Mar 27, 2019 – The Loft at the City Winery, NYC

​This is such a wonderful room to play. Wonderful sound, great engineers and great folks to welcome you and take care of you through the night thanks John and all with that… and tonight I was totally blessed to be playing with my favorite people the great Tony Mercadante on base and John Platania, the master guitarist from upstate New York, on guitar.. both my great great friends for many years.
Loved this show!

photo by Ambrose Blaine
We started out with my sort of theme song from “Last Chance“, “The Real Thing” ..which is the song the kind of put me on the map in the US and in Europe back in the 70s.
Then we played my new album, Whiskey Salesman…actually it won’t be released until May 17 but the shipment of CDs came in time for the show so I gave the audience a very good taste of that – in fact we played 10 songs in a row from Whiskey Salesman and the folks seem to be really enthusiastic about those songs .. many a tribute to my wife Joan .. all of tribute to the stuff that’s closest to me including my local bar, Parnell’s – and all the friends that Joan and I have there.
I don’t think I have played an entire album of songs all in a row since Last Chance in 1974. And I really enjoyed doing it tonight as I felt people got connected to what album portrays .. as I mentioned, my feeling of love and friendship for my wife Joan and my friends at Parnell’s bar and Parnell’s bar itself… and the friendships with other people wherever. This entire album has that focus and you could feel it tonight.
Then we shifted to one of my new hits on Spotify .. the song I wrote for the golfing girls, Brooke and Britney Henderson.. from Smiths Falls Canada, I’ll Carry For You”.. folks seem to really love this one wherever we play it.
Then we shifted to what I called the Meyer Lansky section of the show.
The reason I call it that is because that was the period of time when I was a staff songwriter at April Blackwood Music at 1650 Broadway .. a building full of songwriters and record labels and producers … people like Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil. Bert Berns, Neil Diamond and others. I wrote my hits there –  like I Can’t Let Go, Angel of the Morning, Wild Thing, Anyway That You Want Me, and many others.
But I was doing another thing there as well .. I was making about three bets a day on the horses. Meyer Lansky happened to be my bookie.
So, in honor of those great rock ‘n’ roll days, we played those hits followed by a tribute to the prisoners …with a song I wrote for them which is now a genuine Spotify smash, “Fuck All The Perfect People”
We encored with one of the hit songs from a fan favorite album from my five or six years ago, “Little Prayers Trilogy”…a song called Track 224… which totally shows off the virtuosity of Tony Mercadante and the great John Platania.. Joan always asks me to play this song so she can watch and listen to John and Tony in the spotlight… they were magic on this and throughout the show tonight… what a blessing for me.
Thanks to all for a special night
So many of my friends attended ..friends from Parnell’s .. Carl, Thruston. Dierdra, Mary, Chris and Ambrose, Brian and his lovely wife Lillian and all his gang… and Bonnie.. Ed, Joe and Charlie and so many others ..so nice of you all to come.
Also Tom Hayes ( videographer and coproducer of my videos for Whiskey Salesman )and his lovely fiancé Kristina
And my Sony Music friends …so great to see you Brittany and James and Lindsey and Megan I believe.. what’s special folks
And the Westchester contingent Al and Debbie and Linda and Dana and Elsa and Tom and so many others that I can’t remember.
Thanks to the brilliant Patrick Wang who just flew in from promoting his latest brilliant film “A Bread Factory“.. Great to see you my friend.
“It was so great to see my friend Charlie Feldman and the folks from BMI.. Charlie, thanks for the great support always and thanks for the kind words tonight… It means a lot.
I lost my notes for this show which included a bunch of more names including a couple of new friends from northern Ireland and another fellow from I think Spain who made the special trip here to see the show… Thanks to all of you for making the extra effort… Much appreciated
So that’s it we’re off and running on this Whiskey Salesman tour
And again to remind everybody that Whiskey Salesman is not just 11 songs there are 11 little videos all focused around Parnell’s bar and my apartment and the spirit of my friends from all over.. so the music and the little films are contained in the package in the form of a CD and a DVD… and as I mentioned to the audience the little video/film of the title track has been excepted in a wonderful film festival called the New Media Film Festival… So on June 4 Joan and I will be walking on the red carpet in Los Angeles, representing the spirit of Parnell’s and our good friends.
Hope to see you soon.