Pics:
Chewtoy bandmembers, left to right: Blake Lowrey-Evans guitar, Tom Rodhouse percussion, Carl Royce upright bass, Michael Carney keyboards, Jim Tennant trumpet, and Dan Gaxiola drums.
Dancers on the beach on a misty morning in Yachats, Oregon.
Baker’s Brew – ready to take the stage at The Main theater in Santa Clarita. Baker’s Brew is an experimental Ambient Jazz quartet based in Los Angeles, California. The group is led by drummer Maury Baker whose performing/recording credits include Janis Joplin, Tim Buckley, Frank Zappa and many, many others. Jim Goetsch does double duty on keyboards and soprano sax. Daniel Coffeng transcends all musical genres on guitar. Carl Royce on contrabass and electronics.
My teacher, Seward McCain. Beautiful, powerful album: Seward’s Folly, featuring John Stowell guitar, Tony Foster piano, Arkira Tana drums, Charles McNeal tenor sax, Joel Behrman trumpet, and Wendy McCain vocals.
I took Gary Peacock out on a quest for a flat-back bass and we ran into the great Putter Smith at Stein on Vine. We also stopped in at L.A. Bassworks.
Gary was in town with Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette for the excellent Trio performances at Royce Hall.
Los Angeles drummer/percussionist Breeze Smith. It is my great pleasure to create with Breeze in the Alt-Jazz trio DBC:Unit.
Breeze’s full drum kit on a shag rug in my Los Angeles art workshop.
Iconic electric violinist and composer David Strother represents at least one-third of the Alt-Jazz trio DBC:Unit.
Drummer Stephen Foster on the left and the late Jazz guitarist EdWing Sankey on the right.
The back third of my art workshop here in Bend, Oregon.
All through the 90’s I kept a popular music space called Coppertone Studio in the notorious Music Building in midtown Manhattan, NYC. Coppertone Studio was on the fifth floor and looked out through red curtains to busy 8th Avenue below. Somewhere between 30 and 40 bands regularly booked time at Coppertone when it was available, and several showcased successfully for major labels there.
The Mechanics of Changing The World. This book by John Macgregor is an important read for our interesting times.
“The last half-century has seen the antiwar movement, perestroika, Tiananmen, Occupy, & the Arab Spring. Strong ideals, strong popular support—yet none built anything lasting.
One-off campaigns—whether against war, poverty or surveillance—are fragile. Changing the world needs more than inspired troubleshooting. It needs architecture.”
“We know much more about human nature than we did in 1789. We’ve learned we’re an egalitarian species, and are good at collective decision-making. We hate rigged rules and biased information. We’re naturals at social harmony. It’s way past time this knowledge was reflected in our national constitutions. Time turns a constitution into a Pandora’s box—releasing ‘plagues’ such as bought politics and captured information. We’re forever going after the plagues: our real attention should be on the box.”
– John Macgregor
I use an A/B box feeding three amplifiers – signal A goes to the bass amp and signal B feeds two small ‘acoustic instrument’ amps in stereo for arco. I also use two JamMan Delay phrase samplers, one for bass and one for arco. This makes it possible to set up a bass groove and then improvise on top with arco. Or I can sample an arco drone to accompany a bass groove.
When it comes to playing Jazz standards, I dispense with all of that nonsense.
Aires Bucaneros reunion concert at Palacio de Bellas Artes in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Downstage left to right: me on Puertorican cuatro, Roy Brown, Zoraida Santiago, and Pablo Nieves on percussion.
Andrew Hindes and me, NYC circa ’79. We were fellow combatants in a crusade against lazy songwriting. Jalloon July. We turned down a five album record deal with Atlantic records. :|
Contrabassist Draylen Mason.
May 26, 2000 – March 12, 2018 Austin, Texas.
Some thoughts and observations:
I didn’t want the bunny to catch on fire.
Children are the future.
10,000 hours to mastery.