Hello, for information on live music events and other happenings, please visit the calendar page.

For essays, musical commentary, reminiscences and occasional posts, please go the blog section.

To hear some tunes, please visit the music page, where you can hear tracks by the Jim Duffy Combo. And you can hear tracks by Rods and Cones and Martin's Folly.

Thank you for visiting.

Jim Duffy

Three Dots Music (ASCAP)

3dotsmusic.com

jimduffy@3dotsmusic.com

P.O. Box 220524

Brooklyn, NY 11211

This is on short notice, and it's something a little unusual. On Friday, Sept. 24, at 9 p.m., I'll be playing a set of solo piano music at the Brooklyn Rod and Gun Club, which is at 59 Kent Ave. in Brooklyn, between North 10th and North 11th, right on the East River.

The Brooklyn R&G is a mellow hang -- it's a "private social club," but if you want to come by and not start any fights, you are welcome. On Friday nights, the R&G hosts live, mostly roots-oriented music, and they asked me to do a set opening up for Willy Gantrim.

To find out more about the Brooklyn Rod and Gun Club, go here. And if you can swing by on Friday night, please do.

Save the date -- Thursday, Sept. 16, 9 p.m. The Jim Duffy Combo will return to our "home court," the Lakeside Lounge, 162 Ave. B in Manhattan, near East 10th Street.

We'll be playing our unique blend of sparkling instrumental pop tunes and bouncy themes. We always enjoy playing at the Lakeside -- and who are "we," you may ask?

* Jim Duffy -- keys

* Dennis Diken -- drums

* Paul Page -- bass

* Lance Doss -- guitars

We'll be playing original tunes, plus a surprise or two. The more we play, the more "in the pocket" we get, and the wilder and freer become the musical notes. There's so much going on, you'll forget that there's no singing!

"Moody and bouncy instrumental pop tunes" is my catch-all phrase for what we do, but there's so much more. So come down and join us at the fabulous Lakeside on Thursday, Sept. 16, 9 p.m. -- sweet live music, no cover charge, intimate setting, friendly bartenders, and when we're done playing, the most rocking jukebox in New York City.

But I have to warn you: To be there, you have to be there!

You, dear reader, are the first to know. The Jim Duffy Combo has another date booked: Thursday, June 24, 9 p.m. at the fabulous Lakeside Lounge, 162 Ave. B in Manhattan.

This venue is our favorite spot for cutting loose and playing bouncy and catchy and grooving instrumental music. Check out this lineup:

Jim Duffy, keys
Dennis Diken, drums
Paul Page, bass
Lance Doss, guitar and lap steel

It all keeps getting wilder and wilder.

As for Dennis, people are starting to realize that his 2009 album, "Late Music," credited to Dennis Diken and Bell Sound, is one for the ages, a true keeper. Besides being one of the most powerful rock and roll drummers on the planet, he composes, he sings, he produces, he does it all.

Paul Page, as you read this, is performing all across Europe with Ian Hunter, one of the hardest-to-please rock legends in the business. Page provided the low notes on Ian's latest opus, "Man Overboard," which that action-packed band will be performing, along with indelible tunes from the glam era. They're making history.

Lance Doss, when he isn't rocking the biker crowd at the at one-of-a-kind Great Notch Inn in Little Falls, N.J., a true roadhouse of the kind they just can't make anymore, is singing like a bird with an acoustic guitar at venues all around the five boroughs.

And yours truly is practicing day and night, punching the heavy bag, swinging Indian clubs and tossing the medicine ball, just to be in good enough shape to keep up with these guys.

We'll all be down at the Lakeside, in common cause, on Thursday, June 24, at 9 p.m., so save the date. You want to be there, you know you do, so write it down in pen. Enter it into your little gadget: Thursday, June 24. That's when we put the "lounge" in Lakeside Lounge.

Grooving and sparkling instrumental music, intimate setting, friendly bartenders, no cover charge, and after we finish playing, the most swinging jukebox in New York. What's not to like? Come on down!

(photo by C.S. Gray)

Thanks to everyone who came out last Tuesday to see and hear the Jim Duffy Combo at the Lakeside Lounge. Something about that place makes it easy for us to cut loose and let the music fly on its own.

We'll have more events at that fine venue this spring, so please check back for updates.

On Tuesday, March 30, at 9 p.m., the Jim Duffy Combo returns to the fabulous Lakeside Lounge, 162 Ave. B, Manhattan. This is our favorite venue for cutting loose and playing sparkling and swinging instrumental tunes.

Jim Duffy: keys

Dennis Diken: drums

Paul Page: bass

Lance Doss: guitar

We'll be doing one set starting at 9 p.m. Expect moody and bouncy tunes, deft interplay, tube-warm sound. Intimate space, friendly bartenders, no cover charge. What is not to like?

If you're reading this, I hope you'll come down and check us out!

(For more details about how all this madness went down, please see the Blog section.)

Thanks to everyone who came out last Thursday night to the House of Blues in Boston for the V66 Reunion concert. You all made it a memorable night for Rods and Cones. We had not performed live in 22 years, and we did put some effort into making the set as powerful as we could. To see so many old friends and new friends made it all a rare experience.

Special thanks to Brian "Bone" Marra for doing quick study on bass guitar, to Curtis Kelley for swinging the drums for our rehearsals, Granny (soundman extraordinaire from the Rat), Un-Ted Murphy (for his organizational abilities), John Innamorato (for behind-the-scenes work that we didn't even know about), Tom Schneider (our once and present manager, God help him), Pete Newman (thanks for watching my bass, Pete) and to everyone else who pitched in or danced or simply added their good feelings.

Also, there were fine performances from vintage Boston bands and performers. I heard an especially soulful sound-check from Woody Giessmann and Right Turn, and I also enjoyed the rocking sets from O Positive, Digney Fignus, the Fools and Animotion. If I failed to mention any other fine performers, forgive me -- it was an eventful night.

Playing music with my old mates Rods and Cones for five days and nights has certainly turned my head around. All that bass-playing is going to make it hard to go back to the keyboards, or it may influence my keyboard playing, such as it is. Rods and Cones is the most overtly rhythmic band I've ever played in. Everything fell right into the pocket. When it gets grooving, the music has a lot of air and space in it, and that dual-percussion lineup has a homemade sound.

To get a sense of that night, please go here.

To make it all even better, on Saturday night we re-convened for a party at the Real School of Music in Burlington, Mass., where we shared a bill with the Elliot Mouser Floating Blues Band, which features the incomparable Chris Jenner on guitar. Rods and Cones then played a more jammed-out and perhaps less professional set of music. Then, for an over-the-top third set, the Mousers and Cones joined forces, and we mixed and matched performers and played everything under the moon until the wee hours of the morning.

I'm hoping we get to do this again before another 22 years go by.

Keep those Deluxe Reverb tubes nice and warm!

(Photo of Chris DiNardo taken by Chris Kelley at the Real School of Music)

Back in the 1980s, Boston was a great place to be a local band. In Kenmore Square, the Rat was spawning punk rockers, in Cambridge, the Inn-Square Men's Bar was featuring creative music every night. Further out on the fringes, thousands of college students were looking for a good time, and the drinking age rules were not enforced the way they are today.

In those days, Boston radio stations -- not only college stations but commercial stations as well -- would play records by local bands. You could be a big fish in a small pond, flopping around merrily.

In the midst of all this, a local TV station blinked onto the air, on the other-worldly UHF dial. It was V-66, and it was a free version of the then-new MTV. You might have to move your antenna around to tune it in, but it was music on TV, and it was free.

The band I was in, Rods and Cones, arrived at the right time. We had had something of a local hit with our tune "Education in Love," and our guitarist, Gary France, arranged for some Emerson College film students to create a video for that track. For a long stretch of time in 1986, V-66 was broadcasting it every day of the week.

Great memories and high times. There are worse ways to misspend one's youth.

So ... V-66 is coming back, at least for one night, Thursday, Feb. 11, 2010, at the House of Blues in Boston. A video documentary about V-66, called "Life on the V" will be released that month, and the hard-working people who produced that film will show the world what it was about. Rods and Cones will regroup for that one night, with yours truly on bass guitar.

Other Boston bands from that era will be performing that night, including O Positive, Lizzy Borden and the Axes and a few others yet to be announced.

Well, if you live long enough, you become an oldies act. But Rods and Cones will not be sleepwalking through it. No! We're already undertaking a strict health regimen, jogging, skipping rope, punching the heavy bag. In fact, we have all secluded ourselves at a training camp in a remote part of Massachusetts, subsisting on whole grains, carrot juice and meat that we have hunted ourselves.

OK, I exaggerate. But we are going to be kicking it at that gig. More soon.

Having grown up in the era of 1960s hit radio, I have a deep appreciation for the tightly arranged three-minute record. A great three-minute record glows like a gem. There's no wasted motion. It's like a dream that you can return to again and again.

Over time, and having listened to many other styles of music, I found that many hard-bop records of the 1950s and early 1960s, the early LP era, had such great vibe and hi-fi sound to them -- the whole band is performing live in the studio, and there's such great feeling and playing. The only trouble is, those records have so much soloing and take so long to get to the point.

The idea may not be original with me, but I wondered, what if you tried to get that great vibe and feel and musicianship of those great jazz records, but had the concise, tight structure of a three-minute pop tune?

When I had the opportunity to make my first record of instrumental pop tunes, "Side One," the sound engineer, Greg Duffin, understood all of this immediately. Greg had earned a degree in broadcast engineering, then worked for Lou Whitney in Springfield, Missouri, in an all-analog setting. Greg knows a warm tube tone when he hears one.

What's a bit odd about all of this is that the recording group of myself, Dennis, Paul and Lance is sort of a rock band. We can't help it -- we came up through the rock basements. As much as we may try to stretch away from a rock background toward other forms of music, the rock will always be there. So there's a bit of tension that I believe benefits the records -- a rock band stretching toward other forms.

The term I tend to use is "moody and instrumental pop music." Instrumental music engages the listener in a different way from vocal music -- you don't have to process verbal information. Plus, not too many people are making instrumental pop music in a non-retro way, so the field is wide open.

Since there's no vocal in the center, we're free to move away from verse-chorus-verse song forms. This opens up all kinds of possibilities and allows for bits of improvisation. If it gets "jazzy" at times, it's as a style, not as an art form. The composition comes first. This is pop music, and that means that anything can happen.

With the second record, "Mood Lit," the production is more stripped-down, more immediate, fewer overdubs, and the band may be swinging it a bit harder. We just grooved and rocked and had fun and tried to swing it as hard as we could. Some of that feeling made it onto the tape, I believe.

To make swinging, grooving and moody instrumental music in the form of three-minute tunes -- it seems like such an obvious thing, but not many people are doing it.