Pepperdine University – Dec 15th

Pepperdine – Dec 15th

This is our third appearance at Pepperdine University and it turns out to be a Christmas concert. WOW!! What new inspirations this brings to my thinking about appearances in Los Angeles in the future. Normally, for a long time now, my Los Angeles audience has met me at the Playboy Jazz Festival or the Long Beach Festival, which are huge events with lots of artists and distance from the stage to many festival music lovers. So being two feet and a little bend at the waist to touch hands with people in the first row was the description of an intimacy with my LA people that hasn’t occurred since the early days of my career (like at the Troubadour and the Bla Bla Café). This was really something quite special and I could feel that specialness emanating from this audience where the farthest seat was 180 feet away.

My cousin Sandy Moss and her husband were there, Shireen Reid (YAY!) from MusicCares came to say hello, Cat Bolton and the kids met me back stage before the show, Cindy Landon, Tom Canning, Jim Darby (one of my new best friends), and as you can guess lots of folks who live just around the corner from me all came to the show as well. That’s a great thing to be able to do in my hometown, so to speak.

The program we did was a kind of mix assortment of holiday treats and other old favorites of my music. That was a serious winning ticket! What a concept! And so several times I mentioned doing this program as a regular thing and got a great response. I need to bring back this intimacy to my home audience. I’m thinking Christmas time 2015.

Everyday I thank God for my fabulous band that has been so important to what I do for many years now. What a lucky and blessed guy I am. I said this in a little invocation back stage with the band before starting. I also said I hoped and wished for a continuation of this joy and love with my band and this little mini-ministry.

So Happy Thanksgiving, again, and Season’s Greetings and I pray joy and love and peace be yours forever more.

Love,

Al