Saturday, August 28, 2010

Hey Reggie, Where the Hell Are You?

Well, it has been a while since I have posted something on this blog and I was trolling around for inspiration when I ran across a website called Reggie Scanlan Photography and sure enough it was the
Reggie I know and played with in the early years of the seventies. We were just a garage band struggling to find our musical ways. When he joined up with our band, he was gonna be our bass guitarist but had to borrow my cousin's Fender bass and amp to play it. And, he refused to sing... not even harmonies. To my knowledge, I believe he hasn't sung a note all these great years with the Rads. Thirty plus years later Reg is still making a living as the bass guitarist for the New Orleans band, "The Radiators".

Reg has played with some of the real legends of New Orleans music like Fess, 'Saint, Booker, Dr. John, Spencer Bohren and many others. We'd get together whenever the Radiators came to San Francisco or Los Angeles. It was always a treat to see him and the guys in the band. Most of the time when I would come home to New Orleans to visit, we'd get together at the "Dream Palace", "Tips" or the "Maple Leaf Bar."

Nowadays, now that I actually live near New Orleans, I never see him mainly because my bar hopping and musical forays have flown away on the wings of a bird especially since Katrina. This is a sketch I did of him in his and my "Maple Leaf" days. The pics I found on the internet all show him in quite the same bass guitar pose. Funny... and I wonder if he still has that hat, ha! Hey Reggie, where the hell are you?

Monday, August 9, 2010

Barksdale Painting: On the upside of downhill!

These are portrait closeups of a painting for the United States Air Force. The painting is something I have been working on off and on since April. It has been a while since I painted portraits in oil like this. I am about three quarter finish with the entire piece which needs to be at the Pentagon by the end of August. What'dya think?