My salad days with Stick Men

I recently had the pleasure of spending a few days with my friends in Stick Men: Tony Levin, Markus Reuter, and Pat Mastelotto. They were in Italy for a short tour, and I was invited to open their show in Carrara, in northern Tuscany — a place I had never visited before. Luckily, I had some free time to wander around both before the concert and the following day.

Organized by Paolo Bedini in support of the Parole Liberate project, the show featured a half-hour set of mine alongside my good friend EUGENE. We were also joined by guest trumpet player Lorenzo Eva and Pat Mastelotto himself, who kindly agreed to perform with us. Unfortunately, Alessandro Inolti couldn’t make it to this gig; we missed him, though we had a pretty solid backup plan! The entire show was recorded, and I plan to release the soundboard audio on Bandcamp at some point. In the meantime, you can watch some high-quality footage of our set on YouTube, where I’ve already uploaded a couple of videos: Building Homes and Frantic.

To top it all off, Stick Men rehearsed in my hometown for a couple of days before hitting the road. We had a wonderful time, which served as yet another reminder of how special these people are. I am incredibly grateful for their friendship and the musical moments we share.

Here are some snapshots from our time together (click on the pictures to enlarge).