When: Monday, Sept 29 7:30pm EST

Where: https://youtube.com/live/fgepDq2dZcI?feature=share

Who gets 10%: CLUB PASSIM https://www.passim.org Not just a gig. Home

http://paypal.me/vancevancevance or https://venmo.com/vancevancevance or VanceFunder P.O. Box 17, Arlington, MA 02476

*PRIVATE COACHING AVAILABLE - Contact me (vance@vancegilbert.com) for songwriting, performance, and voice coaching.

***CUSTOM SONGS - Expensive, but sure, you want one about you or your family or something.

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HERB GARDNER, 1938-2025

Abbie texted me, telling me her father was coming to my show, and that he was a big fan.

“OK”.

What little I knew about Herb was that he played some piano and some trombone, but loved the singer songwriter genre me and his daughter call our careers.

It was a coffeehouse in Needham some years ago, and I played what amounted to a great set. My optometrist came to the show. Debbie N. from high school came to the show. It was packed.

I was in pretty great voice. It was the end of the evening, and rather than stepping out and encoring with some large bravado and voice-filled acapella piece, I took a chance.

“Is Herb here?” His hand came up. There was a piano. “Let’s do something together, Herb”.

“Sure”. He ambles up to the piano and sits. The unplanned-ness of this all is now reaching the audience, and they are quiet with slightly nervous anticipation. “What do you have in mind?”, asked Herb with no mic, but audible enough for the audience.

Old geezer. I’d better pick a standard that I can at least make entertaining.

“How about 'The Nearness Of You'?”, he replied with the two musically consummate, genius words that humbly, solemnly, and confidently mean “I can do pretty much everything”.

“What key?”

What happened there was epic, historic, and began a relationship that made it so that this man played on at least 3-4 of the last 7 times I’ve played Club Passim.
He has been on my last 2 albums.
On piano, I asked him to play a Tom Waits kind of thing on “Cousin Shelly’s Station Wagon”.
He’s the swing trombone on "Bad For Me” and “Zombie Pattycake”.
He the whole funk horn section on “Close To You”, like a one-man Earth Wind & Fire horn section.
On “Another Great Day Above Ground” he swings the ‘bone again, with Chris Smither on guitar. All I did was sing.

To record at Riverview Sound there are 4 short flights to the studio. Sure, he rested on the landing at 2, but adamantly refused to have Sam set up studio on the ground floor. He wanted to be where we were doing what we do.

And he’s gone at 87 and it’s just not fair.

When asked, sure he’d tell you all the people he’s played wither the last 75 years. You can look that up. The list is mind boggling. Teaching, songwriting, like I said - look it up. But when asked what he wanted as celebration of his departure, I’ve been told he replied, “A party. With jamming. Otherwise all the other details - surprise me”.

Love you Pops.