with a cup of Hellmann’s where the dressing would normally go. Fries with a large, quivering mass of mayonnaise on the side. And speaking of french fries, I had not even eaten my first one that night when someone approached, unsolicited, and informed me that the Belgians invented French fries, and those French sonzabitches stole the idea. This, I would find out, was a very big deal in this country. It seemed like every person I was introduced to during my stay in Brussels would say: “Hello Bob, very nice to meet you! Did you know that we invented French fries?”

I briefly considered my condiment choices, and decided on plain.

I headed back out to the backstage area just as Candye Kane’s set was reaching critical mass. She had those poor bastards whipped into a frenzy I feared some of them would not survive. She made me damn proud to be an American playing the blues.

Average

There’s nothing wrong with being average. Without average folks the wheels of Western Civilization would surely shudder to a halt. But somewhere along the way, we in America have been sold the notion that talent doesn’t matter; that intelligence doesn’t matter; that greatness doesn’t matter. That these attributes should in fact be regarded with suspicion, if not outright hostility. We have come to believe that we are all entitled to fame, and that to be just like everyone else is to be something quite special. And the army of pundits, writers, reality-show producers, politicians, and country music songwriters who have sold us this dubious bill of goods are, in many cases, talented people themselves. Do they really need the money that badly?

Hipster Self Parody

I'm not here to mock the hipster nation - it's been done, no need for me to say that which has already been said. Instead, I'll let the self-parody of one of their representatives speak for itself. Whoever penned this is so far up his own ass I fear he has no idea how funny he really is. From this week's New Yorker rock and pop reviews:

"The guitarist Sam Mickens, known for his work with Xiu Xiu, the Parenthetical Girls, and the Dead Science, recently released his solo debut, a collection of stripped-down experimental indie-folk called "Slay & Slake." Opening for him will be the bleak witch-house group White Ring, which should provide an odd counterpoint for Micken's theatrical, idiosyncratic songs."

Dorothy Parker is most assuredly spinning in her grave.

Bob Malone's Famous Eggnog Recipe (serves 1)

In small bowl, over sink, beat until light:

1 Egg yolk
Beat in slowly:
1 Tablespoon Sugar
1/4 Cup Cream
A dash of salt
Set mixture aside.
Fill one large (12oz) rocks-glass with:
Bourbon or Rye whiskey
Carefully lift small bowl, and pour egg yolk mixture into sink.
Drink whiskey.
Repeat.

Have a fine holiday season, and remember these words of wisdom from Mark Twain:

"Too much of anything is bad, but too much of good whiskey is just barely enough."

It Never Hurts To Ask

It all began with an email from a 14-year old kid in Switzerland named Richard Freigang, and it went something like this:

“My dad is turning forty this year, and his three favorite musicians are Jimi Hendrix, Janis Jopin, and Bob Malone. Since you are the only one of the three still alive, we are hoping you will come to Switzerland and play for his birthday party.”

Who could say no to such a proposal? I let it roll around in my head for a day or two and then responded in the affirmative. A day later I heard from Richard’s mom, who was astounded that I replied at all. No one in the family thought I would. I would have told them what the kid already suspected: it never hurts to ask.

Mom had some connections in the music biz and said she would get me a plane ticket and put together a tour for me in Germany and Switzerland. And so she did. Great gigs, too. I believe her inexperience allowed her to wade in, unjaded, and ask for stuff a more experienced agent would have thought too lofty to attain.

It never hurts to ask.

So last night I played the birthday party. It was a surprise-party, so after soundchecking the microphone and the 100-year old piano in the tiny living room, I was then sent into hiding in the cellar for the next four hours with nothing for company but my laptop, a white longhaired cat that I was deathly allergic to and a terrarium containing 12 baby turtles. I am a big fan of both cats and turtles, so we got along ok. By the time they liberated me from the cellar, the living room was stuffed beyond comprehension with friends and family of the honoree, and I was in desperate need of the toilet. This would have to wait, however.

Stefan (that’s the dad), cried tears of joy and shocked surprise during most of the first song. I don’t think I was ever happier with my career choice than at that moment. My job, when you strip away all the things I think it is, and other people think it is – both wrong, incidentally – is to make people happy. There is no better gig in the world.

During the three days since arriving at Zurich on an 11-hour flight from L.A., I have been hiding out in a snug little apartment procured for me by Barbara (that’s the mom) in Rapperswil, a charming little town on Lake Zurich, a half-hour by train from the city. There is no wifi here, no TV shows in English. For a short while, I became acutely aware of my addiction to the Internet and my TiVo box, but soon the soothing rhythms of the pre-digital life I once knew took over. There is a small selection of classical CDs here, and I have been getting intimate with J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio…all three discs worth of it. I have just finished a wonderful book by Elisabeth Tova Bailey called “The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating.” The author, left immobile and bedridden my a mysterious illness, spent a year prone in a spare bedroom with no company save that of a tiny woodland snail, an accidental passenger in a pot of field violets brought in by a friend. She learned much about our place in the world from this creature. Sometimes we come out the other side better off when separated from all the chaos we think we need to thrive.

Everyday I hear the kids in the apartment above practicing cello and violin. The kid on cello is sounding quite good – sounds like he’s got a few years on the one scratching out tunes on the violin. In any case, it’s a pleasant enough cacophony. And they are not wasting away the hours playing Guitar Hero, they’re playing guitar…so to speak. Which they will thank their parents for later.

Tonight, I played a wonderful venue full of very enthusiastic people right here in Rapperswil. It was one of those nights that reminded me of how very lucky I am to be a musician. Tomorrow, I’m off to Berlin for the next leg of the tour.

Eddie Horst - You Will Be Missed

After a long battle with clinical depression, my friend Eddie Horst killed himself this week. He was well known as a great composer and arranger, and an energetic and inspiring spirit. He did orchestral arrangements for Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Train, REM, Natalie Cole, all kinds of famous people like that. But to me, he was a true mentor.

In 1985, I was a newly-minted freshman at Berklee College of Music in Boston - 18 years old, just off the boat from New Jersey. One of the first people I met was Eddie. He was fourteen years older than I was and had gone back to school to learn arranging. To a kid like me he was a gargantuan presence. He'd been a professional musician for over a decade, and was already moving on from the things I hoped to do one day. I used to go over to his little apartment in the Back Bay and bring records I liked, or play songs I was working on. He would explain to me what was good and what was crap, always with respect. He saw something in me as a musician that few people saw then, and I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. One day at the little apartment, he took out his copy of "Randy Newman Live at the Bitter End" and said: "I've met very few people who could truly appreciate this, but I think you are one of those few. " It was a life-changing experience.

After college, ten years passed before I saw Eddie again. By then I had started touring and playing my songs, and I would show up in Atlanta from time to time to do a show. We would see each other occasionally, and exchange an email or a phone call once in a while. I was in L.A., he was in Atlanta, and we didn't see that much of each other. But I always felt that so much of what I had become was due to the attention Eddie showed me when I was young and green.

In 2008, when I was working on my latest album, I asked Eddie if he'd be interested in doing a string arrangement for one of the songs. "I don't have a lot of money," I said. He said not to worry about it. The arrangement he sent over a week later was a thing of beauty, like all the work he did. The tune was called "St. Christopher" and it was the tale of a man facing hopelessness and loneliness with only that fabled patron saint of travelers to help him through. Eddie always told me how much he loved that song. Now I think I know why.

May you rest in peace, Eddie Horst. And wherever you are, I hope Saint Christopher is riding shotgun tonight.