Our fashion secrets: revealed!

A lot of people ask us about our suits: Where on Earth do we find them? There is no major mystery to this. We all have eBay alerts set up for “vintage men’s suit” in our sizes. And each of us has a good tailor—except for Tommy, who has his own sewing machine and an impressive set of sartorial chops. So for $50 on eBay plus a few nips and tucks, you can look like a million bucks. And if someone in the band orders a cool vintage suit that shows up in the completely wrong size, he brings it to rehearsal and someone else can usually wear it.

The only problem comes when a vintage suit is not quite as cool as eBay made it out to be. Take the specimen at right. It was sold to Charlie as a green sharkskin suit. When it arrived a couple of weeks ago, it was discovered to be off-white, with a sort of basketweave texture, and disturbingly rich in polyester content. It actually seemed to be made of the same material as Charlie’s Aunt Cena’s sofa. There is no tailor in the world that can make this right, Charlie thought—and the band concurred. None of the other guys would go near it.
But a loss for Chaise Lounge is a win for Purple Heart. They’ll pick it up next week. And we only hope the suit eventually finds its way to the musical act it was meant for.

Bottoms up!

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It’s our newest instrumental number. It’s the name of our upcoming CD. And now, thanks to resident Chaise Lounge mixologist Pete Ostle, “Gin Fizz Fandango” is also a cocktail! Band members dutifully taste-tested Pete’s concoction at our rehearsal Monday night and pronounced it both frothy and delicious.
We hope that bartenders at The Hamilton will be serving the drink at our show there this Friday, April 17. But if you just can’t wait, you can make one at home. Here’s Pete’s recipe:
1½ oz. gin
1 oz. St. Germaine
1 oz. fresh lemon juice
1 oz. simple syrup
1 oz. table cream
1 egg white or 1 heaping bar spoon of dried egg white powder
Peychaud’s cocktail bitters
Put all ingredients except Peychaud’s bitters into a cocktail shaker. Shake well with ice. Strain into a stemmed up-glass such as a martini glass. To decorate, garnish with a few shakes of Peychaud’s on top.

St. Valentine's Day down South

Love was in the air at our Valentine’s Day concert. Really! Two couples got engaged during the course of a two-hour show. Maybe the proposals were planned…or maybe the suitors were overcome by the romance of our songs. Who’s to say?
For our part, we were overcome by the hospitality of the staff at the Cabaret at Fredericksburg Square. They showed us and our V-Day dates a wonderful time.
Here is a snapshot of Pete preparing for the gig.
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What's in a name?

We’ve been back in the studio for the past couple of weeks, adding a few tracks our new CD. When we started the project last year, it was going to be called Tick Tock, after a dark, moody new song we had. Later, we decided to name the album Mambo Noir, after an even darker, moodier, newer song. As of last week, we’re sure that the album will be called Gin Fizz Fandango, after the newest song we’ve performed so far. The track is a trombone feature, and Joe Jackson sounds fantastic on it. The feel? You guessed it—dark and moody. The rest of the album is full of peppy, bright, and happy tracks. But for some reason these never seem like good names for albums. Can someone tell us why this is? We’re getting all dark and moody trying to figure it out.