Andy is coming back to Philly, and we’ll be rehearsing this week for his return shows at Roller’s on January 20th and 21st at 8:00 pm. Tickets are $20. From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

For a time in the 1970s, it seemed that Andy Pratt was rock’s next big thing, with his one hit, “Avenging Annie” (a conflation of Woody Guthrie's “Pretty Boy Floyd,” prog-rock, and hippie culture sung in a great falsetto over dynamite piano playing), but he ended up a near-miss as a pop star. It was a shame, since the eponymous album that contained the hit also had some perfectly gorgeous, musically adventurous songs that were easily the equal of the era's more famed songwriters. If, like us, you find yourself listening to the vinyl original now and then and wondering what happened to the erstwhile pop genius, here's welcome news. He's been writing and recording for years... [Andy is working on his 29th CD; most of his catalog is still in print. —Tony]

Besides Andy Pratt on piano, guitar, and vocals, the band includes Jim Dragoni on guitar and Fred Weiss on bass.

This Sunday will be my first concert at a church in downtown Philadelphia, Trinity Memorial Church at 2212 Spruce Street. The trio includes Barry Sames, a distinguished pianist with a long history of playing jazz in church, Randy Sutin on vibes, and Jazz & Joe founder Alan Segal on bass. We start at 8:00 following the service.

UPDATE: We are playing the service as well, starting at 7:00.

Le Cochon Noir serves upscale barbecue and more (I can vouch for the food—it’s excellent). 5070 Parkside Avenue, Suite 5100E, Philadelphia. We hit at 8:00 p.m.

We’ll be playing danceable selections from the Great American Songbook. There’s no real dance floor, but a few people tried to dance anyway last time, and there’s a whole mess of comfy chairs near the bandstand for listening. We play from 7:00 to 11:00 p.m.

Le Cochon Noir serves upscale barbecue and more (I can vouch for the food—it’s excellent). 5070 Parkside Avenue, Suite 5100E, Philadelphia. We hit at 8:00 p.m.

The concert is this Sunday, June 26th at Jacobs Music Recital Hall (at Jacobs Music, 1135 North Easton Road, Willow Grove, PA) starting at 2:00 pm. Since Jacobs Music is a piano store, I'm betting there will be a niiice piano there! Tickets are $12 at the door. Light refreshments (including Katie's homemade chocolate-chip cookies) will be served at intermission.

The program includes fresh arrangements of some classics from the Great American Songbook (aka "standards") and some jazzy instrumentals as well; late-night, smoky jazz on a Sunday afternoon. Katie will be joined by Lenny Pierro on sax, Tom Lawton on piano, and Madison Rast on bass. (For drummers only: I'm also excited to be using my new-to-me classic Sonorlite snare from 1985.)

Roller’s is at 8142 Germantown Avenue in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia. $10 cover, please call 215-247-0707 for reservations.

I had been planning to go to the Battle of the Brewery Bands at Stoudt's in Adamstown Saturday (6:00-10:00), but obviously now I can't. I have two tickets available if anyone wants to go. $60 face value; $50 OBO. My email is in the footer. Thanks!

Anyway, I hope to be playing more in public in the future and have a gig coming up on Tuesday, January 18 at Chris's. I’m privileged to be working with Ward Marston, a charismatic and dazzling pianist, and vocalist Rosemary Benson. Also in the band are Jack Hegyi on bass and Jim Levendis on trumpet. I'm also looking forward to playing Chris' house set, a sweet custom kit made by Philadelphian Matt Gaither.

Chris’ Jazz Cafe is at 1421 Samson Street. We are on from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM. Cover is $10.

The “Everything” Sampler Pack from West Coast Shaving

When I started wet shaving in 2008, I ordered a small sampler pack of five kinds of blades from West Coast Shaving, and when they ran out, ordered 100 of the Derby “Extra” blades. It took over two years, but I finally used them all up. I was very satisfied with the Derbys, but was craving a little adventure (I want to be more like the Old Spice guy), so I ordered the “Everything” pack with 15 kinds of blades (but no Wilkinson Sword?!). By the end of 2010, I’ll know if the Derbys have met their match.

I was not familiar with places outside the southeastern corner of the Keystone State, so for guidance we turned to Lew Bryson's dead-tree compendium “Pennsylvania Breweries,” an iPhone app called Find Craft Beer and, of course, beermapping.com.

The first stop was Selin’s Grove Brewing which had the most imaginative and best-executed menu of any place on the trip, including many vegetarian options. Their beer was good, too. We sat outside in perfect weather. A delightful experience, and only a mere three hours from home!

Next was Blue Canoe Brewery in Titusville. Blue Canoe occupies the building formerly occupied by Four Sons, which we had visited in years past; not much has changed. More good food and beer and even live music.

Considering its size, Erie itself disappointing, almost devoid of craft beer, at least according to our references. We had lunch at Matthews Trattoria & Martini Lounge. Fine food, but macros only. From there, we walked a few blocks to the only brewpub, The Brewerie at Union Station, which, in the middle of Friday afternoon was basically empty. Andy’s Pub had an acre of pool tables, but only two beers on tap: Bud Lite or Miller Lite. Fortunately, their bottle list included some winners even though they were out of many of them.

On the way home we stopped for lunch at Otto’s Pub & Brewery in State College. They had the best beer of any place and fine food as well.

Overall, we liked Selin’s Grove best followed closely by Otto’s.

There are two stages, one indoor and one outdoor, with bands changing every hour. Check out this lineup. I am playing with the Rhythm Kings, a classic-swing/Dixieland jazz band from 7:00 to 8:00 on the indoor stage. Location is the former Roebling Wire Works building (675 South Clinton Avenue) in the Chambersburg section of Trenton. Linky for full info. Free!

To get maximum hop extraction, we tried something called the Texas Two-Step, which splits the boil into two stages. Previously, we boiled 2.5 gallons of water and added all the ingredients to that, then added 2.5 gallons to the fermentation bucket. The Two-Step has you split your ingredients and add half to each 2.5-gallon boil. Even with that, the beer tasted weak and watery at first. Disappointing. Now that the beer has been in bottles for a few weeks it tastes much better, but it still has virtually no hop flavor. Either our hops are “weak,” or we didn’t use enough of them, or both, probably.

For our next batch (a Hoegaarden clone), we will be using pellet hops and adding some of our Glacier hops for aroma. Hoping this batch will be much better.

A few drafts were devoted to hops. Here’s the first. It should have been posted in October. Confound those insolent, indolent interns.]

Anne picking the driest Glacier hops off the bines in the first picking session in early October.

Besides our regular crop of tomatoes (a record 350-odd this year), we (meaning my wife) usually grow other random crops in a corner of our little quarter-acre lot. Some brewing experiments led us to try growing our own hops.

We picked up five hop rhizomes from Keystone Homebrew in early 2008. None did well the first year, but this year our Glacier plant really took off, covering an entire wall. We started harvesting the hops while they were still on the bine, picking the driest ones at first. As novice hop growers, it was difficult to determine when to harvest them. We may have harvested them a little late, but most still seemed green and moist and only just beginning to dry out. We air-dried them briefly and bagged them for the freezer. Below is a picture of about half our harvest. Hops weigh almost nothing, but I think we came close to a pound.