This week is the week of Road Work Ahead. If you’re unfamiliar with our group think back a bunch of years, to the early 1980’s. Bob Magnusson was living and gigging in Los Angeles and had a record deal with Albert Marx's Discovery Records label. Bob had already done one album as a leader and was organizing his second project. He rounded up pianist Bill Mays, San Diego drummer Jim Plank, and myself and we rehearsed through some of his tunes. The next stop was a Hollywood recording studio where we laid down the tracks for Bob’s album "Road Work Ahead." The direction of the group had some inherent electricity and because of not only the musical ESP but also the human interactive ESP, we decided to continue on, form a band, and call ourselves Road Work Ahead. The idea was to tap into the free advertising angle courtesy of Caltrans and link that up with the hopes of taking the band out on the road.

We were four friends, fully engaged in music, all composing tunes for the group, and all dealing with extensive freeway drive time. Bob and Bill lived in L.A. while Jim and I lived in San Diego. We'd do a hit in Hollywood, Jim and I would sleep under Bill's piano in his house in Studio City, and then after the following evening's gig we'd drive back in the middle of the night, struggling the whole way to stay awake. Sleep deprivation is the part of the equation I'm happy to leave behind but the music itself was priceless.

We went on as a group to record two of my Xanadu album projects (The Path and Bird Raga), two more Road Work Ahead records (Night and Day and Two Generations of Music), a KCET TV show called "Road Work Ahead Performs Four by Four" with Shelly Manne as the host, and many concerts throughout the United States. Leonard Feather wrote about us in the L.A. Times "Another splendid set... this music, halfway between be-bop and the avante garde, bears extended listening..."

In the late 1980's Bill Mays moved to New York City and this marked a big change for the band. Bill had been immersed in the L.A. recording studio scene and really wanted to break away from that world of tense details and morph into the reality of a jazz pianist playing music in real time. New York is the center for this direction and Bill eased right in. The huge distance between Bill's East Coast home and our San Diego contingent pretty much halted our Road Work Ahead exploits for a while. We resurfaced as a group in 1997 and did an inspired show at the Bella Via in Cardiff and garnered a great review in the San Diego Union.

Six more years passed by and in January of 2003 Bill was circling through San Diego (his folks lived here) and had a couple of days free. I called up the rest of the gang, booked a Sunday afternoon hit at Dizzy's (they had just scored a good acoustic piano), and broke out the book of tunes that we used to play to plan what musical vistas we might visit this time around. The concert was a wonderful success and Bill, Jim, Bob, and I vowed to make an effort to do more Road Working ahead. The telepathy and pathos that was generated served as our inspiration and guide.

Our next event was a July, 2003 show at the La Jolla Athenaeum complete with a standing room only audience in attendance. We had a great show, got another glowing review, and on the days following the concert we went into my recording studio and laid down some tracks. Each band member wrote and arranged a few tunes and after a joyous and intense time we emerged with a new recording called "On The Road Again".

Jim Trageser from the North County Times gave the recording an "A+" rating. He writes, “the result is a collection of seven new songs by the band members and four covers that show off both their remarkable virtuosity and the kind of empathetic interplay that only comes with time. Sprague's playing is always pleasant and this new CD shows a side to his playing we do not always get to hear. The new songs are gorgeous and complex enough to challenge the musicians and also hold the listener's interest."

And that brings us up to date. Two weeks back we rehearsed a collection of new music and played a week of concerts in the Bay Area. This week we’re sharing out trip with L.A., Pt. Loma, Temecula, Hollywood and Pacific Beach. We’re also heading into the studio tomorrow to lay down the new music. I hope you can make it out to one of the concerts. Look below for the details. I think you’ll love the music and I know you’ll love Mays’ backstory on “There’s a Small Hotel”. Does a hotel like this really exist?

See you out there and thanks for reading, Peter