Tin Pan

Well, that’s a wrap.

I have just 8 more hours on Turkish soil and then I’m off to Dubai to start the next phase of this adventurous life of creation.

If I haven’t thanked you personally for all your support, love, attention, applause, musicianship, taste, fun, affection, and / or friendship, please know that your presence made life in Turkey feel like a warm and loving home and I am truly moved and grateful for you. Looking forward, I have hope. Looking back I have sadness but few regrets.

Sayenizde İzmir’de yuvamı buldum. Öpüldünüz ve görüşmek üzere.

Yours,
Jesse and Tin Pan.

Sub week continues with Aygû on the bass (with the beard) and Bülent on the tenor saxophone with Caner playing guitar. Do you remember back in the day when Caner was the main guitar player for this band. It was great to have back on his primary instrument. Dude is a slayer. The rhythm section was super fun last night. Everything felt bouncy and energetic. This photo is from the van on the way to the show.

On the ride home, I shared the back of the van with these two characters here. Bülent is a trip! He’s got a lot of great stories about the scene and he seems to know everyone. Which means. . . gossip!! Not that I like gossip or encourage it. But it is a lovely feeling to be part of a scene to the extent that people feel comfortable sharing their opinions of others in a fun, humorous way.

Bülent is telling tales in a lovely mode of slangy Turkish and Aygû is nodding silently and filling in some blanks and opinions of his own and me, being that I don’t know these people get to have the privilege of being an arm chair psychologist and philosopher, dispensing my own version of Solomon-esque crack-pot wisdom. For example: “A lot of people who have huge, bossy egos like that are really quite insecure.”

Nearing the end of my stay here in Turkey, it is a point of pride that I can hang with the language enough to understand the funny and the serious and most of the details of what is being said. I have to ask for a word here and there but mostly I’m able to flow with it.

Bülent makes a point of not letting me speak any English around him. “You’re in Turkey. Speak Turkish.”