I just finished my new digital short called Marty Kills His Sister. It's kinda creepy if you like that kind of thang. Brad Pike wrote the script and I've been trying to get him to shoot it for a while. Finally, I lost my patience and did it myself. My good friend, and an excellent actor, Charles Edward Hall stars as Marty. When he showed up the day of the shoot I opened the door and looked at him and I was disturbed. He looked like he'd been out drinking all night. I said, "Charles what happened to you? You look bad." He said, "It's my character, man!" I was quite relieved. You'll see how much preparation and effort he put into an comicly intense performance as Marty. Phyllis MacBryde, who is a talented actor as well as a top-notch writer herself, gives a convincingly annoying performance as Marty's sister. She also sings on the soundtrack chiming in on the background vocals for the theme song at the end. I'm in the short film (6 and a half minutes). I'm good friends with me and I'll work cheap for myself. Those are probably my strongest attributes.

Speaking of Phyllis MacBryde, we had the first staged reading for our Jazz musical, Zinzi. It was an amazing amount of work getting the reading on. We had a cast of around 25 or 30 actors including some kids. They were amazingly talented as a group and as individuals. It was the first time we had actually seen the whole script put together so it was very instructive as to what works and what needs work. I'm really proud of the songs I've written for the show and was pleased by the interpretations of the singers in the show. Its nice that close to half of the music in the show was written by Dizzy Gillespie. My mom always says, "...you make your friends and your friends make you" if know what I mean. Karla Mosely as Zinzi is a talented and pretty young performer who is destined for stardom, I think. Ohene Cornelius as Scoot is also a charismatic performer. I could definitely see him in the movies, too. Natalie Carter and Venida Evans are a dynamic comic duo that added so much to the production. We are talking to investors at the moment to line up the right kind of people to be involved in this production. At first we had nobody, now we're having to pick and choose. Who'd've thunk it.

I've got the old band back together and we should be playing some gigs by the fall. Jeff Van Nostrand, Bart McLauglin and Rick Ulfik are back with me and working hard on songs from the new album, songs from the other two albums and some classic covers that everyone loves. It's great to be back and playing with my old compadres. I'll let you know when the gigs are on the gig calendar.

 
Scenes from Marty Kills His Sister

Here are a few scenes from Marty Kills His Sister. Check it out, and if you like it pass it along.