Okay. It's an exciting week. I can hardly wait to get started.

This week we answer some of those burning questions from the minds of Tauranga's music scene watchers, questions like...

What do musicians do when they go on holiday? Can you ever have too many Bob Dylan albums? Also this week: the last time you'll ever read about Hot Club Sandwich in this column. Probably.


The Andrew London trio.

So let's start at the end. Since I mentioned recently the imminent Tauranga arrival of The Andrew London Trio for a couple of shows, my email has been awash with people asking what has happened to Hot Club Sandwich. Hot Club were a swing trio fronted by Andrew, which often featured a chap called Nils Olsen on various wind instruments. They had built up quite a following round here over several years.

People are understandably confused since the new trio is also fronted by Andrew (as the name would suggest) and also features Nils on various wind instruments. The difference is that in place of Hot Club's venerable Terry Crayford on bass, you'll now find Andrew's wife Kirsten.

So, in a very credible imitation of a journalist, I rang Andrew on your behalf and asked him what happened.

In fact, he says, Hot Club retired around 2012...

'We quite simply ran out of Wellington work when the economic recession hit the corporate sector, and Terry at 75 was less enthusiastic about travelling out of town. I was enjoying doing small cafe gigs with my wife Kirsten playing bass and, since her other band broke up, we have been able to build this unit up to about where HCS was.”
He says there are a few musical differences: 'A female voice obviously gives the trio a hormone balance it never had. Girls are good in bands…they have a civilising influence. We have also started to deviate from the ‘hot club' swing style. Although it is still a big part of our sound, our new album Ladies a Plate has some rocky and funky elements HCS seldom explored. It's due out in about three weeks I hope.”

The Andrew London Trio play the Historic Village and Omokoroa Boat Club on 20 and 21 September. For details see www.taurangamusic.com.

Also releasing a new album around then is Kokomo who embark on a ‘Tour of Tauranga' to launch Bigger Than Brando, the band's 10th studio outing. The band plays Katikati, Alimento Cafe and the Papamoa Tavern on September 11, 12 and 14. See www.kokomo.co.nz for details. More on that in the Sun next week.

And what do musicians do when they go on holiday? Well if you're a musical family holidaying in New York you do musical things! That's the plan for Robbie Laven, Marion Arts and son Oscar who head off to the Big Apple this weekend.

On the list: a sitar lesson for Robbie from a top Indian sitar teacher; a master-class in classical guitar with international guitarist Raphaella Smits for Marion; and bassoon and tenor sax lessons for Oscar.

Then there are the gigs, which include The Charles Mingus Big Band, the Carol King musical Beautiful on Broadway (they say the neon lights are bright), a Battle of the Tenor Saxes concert with Odean Pope, Pharoah Sanders and James Carter at the Blue Note Jazz Club (Oscar jammed with James Carter at the Django Reinhardt festival at Samois, France), Dizzy's Club at the Lincoln Centre which has concerts by Monty Alexander and Duke Ellington's baritone sax player, and a trip to world music venue Drom.

Yep, that's what musicians call a holiday.

And let's wrap up with that Dylan question. How many albums is too many? Fans will be assessing again come Christmas with the announcement this week of a new boxed set, this time 6 CDs containing the Complete Basement Tapes, sessions that Dylan recorded in 1967 with The Band while recuperating from his motorbike accident."

There are multiple takes of some songs but 138 tracks in all. Which should be enough for anybody. That arrives in November, with – apparently – an album of Bob's Sinatra covers to be released in the meantime. That's a whole lotta Bob.

Till next week...