Whew…post tour exhaustion. Hits you for just a couple days. But you can stay active in a kind of hazy-confused way. I am unloading the truck, transferring gear, merch and assorted junk back to the basement. Setting up to play on alternate trips down. Psyched to experiment a bit with guitar sounds and play just “freely” –after the very planned out, despite the improv sections –  three hours you play this difficult music onstage. I’ll also be testing out a new piece by Line6 – the M9 – to see if it’s a cool solution to distant fly gigs.

This tour was great! Thanks so much for showing up — and making the shows memorable for us. We were so psyched so many people shared in the 25th Year Tour Reunion of Ike Willis and Ray White. Sadly, Ray had a real bad throat/bronchial infection for a couple days, we apologize if you were in one of those cities…and we’ll make it up to you! But generally — it was amazing to see and hear these two guys – this combination that Frank Zappa himself saw so many times as the combo he wanted… The historic albums they have done — so many vinyl copies of which we saw — it was an honor to perform some of those very songs with them, for all of you.

More later – but thanks again for supporting our venture to celebrate and salute the music and art of this most unique of American Composer/Guitarists — Frank Zappa. We are happy and proud that almost 15 years after we started touring, there are many bands now throughout the USA and the world touring and doing Zappa music as well. But we’re also very proud that we remain the band that is dedicated the most to presenting YOU the FAN with a chance to see the Actual Alumni , the genuine items, the people who played on Zappa’s records and toured with him. We appreciate you letting us know you enjoy that. And — despite the obstacles, we’ll continue to do so.

So far we have played live onstage or toured with a list of Zappa alumni including Ike Willis, Ray White, Ed Mann, Napoleon Murphy Brock, Denny Walley, Don Preston, Mike Keneally, Robert Martin, Bunk Gardner, Bob Harris, Thana Harris, Jimmy Carl Black, Arthur Barrow, Roy Estrada, Bruce Bickford.

We’ve performed with many people associated with Zappa or his bands – people like Al Malkin, Jerry Cuccurullo, Andrew Walley  (Denny’s grandson), Geronimo Black (JCB’s son). Performing a number of times with Frank’s sister Candy (Patrice) Zappa was a joy every time and we look forward to performing with her again, hopefully this year. We’ve shared the stage with too many incredible guests to list like Ed Palermo (Ed Palermo Big Band), Jon Fishman (Phish), Gary Lucas (Gods & Monsters, Capt Beefheart Magic Band) David Fiuczynski, Al Schnier, Chuck Garvey, and Jim Loughlin of moe. and so many more.

I say all this to simply review the last decade and a half and say THANK YOU — thanks for supporting what we do, even in lean times. Thanks you for sharing our love of this often off-the-wall music. We have a lot of great plans for the future and we will keep you posted thru all these new communication channels.

Zappy New Year,

Andre’