Time Flies.........

Well, it's been a while since we've checked in hasn't it? Let's see, what have we been doing since November? We had our usual great time at Bar 71 and our yearly holiday celebration/fundraiser for the Ladies Auxiliary of the K of C in Middletown (love those meatballs!), then went "private" for a while and entertained the nice folks at The Wetherington Golf & Country Club and at The Great Wolf Lodge on New Year's Eve, and finally, we played a wonderful party for the employees of the Scripps Company at the Syndicate in Newport.

After the first of the year, we went into rehearsal mode and are currently working on some wonderful "new" tunes to add to our playlist. We're also working hard on booking our yearly allotment of dates between now and the end of the year. Stay tuned for new tunes and new places to play!

Now that we have that behind us, we're coming out of hiding this weekend to appear in one of the friendliest spots in town-the cozy confines of Win, Place, or Show in West Chester. "The Show" has the friendliest staff in town, cold beer, great food, and of course, this Saturday evening, Feb 20, they also have some of the best music in town! We'll start playing about 9:30 and keep going until the wee hours of Sunday morning. Show up early to get a good parking spot and a good seat, and treat yourself to one of the best burgers in town.

Also, we are honored to be included in the City Beat Magazine Best of Cincinnati edition. You can vote for us as the "Best Local Band' in the "Out and About" category. Just click on the choices and scroll down to our name-there are a lot of band names in the category-we're in the first 30-40 names. You can get to the voting page by clicking on the "Best of Cincinnati" logo above. There are categories for anything and everything in town. Vote for as many or as few as you care to. We found out about this late in the game, so vote for us, and let your friends (and our friends) know that we're a part of the poll, and we'd love to have their vote and make a good showing.

We look forward to another great and exciting year. We think you'll enjoy some of the new tunes and new venues we're exploring. We'll see you soon!

Hittin' The Bars Again (and MORE to Come!)

Hey all! Thanks for checking back in. Well the leaves are falling, the trickers got their treats, and the clocks fell back. I guess that means it's time to go back inside for a while, and this month we've got dates at our two favorite places to play.

This weekend we'll be at Bar Seventy One again. If you haven't been there yet, what are you waiting for ? You don't know what you're missing, it's certainly one of the premier nightspots in the city. They have a great dance floor, excellent food, lots of room to sit between dances and more TV's than a Holiday Inn. If you have been there, well then come on back to see us again-we'd love to see your smiling face on the other side of the stage, and we'd love the company.

Later this month (November 20) we'll be making yet another appearance in the cozy confines of Win, Place, or Show in Sharonville/West Chester/Pisgah (depends upon who you're talking to). As always, we expect to see friendly faces (new and old) and creative dancing moves designed to avoid the pole in the middle of the dance floor! WPS is a great place to eat, drink, and be merry. They have the main room in the back, the old "Tommy's" annex in the front (takes you back to the early days) and a huge outdoor deck with ample seating, in case you feel the need to cool off after showing your moves on the dance floor (or burning a heater if you're so inclined).

After November, we'll be dressing up in our finest duds to play for our friends at Wetherington Country club and for the nice people from the K of C Auxiliary in Middletown. We haven't finalized the details yet, but it appears we will be back at the Great Wolf Lodge in Mason for New Year's Eve. We'll let you know as soon as we do.

Also, you'll note that on our schedule, we have a listing for Santa's Goody Bag Band's annual Christmas Tour on December 19. For those of you who don't know, members of the Second Wind Horn section have one date a year that they specify as a definite "no book" date for the band, and that is typically the last Saturday before Christmas. For........ how should we say?............AN AWFUL LONG TIME, we've dedicated this one night per year to our annual Christmas Tour. Our guys, along with about 2o or so more of our great musical friends, don our finest long red underwear, suspenders, and other assorted Christmas finery and pop in to as many stops (bars, restaurants, and the occasional private party) as we can in that evening to entertain the guests and patrons of those fine establishments with some of our favorite holiday tunes. In the process we travel with our "elves" that accept donations from the crowds on hand that benefit the Shriner's Childrens Hospitals and other very worthy children's charities. Through these efforts we've been able to raise well over $40,000 in donations over the years that has gone to some of these wonderful causes. Stay tuned here for more details.

Last, but not least, we're at the end of our season once again, so it's time to retool and re plan for next year. As always, we're very interested in your feedback. If you have any songs you'd like us to add, or if you have any suggestions (or connections to!) any establishments you'd like to see us add, we'd love to hear from you. Please drop us a line, or leave your suggestions in the comments section here. Thanks again for being there-we couldn't do it without you!

Summer's Winding Down........

Well we've zipped through August and are well into September now. As usually happens with our group, we spend an awful lot of time playing outdoors during the summer months. As long as the weather cooperates we love playing outdoors-when it doesn't........well not so much, but we've had very few issues with bad weather over the years.

Since our last post, we've played for the wonderful folks at St. Margret of York (always a great time!), The Proud family and their wonderful guests at their annual Proudstock party at their home in Liberty Township (now they know how to throw a party!), Ben & Becca Huffman's wedding reception at beautiful and historic Moonlight Gardens (our first time playing there-we'd love to play there again-thanks to Ben & Becca for making us a part of their special day), ~AND~Theo & Megan Papanikolaou's wedding reception at the Marquise Banquet Hall in Wilder (thanks Mr. & Mrs. P-we a great time-yummy desserts too!).

Last but not least, we were honored to participate in a special one set benefit at Win, Place, or Show along with The Josh Pilot Band, Dallas Moore, & the Snowshoe Crabs. Proceeds of the benefit were donated to help offset two friends of WPS who have been directly affected by colon cancer. Thanks to WPS for allowing us to be a part of the program.

Now that we're well into September, we only have a handul of outdoor dates remaining on our calendar, including two of our favorites this weekend. This Friday evening (the 11th) we'll be playing at the St. Susanna Family Festival in Mason. We'll start playing at 8:00. We have a long history with this festival, and it gets bigger and better every year-come on out for some great tunes and other festival fare.

On Saturday evening (the 12th) we'll be making our TENTH annual appearance at the Vinoklet Art & Wine Festival in Colerain Twp. If you've been there in the past, you already know what a great event this one is every year-a beautiful setting, friendly crowd, great art to browse and buy, scrumptious food, award winning wines (cold beer too for those who prefer hops to grapes), and of course Horn-Charged Tunes from Second Wind. Come on out and join the crowd-the weather is supposed to be perfect, and we'd love to see you there!

St. Margaret of York '09 & More

This Friday night (Aug 7) marks our annual visit to one of our favorite summer festival stops, St. Margaret of York in Loveland. For those of you who have been around us for a while, you may know that this festival was an important part of our heritage. Our 5 piece horn section was originally conceived and created to play this festival by our friend and trumpet playing bandmate Tom Heitkemper to lay down some hot horn licks with The SMOYs, a band put together by St. Margaret of York's parishoners. Many of the arrangements we still play today were originally penned by Tom way back in the day for our "once a year" performance at this festival. Three of our original horn players (Tom, Don, & Paul) from that period are still active members of Second Wind, and the other two (Mark "Fern" Greiner & Mark "Buggs" Hagee) still make occasional guest appearances with our group.

In addition to the historical significance of this festival, it's one of the biggest and best in the city-they know how to do it up right! They have great food, great rides, cold beer, margaritas, and a friendly and familiar crowd. We've also heard (uncomfirmed) rumors that they deal a lively game of Blackjack out under the tents-not sure about that, but there always seems to be a crowd there. Come on out and celebrate the season with some horn-charged tunes with Second Wind. We start playing at about 7:30 and wrap up about 11:30.

Now.....what have we been doing for the last few weeks? First, we wrapped our Blast of Brass summer tour with Bluestone Ivory with a fabulous concert at Sharonville's Gower Park on Friday, July 24. The weather was great, the setting was perfect, the crowd was wonderful, and our friends from BSI were great fun to work with. We ended the evening with a powerful set featuring all 17 players from both bands, on stage at the same time. We thank Lee and the rest of the group for conceiving and producing these shows. It took a tremendous amount of time and effort on their part to do so, and we were honored to be a part of such a unique musical event. We all appreciated the opportunity to work with and get to know all of the players in their band better. both personally and musically. Thanks guys-it was great fun!

We've also kept ourselves occupied with wedding receptions for a couple of different friends of the band. We played at the Sheraton in Sharonville, and at the Marriott at Union Centre, and had a great time at both events. We love playing wedding receptions, and it's worth what we charge just to see us dressed up in our fancy duds! If you're interested in having us play at a wedding reception, drop us a line at secondwind-band@cinci.rr.com and we'll contact you for details. We typically do 4-6 weddings per year, and we'd love to do more of them.

First Blast, Some Raindrops & Blue Ash

We had a great crowd and a great time at Fairfield on July with our first Blast of Brass Concert with Bluestone Ivory. The weather cooperated and everything went off like clockwork! Everyone in attendance had a great time, and had an opportunity to listen to and watch a unique and entertaining presentation. If you missed it, you'll have one more opportunity on July 24 at Sharonville. Stay tuned for more details.

We followed up our July 3 performance with a concert for the city of St. Bernard the next evening, July 4. Unfortunately the weatherman didn't cooperate nearly as well and we started the evening playing to a small, somewhat dampish crowd. Eventually the raindrops did subside, and the crowd grew to a relatively sizable group that enjoyed our final sets and the fireworks that followed. Thanks to the good people in St. Bernard for making us a part of your festivities, and we'll see you in September for the St. Clement Festival.

Our next public performance will be Friday, July 17 at the Blue Ash Towne Square at the corner of Hunt & Cooper roads. Blue Ash is known for their entertainment, and this event is first class. We'll be playing two long sets between 8:00 & 11:00 PM. Bring your lawn chairs and coolers and join us for a great evening of music.

We'll see you real soon!

Blast of Brass, More Fireworks In St. Bernard & Introducing Our New Member

After months of exchanging emails & phone calls, and several combined practices the members of Second Wind and Bluestone Ivory will be taking the stage together for a joint concert presentation on Friday, July 3 at Fairfield's Red, White, & Kaboom. The concert will start at 6:30 and run until 10:00 PM with Rozzi's fireworks immediately following overhead. Each band will do a solo set with Second Wind taking the stage first, followed by Bluestone Ivory. The two bands will combine into one band, The Blast of Brass Band for a final set featuring some of your favorite tunes from both bands. This is one significant change from last year-fans and members of both bands noted they would have liked to have seen the bands do more tunes together, so we've responded by putting a full set of music together featuring a combined group that features a total of 17 musicians onstage with an 8 piece horn section. Wow! The final tuneup rehearsal was on Sunday, and it was spectactular. Bring your lawnchair and cooler to The Village Green Park, get comfy and get ready for a night of great entertainment.

On Saturday, July 4, Second Wind will be performing a concert for the City of St. Bernard. The concert get's under way at about 6:00 PM and goes until 10:00 PM with Rozzi's fireworks following. The concert will be held at St. Bernard's Ross Park, which is right off the corner of Vine Street and East Ross Avenue. This will be our first concert for the City of St. Bernard, and we're greatly looking forward to it.

Last but not least, for those of you who are long time fans of Second Wind, you'll notice a new face in our band starting this weekend. One of our founding members, keyboardist Dave Frey has left our lineup to pursue other musical and personal interests. While we'll miss Dave's contributions to our band on and off the stage, we're all very excited to introduce and welcome our newest member, Bill Houston. Bill has been a member of two standout local bands, DV8 & Nightlife for the last 18 years. He's performed with our band as a sub a number of times in the past filling in on tenor sax and baritone sax. Bill's primary focus in our group will be on keyboards, but in addition to sax, he also will be doing some work on flute, guitar, and who knows what else? He plays nearly every instrument in the band, and is a lot of fun to watch on stage. In addition to the musical talent that Bill brings to Second Wind, he's a great guy-if you have the opportunity, come on up to him and welcome him to our band. We're sure he'd appreciate it.

Have a great week, and join us Friday & Saturday evenings for a great weekend!

Back At Bar Seventy One And More!

We had the opportunity to play for the good folks at the Cincinnati Country Club a couple of weeks ago for their annual EXTREME Party. What a great time-those people know how to throw a party! Since it was a private function, we've been out of the public eye for a while, but this Friday night we're back at Bar Seventy One, a great place to play and a wonderful place to have a good time. If you've been out there to see us, come on out and join in the fun again-we'd love to see you. If you haven't been there yet, you don't know what you're missing. It's a huge facility with plentiful seating, a huge dance floor, a WONDERFUL staff, great food, and ALWAYS a great crowd. We've always had a great time playing there, and we know you'll have a great time too. It's located at the I-71 North and Mason Montgomery/Fields Ertel Road exit. You'll see the tall sign right next to the exit ramp, and it's located right behind the old Bob Evans restaurant and right next to the DSW Shoe store. As you can tell by the picture, Brian had a GREAT time there last month. Check out their website at http://www.barseventyone.com/ for more details.


On Sunday of this week we got together with the boys from Bluestone Ivory for our first group rehearsal for Blast of Brass II. We'll be appearing again this year for joint concerts on July 3 in Fairfield and on July 24 in Sharonville. The two bands will be playing a full final set together featuring some of our tunes, some of theirs, and plenty of sound with a combined 17 piece band with an 8 piece horn section. The rehearsal was pretty spectacular itself-stay tuned for more details.


Monday we got together and practiced with Jamie Steele from The Vibe. Jamie has graciously (and enthusiastically) agreed to help us out for our June 13 concert for Bellevue. Brian has a family commitment that day, so he can't join us, but Jamie is a seasoned pro and we're confident he'll do a great job and help us put on a great show. Come on out and check it out.

See you soon!