June 2022 Organizer Update - Reflections on Dr. Dougie's Dangerous Delight

Although it may be tooting my own horn, I thought we had a great night here on the third Wednesday in June. In addition to some old-school homies like Brumy and Connor Philion showing up, we had our Coffee & Cotton regulars, Nikolai (asserting “the non-binary urge to be abstract”), Krys (declaring “I am honeysuckle unstoppable”), and Max (sketching “a liminal space we happened to be passing thru”), among others. We also had Mara on the mic, who was a barista for us when Untitled was at Brew’d Awakening, but now is one of the managers for Coffee & Cotton, thus helping to keep the continuity flowing.

Of course, for me, the night was about my band, Dr. Dougie’s Dangerous Delight, which is my leading edge creatively. Although I have worked with some of these musicians for many years, this was our first gig as a quartet, with Todd Brunel on clarinet and flute, Don Bishop (yes, my brother) on percussion, and Ken Paynter on stand-up bass. I added the poetry, as well as some incidental percussion, and we presented something pretty rare: poetry in a musical context.

I am sincerely and humbly grateful to the members of the band who worked with me to create soundscapes for the poems, listening carefully and bringing their expertise into the mix to create some very expressive pieces where the whole equals more than the sum of its parts.