Every Tuesday for twenty years, he has walked onto the same small stage at nine thirty, nodded to the bass player and started with the same standard. After that, nothing is fixed.
A weekly residency is a strange discipline. The room is half full on a rainy night and overflowing after a good review. The regulars request songs he stopped playing years ago. And every week, he says, the music has to be new, or there is no point in coming back.
Go on a Tuesday. Sit near the front. When he closes his eyes during the second set, that is the song he was waiting all evening to play.
