In anticipation of a total eclipse coming to Rochester, N.Y. on April 8, we threw together this brief eclipse medley and performed it during our April 4 date at the Little Theatre Cafe with a little improvisation mixed in.
Here’s wishing the world’s inhabitants a pleasant eclipse experience on Monday.
And when Thursday rolls around, remember that on every Thursday in April, Watkins and the Rapiers perform from 7-9 PM at the Little Theatre Cafe, where the moon has never blocked the house lights.
Here’s a novel way to celebrate your birthday. Book a gig with your band, and ask your fellow group members to sing songs you’ve written, the ones you usually sing.
That’s what Watkins and the Rapiers founding member Tom Whitmore asked his bandmates to do on his birthday, Thursday, Oct. 5., to be celebrated at the Little Theatre Café. That has led the band to reimagine many of Tom’s most popular tunes for that night’s performance.
Tom Whitmore’s birthday night kicks off an October Thursday residency at the Little that on other nights will feature a lederhosen-filled celebration of Oktoberfest and a tribute to The Band’s main songwriter Robbie Robertson, who passed away Aug. 9. Watkins and the Rapiers also has a small collection of new songs to introduce this month at the Little and in a First Friday appearance at the Billsboro Winery in Geneva, N.Y. on Friday, Oct. 6, from 5-7 pm.
The Billsboro performance will likely include a tip of the hat to Geneva Democratic mayoral candidate Jan Regan, who is the sister of Watkins and the Rapiers band members Scott and Kerry Regan. Jan is the runaway favorite in the race, according to a poll of Regan family members.
Admission to all of the band’s October performances is free of charge, and no reservations are required.
Photo of the birthday celebration at the top of this post is by Mack Male from Edmonton, AB, Canada – Birthday Cake, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109491548
Watkins and the Rapiers return from their annual post-Christmas hibernation with a handful of new tunes that will have their debuts at the band’s multiple May performances in Rochester, including a Monday residency at the Little Theatre Cafe and a Friday, May 19 happy hour performance on the deck at Abilene.
Among the band’s new tunes: Tom Whitmore’s “International Space Station,” which he performed in a space suit for the “What Did I Miss?” chapter of the sometimes annual “If All Rochester Wrote the Same Song” show in March. Not sure we’re going to see the space suit again, but you never know.
Still in planning stages but expected for May is a tribute to Burt Bacharach, the hit-making songwriter who passed away in February.
Let us know if there’s something you’d like to see us do this month. We may still have time to pull it off.
Watkins and the Rapiers 