In my earliest days in NYC I used to haunt Smalls. After hearing me play, Jimmy Lovelace sat me down and told me to quit music because I just didn’t have it inside me. He insisted he was stopping me for my own good. I was shook but I came back the next night and […]
Sound Manifesto
Sound Manifesto We’ve never seen sound We’ve measured it, transcribed it, analyzed it, and spent countless hours listening to each other speak. The sounds of the world are infinite Sound can absolutely be identified in many cases but not always What is it? Sound can communicate emotions that may be impossible to […]
Boundaries
Boundaries is a tune written by Bern Nix. Celebrating his life and music last week has me musing once again on musical identity. It has occurred to me that I have been trying to figure out my musical identity for many moons. Bern was a straight ahead Berklee graduate when he joined Prime Time. His […]
Giuseppi Logan Saves the World
I got the call from the universe, or a feeling from deep inside, that it was time to go see my buddy Giuseppi a few days ago. I tried to get other folks to join me, but it looked like it was me and G again. I found him in his room wearing a fly […]
Bright Momentum
Daniel Carter and I talk about many things. He’s the person who got me to start writing. I used to have a notebook of stuff that’s lost now. I was using an ancient tool called a pen that I could use to write words in ink on paper. We used to roll on the phone […]
Death
I read an interview with Branford Marsalis who spoke about a group of people gathered around Elvin Jones asking him about what it was like to be right at the center of John Coltrane’s music. Elvin said that at the core of it all was this level of conviction: To reach that level with someone […]
Soaring With Bird. The Astrology of Charlie Parker
Looking deeper into the astrology of Ornette Coleman inevitably led me to the astrology of Charlie Parker. Bird is where Ornette started. Thanks to Massimo Magee who asked me when I would do Eric Dolphy’s chart. That idea made me realize I had to go to Bird first. Looking closely at Bird’s cosmic relationship with […]
49
49 trips around the sun is not just a quick skip through the park. My older friends are quick to tell me that I’m still young. It seems that as long as someone is older than you, then you’re still young. It goes right to the top. My father, in his mid-70’s, was telling me […]
Soul Thesis
Who writes the idea of your soul? We all have to be who we are in this world, no matter what, but who decides where and when you are born, and with what purpose? I have always felt out of time and out of place, and left with no choice but to trust the process […]
Natural Music, Part 2 (Eagles and Snakes)
Just a few weeks past, the Universe had me walking across town in NYC with none other than Pharoah Sanders. When you’re around someone imbued with that much spiritual power, you can sense something present that’s beyond the energy that you’re used to, especially in such a twisted environment as Times Square. The weather was […]
