JazzCore2/part five

                                                         JazzCore2/part five

 

 

Playing jazz is richly interactive, its vitality dependent on empowering relationships. In this last chorus of JazzCore2, we look at three varieties of that interaction.  For each of the three, you will read the pre-pandemic words of local musicians who play jazz and who have grown through their varied relationships with the music.  

 

First of the three relationships is the bond between players and the jazz tradition.  Learning by listening to other musicians is a vital option, as you will read in the blog’s opening set.

 

Among the most powerful opportunities for extending that learning is playing live with other musicians, the focus of the second set. For even richer potential, add a listening audience, the topic of the last set. Playing with and for others can teach and surprise with memorable moments of breakthrough and flow.  

 

For many musicians, the pandemic means that those learning (and earning) experiences with actual players and listeners have diminished or disappeared. Let us hope for their timely return.

 

In the meantime, plenty of jazz-centric readables here for these quieter pandemic days.  Take them at your own tempo.

 

Your interactive comments welcome below.

 

 

With readiness/August 2020. 

 

 

 

1/Listening to the Tradition

.  

 

 

Tim Garcia, piano

 

I have taught piano class for beginners, I’ve taught jazz piano at the different universities, I’ve taught music notation…, music appreciation, and I’ve taught composition classes, jazz theory, jazz combo—pretty much all the basic classes…. I put people in touch with the Jamey Abersold theories and hundreds of other books that are available.  

 

But I stress the records, because I believe that all the answers are on the records.  So we do a lot of listening, and we talk a lot about what is happening there, and I think that’s the oral tradition that I like to think that I’m a part of, because that’s how the masters learned.  They didn’t have these books.  They had people that they knew, and someone would show them—somebody says, ‘What are you doing?’  Guy says, ‘It goes like this’—[sings figure]—‘Like this?’—[sings figure]—‘No, like this’—[sings figure]—‘Oh, I see’—[sings figure].  And then you got it.  

 

That’s how I learned.  I feel like I’m part of that oral tradition passed down through recordings from themasters.  I laugh about it, but I might say to myself, ‘Okay, today I’m going to study with Sonny Rollins,’ and I’ll put on some Sonny Rollins, and off we go. 

 

 

Bob DeBoo, bass

 

The qualities needed to become a jazz musician?  Would depend on the person, but if they’re not already listening to jazz…, then obviously you would tell them to go listen—to put on Louis Armstrong or anywhere in between modern to early, early musics and let it build. And especially going out and being part of the community, going to shows, and, if there’s a jam session, even if you can’t play, to go and to be part of it, see how it’s put together, how people are growing, and to have understanding that it’s not an overnight or even a year goal to be a successful jazz musician—or a ten-year goal, I guess. It just doesn’t stop, at least for people who are serious about it.  So there needs to be that.  You can’t be too comfortable. 

 

 

Herb Drury, piano

 

I loved Errol Garner for a while.  And I started playing like him—‘I can do this!  I can get this style!’  It was pretty good--came out pretty well.  Shearing, of course—he was an easy one for me to copy because of the locked-hands style.  I kind of did that anyway, and once I heard him do it, so I went to that pretty easily. 

 

Every once in a while, I’d play on a gig…[and] I’d play a tune all the way through like Errol Garner…. I would say Errol Garner because he had the most distinctive style.  There’s no mistake about him.  And then, as I say, I was playing locked-hand—it was sort of integrated into my style already.  I never reached the heights of Oscar, but occasionally I’d get kind of close.  

 

 

Ben Wheeler, bass

 

There are definitely playing styles on the bass.  I like sixties jazz—I like Scott LaFaro, the bass player.  I like to play bebop, but I think a little more modern than that.  I mean, I’d like to consider myself more of a modern bass player, and I want to work towards that.  And that doesn’t mean throwing out the tradition.  It means using those things.  You listen to a lot of that, and you do these technical exercises, and then eventually a connection might happen…. I listen to music all the time, talk about it, and think about it, so it’s still there, and even when I’m not doing those things, it’s listening, too.

 

 

Tom Byrne, guitar

 

Playing a guitar with a synthesizer pickup…opens up all kinds of possibilities…. My interest in synthesizer guitars stems at least partly from my love of Pat Metheny's music and his playing.  He was one of the first guitarists to use guitar synthesizers prominently, to put it on the map as early as like 1982.  I think that's the first time I can think of where he used guitar-synthesizer--on an album called "Off Ramp."  When it first came out in the early-to-mid-'80s…, I listened to it a lot. That had a big influence on me…. I just always loved the sound, expanding beyond just the sounds you associate with guitar into other realms.  

It is important to keep developing.

 

I also studied at NYU for a semester…. The school was great.  I enjoyed the coursework.  But the environment was probably the biggest.  Mostly going out and listening and hearing people that I had only had any contact with from recordings, such as Dave Liebman.  Jack Wilkins, the guitar-player.  I mean so many musicians…. That really had a huge influence on me--just hearing people doing it the way it was meant to be done.

 

It was really a way of setting a high standard for myself.  Understanding what it really encompassed to be a great musician.

 

 

Jim Manley, trumpet

 

I grew up not hearing jazz.  I grew up hearing Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.  My parents didn't have any jazz albums at all…. When I got into high school, I'd only been playing trumpet since 7th grade…. I had a free period the last two years I was there, and my band director would bring in recordings of different jazz people.  It was like instant love!  It instantly just spoke to my brain.

 

I can still remember him bringing in a little reel-to-reel tape of a famous trumpet player named Maynard Ferguson.  I'd never heard of him.  I can still in my brain go back to sitting there and hearing that after band and being stunned at what I heard.  

 

That was the first time I’d heard any sound like that come out of a trumpet. And it wasn't just because he could play extremely high; it was the sound that just locked into my brain…. Just like a smack in the head. So for the next 40-plus years, I've been trying to capture that sound.

 

But Maynard led me to other guys because my band director would bring me Maynard on one day and Chet Baker the next day.  Miles Davis another day.  And then some unknown guys--unknown to the normal populace—like Jack Sheldon.  

 

I just fell in love with recordings at that point.  And it's just never stopped….

 

Every day I listen to music.  You have to sit down and listen to the people who did it before you.  If I would've grown up listening to Clifford Brown and Freddie Hubbard and Miles Davis, I am sure my playing would be way different today than what I grew up with…. That doesn't stop me from going back now and figuring out what Clifford is doing.

 

 

Adaron Jackson, piano

 

For a show I did, I was handed a tune list that included ”Moanin’,” so for research or preparation I got a whole bunch of examples of that song from different people, including Wynton Kelly and Oscar Peterson. I listened to hear what this person did on it and that person did on it, and I just took from little pieces here and there.  I don’t necessarily write it out unless I would have to teach it or maybe give it to someone else for some kind of educational purpose.  But if it’s just for me, then I would just transcribe it and work it out at the piano, but I wouldn’t write it out.

 

I like re-listening to albums—you know, you hear different things. You’re slightly more mature than you were the last time, so you may have a different perspective.  It’s always good to re-visit because once again to me it means making yourself a student of the music.

 

 

Eric Slaughter, guitar

 

I think that to be a jazz musician you have to be focused on creating your own language—your own personal musical language—and always working on that, whether or not it’s applicable to the gig you’re doing at the time.Expanding it, expanding the things you can hear….

 

How? You have to always be learning vocabulary.  It’s just like vocabulary, like speaking….

 

But I think that that’s the process:  It’s like you’re constantly listening to other players and trying to pick out things that you can use, trying to understand why you like certain things that they do.  

 

In the beginning, that can be really specific, and as you go on, you can sort of get concepts, and it’s not like about copying so much as just trying to understand what the bigger picture is of what they’re doing and how you can use that and make it your own…do it your own way.  

 

 

Danny Campbell, trumpet

 

My jazz style as a player? Maybe more bop, because I listened to a lot of Clifford Brown, Freddie Hubbard, Kenny Dorham, Blue Mitchell--yeah, most of the bop guys.  The swing era, right after Louis Armstrong, I didn’t listen to as much of those guys.

 

I didn’t listen to a lot of Louis until later. Something about the bop guys that really sticks with a lot of us, I guess—being able to rip fast notes, you know, and play those lines like Charlie Parker…. Those are my main heroes.

 

As far as my sound is concerned, I think one of my main influences would be Lee Morgan--Lee Morgan first, probably, because of his very bold, sassy, brassy sound.  Clifford had a smoother sound--I like Clifford a lot--Miles had a softer, more subdued sound.  I think I’m more like Lee Morgan.

 

Learning to improvise should be founded in listening to what the masters did and learning from that.

 

If you want to learn to speak Spanish, you’re not going to learn to speak Spanish by never listening to Spanish and ‘I’m just going to read a book.’ But when you listen to people speak the language, you internalize it, it’s something you feel, and it becomes more a part of you…. 

 

 

Jim Jeter, saxophone

 

Listening to other players is how a lot of people learn to improvise…. There are a lot of acolytes of Charlie Parker--like Jackie McLean and Phil Woods—and the way that they learned was listening to Bird records and picking up those licks and then putting the theoretical knowledge on top of that, maybe later.  

 

In terms of learning the music, go listen to it to hear it played properly, and that’ll make that easier. 

 

Willem von Hombracht, bass

 

If you're going to improvise and if sound is your medium…, most of the time we're improvising within the context of some kind of tradition.  If you’re improvising in a jazz idiom, then it's important to learn what are the characteristics of that idiom, traditionally.  That basically simply means, ‘What did some other musicians before us figure out that they liked to do?  What worked for them?’

 

If you want to play in a baroque style, you have to listen to how people play baroque music.  If you want to play bebop style, you have to listen to how people play bebop--a lot of listening to recordings as well as live music.  

 

But then also analyzing what are some of the characteristics and stylistic traits. Also, how the music is structured. What do the chords do and what do the scales do and how do they fit together with the groove?  And how do the rhythms and the phrases work?  All these aspects of music.

 

 

Paul DeMarinis, saxophone

 

I’ve been an avid listener as all players—all good players—are, I think. You fall in love with the music, and you fall in love with and get really interested in the way the music developed and how it sounds and how it sounded in different time periods.  And all the years offer something that you can utilize, maybe some language specifics that you can utilize, because, if you’re improvising with other players, there has to be a shared language if you’re going to be able to communicate well. Given the nature of what I‘m asked to do most of the time, and what I enjoy doing, I’m called on to do all kinds of different stuff, so I’ve got to be stylistically diverse. 

 

 

 

2/Playing with Others

 

 

Bob DeBoo, bass

 

It is about the community, getting out and interacting with other musicians.  That’s how it’s learned—not through the school. By interacting with other jazz musicians.  So playing standards from a book--no.  I wouldn’t consider that jazz.  That would be the idiom—like the standards are obviously the vehicle for jazz—but improvisation, yes, is key—absolutely. 

 

I like to be right up against that as far as interacting with people. I’m not talking about playing a bunch of notes, but I’m trying to be as aware of what is happening harmonically and rhythmically and having something to say with that as an accompanist—having a creative conversation with everybody that’s playing and really trying to push that harmonically and rhythmically as well.  If something is needing a little bit of a push or is already there, then being comfortable with it, interacting with purpose as opposed to just interacting and putting something out there.  

 

To play well with other musicians, they need to know how to listen, how to communicate with each other, even before they pick up their instruments. They obviously need to know their scales and their technique, their triads, their repertoire, and all that. It’s an interactive music. …What interests me is everybody being involved, leaving space, and asking questions. 

 

 

Don Cook, saxophone

 

My style can change completely depending on whom I’m playing with. The players or the occasion--or even the venue—will dictate where you go and what you do in your playing.  

 

I have a chance to play in venues other than just jazz clubs or events and with that I can often be freer with what I do, take more chances.  For example, I play in a church band, and when I play a solo I can do things that really allow me to stretch out with good musicians. They give me the space, and I have the chance to try things that I hear all of a sudden playing with them that I probably wouldn’t hear in a normal setting. 

 

 

Tim Garcia, piano

 

I get to play in a trio setting—a bass player and a drummer—and that’s a nice place for me to stretch out.  I can usually try my own tunes there and kind of work out some things. It’s very satisfying.  A lot of freedom with a trio….  

 

I also want to say that it’s important to be aware that it works in a positive way, not just a negative way--maybe in thinking a wrong note or a wrong rhythm.  But there are moments that I really felt like I let the music flow and things happened that I didn’t intend but on hindsight I really was glad they were there because they sounded right for the time and for the music.  They were really contributing to the moment.  And I think that because it’s jazz, you really get that spontaneity in ways that you don’t get that with other art forms.  

 

 

Ben Wheeler, bass

 

You know, if the conditions are right with other people—if they’re playing in a way that allows me to feel free to improvise and feel like I’m creating something--then that makes it worth it. If I can play something and they respond, ‘Oooh, I hear that’ because it’s fresh and spontaneous, then that makes it worth it, even just for my own edification…. 

 

I guess the most satisfying is when conditions are right for me to feel free…where they’re supporting me, lifting me up to where I can be my best. And vice versa:  If I’m the supporting guy, and, for example, if the saxophone player takes another chorus and another chorus, that makes me know I’m doing the right thing and also, if I feel that, too—if it is the right thing—then that’s a great feeling, too. Then I know that I’m helping the whole thing—that’s satisfying, too. 

 

 

Tom Byrne, guitar

 

How important are the other musicians you're playing with?  Really important.  If you're playing jazz, especially.  It’s an interactive form of music where the players around you are interacting with you and you're interacting with them.  It's not predetermined so much what's going to happen.  So yes, it's really super-important to have musicians—ideally-- who will provide you with that springboard, and that you provide them with that springboard.

 

Some of the gigs…don't pay a whole lot of money.  A lot of times we're doing this because we love the music and we love to do it.  The pleasure of playing…the enjoyment of playing together, having a rapport with someone…, that interaction that creates the sound of the group and that’s greater than the sum of the individual parts.  When things come together like that, it's very gratifying.

 

It's a never-ending learning experience, playing music.

 

 

Adaron Jackson, piano

 

Play out more?  Less? I don’t ask myself that question. For me it’s not a question of playing out more or less. I want to create music with a specific group of people with a specific mindset.  I’d like to do that more.  Which means we are all on the same page and we’re looking to create this musical experience.  We’re all working together, we’re all competent, we’re looking to elevate the experience collectively, between us.  So I’m looking for that experience more and more.

 

I believe my job as a piano player…is to help people sound the best that they can, to contribute in a positive way to the overall goal of whatever the music is or whatever the situation or the setting is.  So I hope when people play with me or the feeling that they have after they play with me is that I have contributed in a positive way to the performance….

 

If I’m improvising…within the chord structure of the song, I’m seeking to express an idea and so then I’m creating melodies to do that…and take it as far out or in as I want to.  It’s not autonomous, you know.  You want to play with the people you’re playing with…. You don’t want to not include people in the conversation that you’re having with them.

 

 

Paul DeMarinis, saxophone

 

The best performances are absolutely the ones…where it seems like you’re not in control of what’s happening.   

 

I specifically remember…this was years ago, it was a duo gig I did…, it was on a weeknight, there was almost nobody there—hard surfaces, you know, acoustically it was a bad room:  One of the best gigs I’ve ever played, for the reason that there were just two of us, there was almost nobody there, it was on a weeknight, it was on a school night, too, so that I was kind of wiped out—it was one of these situations where I had taught all day, and this gig started late and ran later…. 

 

But the level of communication between the two of us seemed effortless.  It was just like a conversation with somebody where all of a sudden you look at your watch and like three hours have gone by, and it has seemed just like a delightful exchange, and everything’s fluid.  It was just like that—effortless—and that’s the best…, when everything’s working well.

 

To me, the performances that are most notable are the ones that involve the greatest amount of flow where--I mean improvised, but it doesn’t have to be improvised—but if we’re talking about improvisation, the ones where it seems like it’s not work—you don’t have to work—you don’t have to search for the next note.  Where, whoever you’re playing with—it could be one person, it could be five people, a trio, whatever—where the sense is that everyone is listening and very, very attuned to the flow of the music…everyone in the group.  

 

 

Danny Campbell, trumpet

 

When everything is right, that’s a wonderful experience to have…. Being right in the zone and focused like that is what we want all the time. And I think that’s what we try to achieve.  I try to have that whenever I play.  It doesn’t always happen.  I sometimes get that voice, that critical voice that comes, but it’s not always there. And when it’s not there, it’s wonderful.  The band is playing together, your tone is together.  At that point, you’re just saying to yourself, ‘Okay, what do I want to play?  I can play anything.  Okay, I’m going to take a chance.’ You want to take chances.  That’s when you find yourself putting yourself out there. ‘I’m going to play…I’m just going to play something.’  It doesn’t matter, because I can make it happen and own it then.  I can own whatever it is I play.

 

 

 

Willem von Hombracht, bass

 

Listening to the other musicians is the majority of what we do when we're playing. Well, if we're in a good [playing] situation.

 

The best music I've played has been with groups of people in which we don't really have to think about what we're going to play or talk too much about what we're going to play.  Because everybody's listening.

 

I've found I become more and more aware of that element.  I've found that really, when we're playing, if we're playing at our best, something around 90% of what we're doing is listening.  And I've found that if you're in a group where everybody is listening that intensely, you don't need to think about what to play. Because the act of listening draws out the right things from each of the musicians.

 

Listening to the musicians around you makes you play the right thing.  It only starts getting messed up when you start thinking about ‘I know that this is going to work well with that’ or ‘Last night when I played this tune I did this thing, and it worked really well.  Let me do that again.’

 

As soon as you start thinking about those things, you're not listening as well. Then you start trying to super-impose things that aren't relative to what's happening.  It takes you away from listening.  And it takes you out of the moment of your best playing. 

 

Listening is a guide.  Yes, you can't completely not think at all.  You have to have some awareness of what's going on and what you're doing. But really, I think listening is way up there at about 90%.  Unfortunately, it doesn't happen all that often, but I do sometimes get to play in those situations.  But much more often, I'm playing in situations where people aren't quite listening as intently.  We still play good music, but it's not at the same level of creativity. 

 

It's giving up your ego for the group.  That gives you the most intense and most pure music. When it's done well and when I'm playing with good musicians, it is pleasurable.  It's fun.  It's exciting and beautiful. 

 

 

Dawn Weber, trumpet and voice

 

I’m getting to work with people I haven’t worked with before, and every time that you work with someone different, you learn because you gather knowledge from all these different people and you share knowledge and you share sounds…. When you get to play with different people, you’re learning and growing. 

 

 

Jim Jeter, saxophone

 

One of the things people don’t like about jazz is that it’s different every time, which is the great thing about it, in my estimation. Improvisation is a key to it.  And then playing in the big band environment--particularly in a sax section--you have to be able to play, but then you have be able to shape the music in a way that it sounds good within a section, and it’s a great skill…. A jazz musician has to be able to play with others, he has to be able to solo…. The really good ones have to be able to read well, they have to understand the theory and all the elements that go into the music.

 

 

 

3/Playing for Others

 

 

Tim Garcia, piano

 

Playing out as giving me a sense of being worth listening to?  I guess it does.  I think there’s a sharing that I feel compelled to do.  Also there’s some satisfactionof feeling there’s a job well done.  I mean if I spend hours and hours and days and weeks and months and years on something, and I’m out performing it, it is nice to be recognized.  I won’t deny that. But I don’t think it’s my driving force…. I feel like this is a calling for me.  I feel like had I been…had I studied medicine or law, I’d be a doctor or as lawyer right now or a priest.  But this is what I am:  a musician. 

 

Usually people like what I’m doing.  And they’re verbal about it.  So, often whenever I play, someone will come up to me and say something nice about what I played or how I played it or the song I played.  It’s recognition on kind of a smaller scale, not on a worldwide level, but I’m not going for that anyway.

 

 

Herb Drury, piano

 

Audience and venue definitely affect playing.  This is why you become a pretty well-rounded, experienced player after you’ve done so many professional gigs…. 

 

I can remember when I used to play with a group called Jazz Central years ago…. We would play these concerts, and almost every solo I would take, I would get, somewhere in the solo, after I sort of built it up a little bit, a round of applause while I’m playing.  That’s recognition, you know…. I don’t know how important the recognition was, but it certainly was fulfilling that I got to my listeners somehow.

 

Most exciting for me:  Playing a gig where…you’re playing for them to listen, but you know that what they want to hear is what you want to play.  My 10-year Ritz gig was basically like that:  trying to do your best with the way you played, so they would enjoy it. 

 

 

Ben Wheeler, bass

 

What we care about is something that the vast majority of people don’t care about—like the interesting solo, you know, or the interesting performance that most people might blow off or not listen to or not pay attention to.  

 

Given the apathy, how do you stay connected to the music? Well, there are a few people that might know, so you never know who’s listening in the audience or on the bandstands.  It has nothing to do with age--some of the people that I respect the most are a decade younger than me.  But if I can play something and they respond, ‘Oooh, I hear that’ because it is fresh and spontaneous, then that kind of makes it worth it.

 

 

Tom Byrne, guitar

 

Jazz is often thought of as dinner music.  It does make good dinner music, no doubt.  Then you have--if you're playing a private event --a lot of times after dinner, people will want to dance and get into a little party mode. That's when you break out the funk and the rock-and-roll and the R&B and Motown and all that sort of thing. That's definitely proven to be very valuable over the years, to have that versatility….

 

But I really enjoy playing jazz.  I get a lot out of improvising on and playing jazz in its various forms.  I get a lot from it personally. It's almost spiritual. Well, it is spiritual, I think. It's kind of therapeutic.  I think it's good for me.  It feels real to me when I'm playing jazz over some standard. It just feels true to my nature to play that.

 

Another reason that I like to play and continue to play jazz is that I love the music. I want to be part of letting more people know about it.  Spreading it. I want to be part of the continuation, of perpetuating the music.

 

 

Danny Campbell, trumpet

 

I love salsa…. Love jazz music, but salsa is…it’s living, it’s breathing, because people are still dancing to it.  People don’t really dance to jazz any more like they used to. 

 

On a jazz gig, the audience is sitting down, listening…. Sometimes musicians are in the audience, somehow the most intimidating people to play for because not only are they listening to the music, they know exactly what you’re playing and when you’re not playing…. But jazz music is great, because people are there.… People have this feeling that ‘jazz relaxes’, but, you know, it makes some people excited. They’re not dancing, but that’s okay.  As long as they’re snapping their fingers and bobbing their heads.

 

If you ever play for people who…you get no response from, that’s hard.  You have to figure out, ’Well, what’s going on? Is it what we’re playing, or how I’m playing, or are we playing the wrong music in the wrong place?’

 

 

Dawn Weber, trumpet and voice

 

Definitely, the connection with the other musicians…that’s a really nice experience.  It’s fun when that happens, because then we’re just having fun.  But then with the audience, like if they’re really enjoying…just getting something out of it and you’re touching them, like where they’re feeling something and it means something to them, you know that’s the real purpose of us as musicians or songwriters, that’s what I think we feel is our main purpose.  That’s why we’re here.  And so, that just kind of gives you like your reason that you were created the way you were created--to be a musician or a songwriter.  And it’s just nice to have people get it and appreciate you. 

 

 

Willem von Hombracht, bass

 

No matter how good the recording techniques are and no matter how good the playback equipment is, listening to a CD or some kind of recording is always just a pale representation of what goes on in a concert setting.

 

When you're present at the creation of the music, it's really exciting.  Not only that, but what a lot of people don't realize--musicians and audience members don't really realize this --that the audience is part of the creative act.  There's energy and a response going back-and-forth between the musicians and the audience.

With the audience's response, it has a direct impact on how you play.  The way that the music is created changes depending on the way that the audience responds.

 

It could be something as simple as someone in the audience smiling at something they heard.  That means, ‘I like that!’  Maybe you'll just continue that train of thought a little longer.  That doesn't mean we're trying to play for that effect.

 

But it's nice if you have some kind of interaction there.  That's something that you don't have when you're listening to a recording.  As much as I enjoy listening to recordings, and I'm really glad that we have recordings so that we can at least hear a little impression of what people sounded like that aren't here anymore, I know that it's really not the same thing as what was actually going on.

 

 

JazzCore2/part four

JazzCore2/part four

JCore is back—and welcome (back) to you, too!  Come in and spend some time with our next soloist, Eric Slaughter. Your chorus is always welcome:  Play your comments below.

* * *  *  *  *

Nat Pierce attended one of Erroll Garner’s record dates in 1969:

The red light went on and he started to play.  The red light went off and he kept on            playing. Everybody waved to him from the booth, and when he eventually finished they said, ‘Erroll, we turned off the light. You were supposed to stop.’ He looked at them and said, ‘I couldn’t stop.  I wanted to find out how it would come out.’

       --Bill Crow, Jazz Anecdotes(1990)

Eric Slaughter

To be a jazz musician is to be focused on creating your own language--your own personal language.  And always working on that, whether or not it's applicable to the gig you're doing at the time.

       --Eric Slaughter

The active learning that energizes his jazz improvisation also expresses itself again and again in Eric Slaughter’s life. His playing as a jazz musician represents how he lives: always growing, taking risks, ready to explore and build on the moment’s possibilities. 

Early on, Eric’s family life was filled with musical possibilities, supporting and inspiring him the way the other players in a jazz group can support and inspire the improvising soloist—but also helping him see how to learn and grow as a versatile musician.

Eric remembers that “there were a lot of people in my family that played.”

“My grandfather was a trumpet-player, and he owned a jazz club…. He played in George Hudson's bands, and he knew popular players such as Clark Terry and Oscar Peterson. I don't remember, but my mom remembers Oscar Peterson coming to the house.” 

Eric’s uncle was a bass player, and his aunt, Marsha Evans, a long-time professional singer in St. Louis with a famously broad repertoire that, as Kevin Johnson noted in 2011,  “encompasses blues, R & B, jazz, pop classics, and the great American songbook.” She would be a playing partner later in Eric’s life and a model for what her versatile nephew would become. 

Eric’s mother was a key figure in the explicit launching of Eric’s learning both about music and about growing as a musician.  Eric remembers: “We had a piano; my mother was a classical pianist.  She sort of forced piano on me.  Of course, I didn't want to play it!   I liked to improvise on it, but I didn't like to play the music.” 

A version of that tension surfaced soon after when Eric was 10 or 11 and his mother sent him for piano lessons to CASA, a community arts school in St. Louis, and, Eric says, “there was actually a disconnect between the teacher and me.”

His mother had sent him there “thinking that they were going to teach me classical music,” but his teacher apparently “didn't understand that I came from a musical household.  I had heard a lot of classical music already….  I don’t think she knew that.

“She was giving me ‘On Top of Old Smokey’ and songs like that, and I thought I'd get some simple Mozart things to play.  I didn't articulate that to her….  I just felt if she had given me some very simple classical music, I would have been more into that.  I just wasn't into the songs she was giving me.”

As if predicting the self-invention that was to come, young Eric had taught himself a two-handed version of “The Entertainer” when he was only five, and “I played it for the kids at my babysitter's, because she had a piano.”  

2

This process of trying out, experimenting, and seeing what works continued, the essence of an improvised musical life: always the active search for possibilities.

Eric stayed with piano lessons for about 4 years, and, yes, “I think I would have liked to have played classical piano, but we never got that far.”  His teacher “did teach me a lot.  She taught me how to play all the scales.  I still use that today.  She taught me how to read. So I got something out of it.”  

          

Perhaps most important, he pursued a new option, his mother once again a central figure: She had an acoustic guitar.  “She never learned to play it; she just had it around.  She didn't buy it for me -- she bought it for her!

“What happened was, my mom was like, ‘You have to stay with something classical.’ So I said, ‘Okay.  I want to do classical guitar.’  I started studying at CASA with Rod Stuckey when I got to be around 15.  I did that 'til the end of high school.”

And something else happened:  Classical-guitarist Eric discovered Jimi Hendrix and the blues.  He was living in Ferguson but attending elementary school at Country Day, then a private school for boys that he’d entered in sixth grade because his family thought he’d get the best education there.  

Eric’s musical options were expanding: “My friends were listening to rock music. The people in my neighborhood and all of my friends from before were listening to R&B.  I think somehow with the friends at school, I heard Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin and stuff like that.  But I had also heard blues records in the house.  I had heard Albert King and all these blues. “

He connected with Hendrix partly because of his blues listening:   “I already knew some of that language in my head.  A lot of Hendrix is Albert King.  He's playing it with a different sound and sometimes a different articulation.  But a lot of the vocabulary is the same:  I mean the actual licks he's playing.  It's Albert King, a lot of it!”

3

Eric’s self-directed, improvised life moved forward into new possibilities, new languages:  “Somehow through Hendrix, I started reading Guitar Player Magazinearound age 12.   In the articles at the end, they'd talk about records.  I'd read those articles and then go to this place called CD Reunion, which was like a bargain-bin record place.  I'd take my allowance and buy comic books and records.  Because those records --the jazz records -- nobody wanted them then!  They were like 25 cents!”

                         Eric explored: “At first I'd just go by the cover.  If the cover looked cool, I'd buy it.” His listening ranged from McCoy Tyner and Jack DeJohnette to “some weird stuff, like Norwegian guitarist Terje Rypdal,” a prediction of the older Eric’s diverse musical languages. As he says now, this was “a hip collection for a 12-year old.”

“Around that time, I think because of those articles and those records, I started getting into fusion.  I was listening to John Scofield and Mike Stern. Some of the fusion Miles records.”

Then Eric’s record-resource uncle entered Eric’s life:  “I think he realized I was listening to that, and he started making me tapes of his collection.  He had thousands of records.  He was almost a record-hoarder.  

“First, he'd lend me the record.  Then I was keeping the records too long.  So then he started making me cassette tapes.”

            Learning happened:  “I remember the first couple of things I listened to were Oscar Peterson.  There was also a Bill Evans record called Symbiosis.  That's kind of weird for him, because he was playing a Fender Rhodes, and it had an orchestra on it. I remember listening to that a lot.

            “I got a Charlie Parker record -- Live at Carnegie Hall -- with Dizzy Gillespie.  That really got me into jazz.  That was the first record that I was like, ‘Oh, my God!  This is something cool!  I don't know what it is!’” 

4

Eric responded to the opportunity to learn more:  Like his listening life, his music-playing life was growing as he moved through school.  When he was finishing middle school, Eric began playing both keyboard and guitar in an R&B band.  “It was kind of serious.  They were trying to make a boy band with a bunch of black kids.  We had a manager, and we were playing Prince and Ready for the World and stuff like that.  We were rehearsing a lot, and we played out a lot.  They were trying to get us to do moves.  It was like a show.”

Then in high school he began playing guitar in a rock band:  “We were playing progressive rock, like Rush and Yes,” and playing out for school functions such as alumni events.  All along, he was learning how to play improvised music on the guitar.

At this point, Eric says, jazz “was my personal project because I had nobody to play it with,” but that was about to change, and he started to grow into another dimension of his diverse playing:  “When I got to high school, I joined the jazz band at Country Day, also on guitar, and that's when I started knowing the songs and learning the tunes…. The bandleader—Bill Habetler--was a jazz enthusiast. He got me connected with trombonist Robert Edwards, who was teaching at Normandy and East St. Louis, and Robert helped me start to know other kids.  I started playing with them, too. We didn't do gigs, but we'd get together and play jazz.”  

Eric played both rhythm and solo guitar in the big band, and he had success: He was selected to play guitar in both the district- and the state-wide jazz bands made up of the best high-school players, and “I actually won the best soloist award at the state competition.”  

Then Eric’s mother enriched her son’s musical options and possibilities again: “When I was 15, she started sending me to a jazz camp in Connecticut called the National Guitar Summer Workshop.  The first jazz lesson I had was with Jim Hall!  I got to study with him for like a week.  Another year, I went, and it was Mark Whitfield and John Abercrombie.  And Mike Stern one year.  It was in New Milford, Connecticut, and there's nothing to do there. So those guys were actually around for the whole week.  You were just walking around with Jim Hall!”  Moreover, “there were people of all ages; it wasn't just kids.  I think I might've been the youngest one.  There were guys in their 70s there.  It was a really unique program.” 

5

After graduation from Country Day in 1990,Eric chose to move away from music—but not for long. Because “I didn't have an outlet to play out with jazz when I was in high school, I didn't think about making jazz a career.” Options would eventually lead him in another direction, but for the moment Eric chose a very different life course: He enrolled at the University of Michigan where he “had a full ride to study electrical engineering.”   

Just as his less-than-satisfying experience with piano lessons didn’t drive music out of his life, so Eric soon found—chose—a way back to playing. He was in the engineering program, but he still got to know the head of the music program, Ed Sarath, a graduate of Berklee in Boston.  The Michigan program “was very small, and it was a classical program.  This was when jazz education wasn't really accepted,” Eric recalls, but he still met some jazz musicians there and began jamming with them, including three still playing in New York:  Craig Taborn, Gerald Cleaver, and Xavier Davis.  “The way the music program treated us was terrible.  They wouldn't let us get practice rooms.  We were not acknowledged—we were the evil stepchildren.  But I didn't care so much, because I wasn't in the program.  I was in the engineering program.”  

Still, change was coming, and Eric was receptive.  “There were really monster players there.  That was what made me get more into jazz.  Just realizing that, ‘Oh, wow, these kids are playing like adults!’” 

Eric’s life solo changed:  “At that point, I knew I wanted to study music, but I couldn't stay at Michigan, because there wasn't a jazz program.” So after a half-year at Michigan, he transferred to Berklee, Ed Sereth’s alma mater.  He gave up his full-ride at Michigan--which “my mom wasn't happy with, understandably”—and moved to Boston. “Yes,” he says, with clarity:  “I was seriously into jazz.  That’s what I wanted to pursue.”

6

After about a year and a half, Eric’s musical growth once more began to move from the formal to the experiential, as it had in high school and at Michigan.  His choice:  “I got way into Wally's,” a club in Roxbury that “was like a sit-in thing. I got more into that than Berklee. They'd have after-hours sessions pretty much every night.  But it would be different.  Like Thursday night I remember was Afro-Cuban.  But most of the other nights were jazz nights.  I started playing there, and then I started getting gigs there. And they were good players--Reuben Rogers, Aaron Goldberg.  Like the real players. Roy Hargrove would be there and Joshua Redman, before anybody knew who he was.”

Eric’s formal Berklee studies began to fade: “I was staying out so late, so it was hard to get up and go to class!  I'd be coming in, and it was daylight.  Sometimes I had friends take my homework.  I remember one time I was in composition class, and my girlfriend took a composition that I'd written in, and the teacher liked it.  He talked about it for a whole class.  I wasn't there!  It was like, ‘I don't know who this Eric Slaughter guy is, but he can write songs!’”

Eric didn’t finish his Berklee degree.  “No, I didn't.  Actually, we ran out of money. So I did a bunch of loans.  After a while, my mom was like, ‘Listen.  I can't really pay for you to stay in school, but I can pay for you to stay in Boston.’ I had gigs by then, so I stayed in Boston for another year or year and a half and just played.  There were a lot of straight-ahead jazz gigs, even though they didn't pay anything.”

As for moving towards becoming a performing player, Eric says, “I would never have predicted it.”  So goes improvisation.  Yes, maybe “I was dreaming about being a musician but wasn’t serious.  Everybody in the family was steering me into something else. Like, ‘Well, you could do this; that's kind of musical.  But you could survive!’” Teaching, for example. But “I never wanted to do any of those things.”

After a year of jamming in Boston, doing what he wanted, around 1994 Eric returned to St. Louis, a versatile and ready musician.  He started playing with two of St. Louis’ hippest saxophonists:  Willie Akins and Peanuts Whalum.  His gig with Peanuts (which sometimes included pianist/vocalist Christine Hitt) soon went to six nights a week at the Adam’s Mark and lasted for a year, “so I couldn’t play with anybody else in town during that time.” When the job ended abruptly, it was as if Eric had been off the scene for a year. “I was still playing with Peanuts sporadically, but we didn't have that many nights.  All of a sudden, I didn't have as much work, and nobody knew who I was.”

7

So Eric started doing gigs with his aunt, Marsha Evans, “to supplement the lost nights and make the money back.”  She had an R & B blues band that was playing six nights a week.  “She always had great players.  Like Greg Tardy played with her for a year.”

Eric’s uncle played with Marsha, too, and he also worked with popular St. Louis bandleader Oliver Sain.  “Although Oliver was like a blues-R&B saxophone player, he came up in the era of Illinois Jacquet, and he loved jazz.”  Versatile Eric was the right player at the right time: Oliver invited him to join the band, especially “because of the jazz set.  We could actually really play jazz.  Most of his guitar players couldn't.  He wanted to keep me in the band, and he took really good care of me.”

            Taking risks, embracing growth, Eric’s life solo advanced: Through Oliver, he met drummer Gerald Warren who was blues singer/songwriter Willie Clayton’s musical director.  “They used to call Willie the ‘Young King of the Blues.’”

For almost two years, Eric toured with Willie, who “had a tour bus and everything.  He did the ‘Chitlin' Circuit,’ which was like all these southern clubs where you'd do shows. You'd have 45-minute slots, and there'd be like arena shows, where there'd be five acts.  People would pay one ticket price and see five bands,” sometimes including performers such as Bobby “Blue” Bland, Shirley Brown, Johnnie Taylor, and Bobby Rush.

            “Willie would do a lot of stuff like that.  But he'd also do clubs.  We played a club in a cornfield!  So you'd go from that where there'd be like 2,000 people, and then you'd go to a joint where there's no electricity and you're running electricity from the bus via extension cords.”

8

Around 1997, Eric returned to St. Louis because his mother was ill.  His versatility and daring once again served him well and opened surprisingly into a new way for receptive Eric:  One night, when he was playing with local saxophonist and teacher John Norment at the Delmar Lounge in the Loop, U. City-born trumpeter Jeremy Davenport, in town for his annual gig here, came to listen.  

It turned out Jeremy was looking for a guitar player who could do Brazilian music with the pianist in Jeremy’s New Orleans band.  Otherwise the pianist planned to leave the group, “and Jeremy didn’t want to lose his pianist.  When he heard me at the club, I guess he liked what he heard”--and so did his pianist. “What Jeremy did was, he held his phone up in the club to Glen, his pianist, and Glen heard me play through the phone.”  The two agreed:  They wanted Eric. “That’s how I got hired.   Jeremy asked me if I wanted to move to New Orleans, and he made it very easy: He gave me an apartment next to his.”

Eric moved and began a two-nights-a-week gig with Jeremy’s jazz quintet at a club called The Red Room.  “Actually, it was a piece of the Eiffel Tower that they somehow transported to New Orleans and turned into a club.  It was like the top part.  It doesn't exist anymore.” 

By this time Eric was playing both guitar and—his old mate—piano, and he was, as always, learning.  “I started playing jazz with everybody there, and I realized there that I wasn't really that good.  I thought I was better than I was,” but  “everybody had faith in me, and I had a good attitude.  All the older guys let me play.”

Eric’s “good attitude” meant he pursued the readiness to learn that had already served him well:  “I was very into the music.  I was practicing all the time, and I got to the point where I was playing solo piano on gigs.  I think they had faith that I was going to learn something, so they let me stay in the fray.  And there were so many gigs back then, down there…. There was a place called Storyville that had three rooms going all day.”

Eric eventually left New Orleans and spent two years playing in New York with local jazz and Latin musicians (including drummer Billy Kaye), mostly at Harlem venues. He also got married there, and when his wife—now ex-wife—got a job in New Orleans, they moved back there, and Eric had the opportunity to draw on his deep versatility.  The first time there, “I was playing all jazz.  This time, I was also playing in a reggae band and a hip-hop band.”  

Eric made a virtue of necessity: “The scene had changed a little bit, and also with a wife, I needed to make more money….That's the first time I really started playing all styles -- which you can do there, because every style is there.  The good thing is, I started learning about new stuff. Like Latin music. I didn't really know anything about it.  I started to learn about it there from people from those countries.”

9

Eric was growing more multi-lingual as a musician, thanks partly to his embracing international experiences with language, musical and verbal.  “My ex-wife was from Brazil.  So we went to Brazil a bunch of times just to see her family.” Then, when he got divorced, Eric began playing on cruises, a gig that grew more and more stressful:  “I went from having a job I loved to a job I hated, because I had no free time…. So I quit. I just got off in San Diego, and I didn't know what I was going to do, because I didn't live in St Louis anymore.” 

            Improvising, Eric decided he wanted to learn Spanish—really learn it. “I'd taken it in high school but never got to the point where I could talk.  But I could understand a lot, and I knew a lot of words. 

“When I went to New York, a lot of people would come up to me and think I was Hispanic, and they'd talk to me because I was living in an Hispanic neighborhood. I couldn't talk back to them. That got it on my mind.

            “I started trying to learn there, just on my own.” He joined a Spanish-speaking conversation group, and “the guy that spoke the best Spanish had been to Costa Rica for like three months.  I was like, ‘I'm going to actually go to Costa Rica, and I'll be talking in three months.’  Which didn't happen! It took me like a year and a half.” 

Eric’s mother had died, and his inheritance helped him pay his travel expenses.  He did some playing, “but I just really focused on learning Spanish.  Mostly I was in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but I also went to Costa Rica, to Quito, Ecuador, and to Cali, Colombia. Then I came back in 2009.  I had run out of money.  Also, my grandfather—my father’s father--died.  So I came back.  I felt I'd gotten to a point where my Spanish was pretty good.”

10

Being back in St. Louis, Eric recalls, “was weird, really strange.  The older guys remembered me.  But there were all these guys I didn't know, and they didn't know who I was.  I thought I was just going to waltz in and start playing again.  It wasn't like that!  So I was like, ‘Wow.  Do I even want to?’”

Another junction point, another chance to examine options, try changes: “I considered going back to engineering school…. I took some advanced-math classes in preparation. I was trying to figure out if I was feeling my way back into doing that or not.” Once again, the option of music appeared:   “Right as I started doing that, I started to get some gigs.  Not long after, I started playing with Willie Akins again.  I played with him pretty much every week 'til he died in 2015.”

When another chance to grow through international experience presented itself in 2013, Eric took three months off to play and teach in Nepal.  “It was a really interesting situation.   There was a guy from Spain that started a jazz school in Nepal, and what they were trying to do was bring teachers over to teach teachers…. We were teaching the guys that are teaching there now.”  Eric’s students were from India and Nepal, but the teaching focused on jazz.

             At the same time, Eric seized the chance to learn a new musical language. He joined Su Karma, a Nepalese ensemble that played classical Indian music.  “We got a fusion band together, and I had to learn about their music, which is totally different.”  The group was playing “Indian-based music,” but “we would just improvise the way we improvise.” The band played gigs at “big embassy parties where they have a whole spread and a lot of wealthy diplomats.”

Once again, Eric embraced an opportunity and took a risk, going to Nepal:   “Yes.  I hadn't planned to do it, but it happened.”  After three months, he headed home—but couldn’t resist the chance to spend three weeks in Thailand on his way back.

11

Eric entered an active, instructive musical life after his return to St. Louis.  “I played guitar with St. Louis-born Ronnie Burrage for a few years.  We were playing a lot up on the East Coast.  We went to Martinique and played a jazz festival there.

            “Then Ronnie formed a band that was a tribute to Weather Report. He had Wallace Roney's brother, Antoine Roney, on tenor and Gerald Veasley on bass.  They were some really good players. I learned a lot from them. We didn't tour a lot.  We did maybe like eight gigs.”

            On the local scene, Eric “started playing with--and I'm still playing with—vocalist Denise Thimes.  I'm playing with Kasimu Taylor.  I was playing with Theo Peoples.  Now I've been playing with Anita Jackson and Erin Bode. I'm just freelancing and playing with whomever.

“I've also been going up to Kansas City a lot.  There's a lot of good jazz up there now, and there are lots of places to play. There's a piano-player from here named Matt Villinger--he and a vibes player with a St. Louis connection named Peter Schlamb, who has also moved there. Very good players.  They let musicians go do gigs there and stay at their house and come back.

           “So I've been able to meet a lot of really good players up there.  They're going through a period of prosperity.  I guess they have a tech boom, so there are all of these younger people out on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  That doesn't happen in St Louis.  That can keep the clubs going.

“Last year I was up there like half of the year just like every other weekend.  This year, I haven't done it as much…. In order to facilitate going up there, I started playing at Murray's in Columbia.  

            

“I'll try to get a gig up there and then try to get something in Columbia…. I can play two gigs up there and one on the way back.”

            Is Eric able to support himself as a musician? “Yes--barely!  It's not easy—and it's not all jazz, especially when I'm in St Louis. It's really hard to make it because the jazz money has steadily gone down.

            “When I started playing, the first jazz gigs I did after Berklee were with Willie, John Norment, Freddie Washington, and people like that.  They were paying me $100.  This was '94.  Now sometimes they want to pay you $75.”

Eric has had jazz gigs at Jazz at the Bistro with Denise Thimes and the popular fusion group Weather Forever.

He has done some teaching as well, for about three years working privately with students from Jazz St. Louis’ Jazz U. program, but he says the scheduling of the lessons, often held at the students’ homes, grew too complicated, especially when he was going out of town and had to re-schedule lessons. 

True, Eric had taught in Nepal, and “I always liked teaching, because I learn a lot about what I need to do.”  Indeed, he says, “I was learning a lot, so I liked it in that way.  And I liked the feeling of the student getting better.  So I didn't mind the teaching.  I just couldn't find a way to make it easy for me with my schedule,” so he cut way back. Today he has only a couple of students, one of them through Jazz St Louis.

12

To help make ends meet, Eric has begun doing what he’d avoided so far:  Joining top-40s bands.  “Ironically,” he says,  “that’s the best job in St. Louis” because it is regular and it pays.   “If you want to buy a house, you can do it with a Top-40 band and not teach and do other things.  If you look at guys that used to play jazz, it's not that they can't play jazz anymore, but they're doing those kinds of gigs now.  Or they're doing road gigs that are not jazz gigs. But they have houses, and they're comfortable.

“I've resisted that, because it's hard for me to do the same thing exactly the same way,” and that’s how those gigs are.  “It's like a shtick.  Even the order of the tunes.  It's a show,” and soon “it feels like a day job!  Even when it's with good musicians.  In the beginning, it's fun if the musicians are really good.  But at some point, it's like you've done everything you can do with it.  It's just the same all the time.”

The work becomes routine, allowing little room for the creative improvising and growth that have defined Eric’s musical career.

“The thing that really gets me is not so much only that, but that after a while I feel that I'm not thinking about being creative or improving”—essential themes of his life.  “I'm just doing the gig and going through the motions.  It starts to affect how I think about music in a bigger sense.” After gigging with a couple of top-40 bands,  “I just felt,  ‘I'm not even enthusiastic about playing anymore.’”

Eric pushed back against the power of routine.  Among the four or five weekly jobs he may have, he plays non-jazz gigs with room for creativity, including solo guitar work at places such as St. Louis Country Club and the Racquet Club.  “I try to mix it up and watch what they’re responding to—all different styles. 

“You can just play anything and improvise.  You don't feel like you have to play certain clichés.  You can just express yourself through that material.”

Just as he has found possibilities for growth in many kinds of experience, so Eric’s solo gigs have shown him that “you can play jazz on any form.  I mean you could improvise on any form…. It might sound strange, but the good thing about playing a song that's never been played by Miles or Coltrane is, you have to figure out a way to play it.”

            Eric’s goal, once again, is to grow: “I want to get to the point where I can freely express myself so it's not a drag for me to play that stuff.  What I've realized is that if I encounter resistance to playing it, sometimes it's because I don't know it well enough.”  Room to grow.

13

Since returning to St. Louis, Eric has also pursued intellectual and spiritual interests, choosing again to embrace new ways of thinking and being.  They have taken him into Buddhism and meditation through writers such as Alan Watts and D. T. Suzuki.  Although he has since moved closer to Western religion, he continues to meditate.  “I believe in the power of that.  I think when the Bible talks about prayer that they really mean meditation.”

Eric began by practising breath-based meditation, “then I became aware of Eckhart Tolle.  He was talking about meditating on the energy field of the body.  I started doing that,” then—no surprise—he began doing auditory meditation using “ambient sound in the room.  If you listen to it for a while, you'll hear something inside of it. It's like you can tune into the sound more and more 'til you're on a very specific frequency.  You're still aware of the peace in your body and your breath, but that's in the background.

            “For some reason, maybe because I'm a musician, I get more stability with that than with just the field of the body. I always wanted to get to the point with the energy field where I could feel the energy field going all the way out and couldn't feel my body.  That very rarely happens.  But that started happening with the sound meditation.”

Eric meditates daily, and, partly through reading Neville Goddard, he has thought explicitly about the process of manifesting that his musical life seems to have thrived on: “I'm trying to work on visualizing things that I want to happen. I'm experimenting with that…. I'm starting to think that maybe things that happen on the outside are based on thoughts we have on the inside.” 

True, Eric says, “I don't understand how that happens.  I don't claim to know.  But I have noticed a connection…. If I harbor resentment against somebody but don't say it openly to them and smile in their face, the relationship still gets messed up.

“Then sometimes some feelings I have about myself are mirrored in my environment.  If I change those feelings, they change in the environment….That's what Neville Goddard talks about.

“I remember when I was a kid, I think I did that automatically.  I'd think a thought and certain things would happen -- like Jeremy Davenport moving me to New Orleans….Then I thought, before I got that blues band gig on the road, that ‘I think I'd like to play blues on the road.’ Two weeks later….”

14

In 2017, in his mid-forties, Eric was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. He had no health insurance at the time and was soon facing bills of up to $50,000.   “I was in the hospital for a week, and they had me on this heart monitor that I had to wear—a big battery-pack, a belt with straps--for three months.  I had to start taking medicine for the first time in my life, which I'm still taking:  two medications for blood pressure, a diuretic, and aspirin.  I would love to get off the medicine.

            “By the grace of God, I've gotten out of all of that debt by jumping through hoops pretty much every week.  Like sending somebody something.  Bank statements.  Tax statements.  Multiple times.  They’d lose it!  I don't think I owe anybody anything now, but it wasn't easy!” 

Some of his fellow St. Louis players helped out.  “Musicians like Montez Coleman and Adam Maness did a birthday party for Montez, and he gave me all the money from that.  The whole band pitched in their money.  That was totally unexpected.  It helped immensely, because I couldn't work for a while.”

            You would expect Eric to move forward, seek improvement.  “Since then, I've had to change a lot of things about my lifestyle.  I’ve become vegan and started exercising.  My heart is almost back to normal now.”  And he’s enrolled in Gateway,  “which is state health insurance for low-income people.”

15

Eric has also been learning and growing as a musician--pushing past his limitations--in another key language:  “Now what I'm trying to learn about is technology, which I've resisted for a long time…. I'm trying to learn this program, Ableton Live.  I'm also getting better at Sibelius, which is a music-software program where you can change the key of your charts.  It's pretty amazing, actually.”

Eric uses the software to practice, to write, and to play. 

            “I can lay down a bass line of a song and make it a loop -- then lower that an octave.  Then I can make another loop of me comping over it.  Then I can make another loop of me soloing over it.  Then I can program the drums.  I use it every day to practice.  But I also use it to write and perform original music.  I think I could actually get to the point where I could learn about orchestration using these tools and not have to go back to school.”

For Eric’s playing, the new technology “helps me to just hear what I'm doing.  If you hear yourself every day, it starts to change how you think.  You're like, ‘Oh, I need to work on this.’”  So recording himself is part of Eric’s daily practice routine, putting down lines and learning by listening to himself.

Eventually Eric hopes to use the technology on gigs by programming his bass lines, then comping and playing guitar over them, especially on gigs where he’s playing with one or two musicians, can’t afford to hire more, but wants a bigger sound.  “I can program all of that, even if it wouldn't be as good as having live players….”

No wonder Eric, embracing the possibilities of uncertainty as an improviser does, says of Ableton Live, “I think that's actually going to be the new instrument.”

16

             Eric continues to gig—and to grow musically, to embrace change (as in his recently playing a concert of Stevie Wonder’s music with a local quartet).  He especially wants to move forward in his mastery of Ableton technology and its application in his playing. “For the gigs that I’m sometimes doing now either by myself on guitar or just with a singer, I’m using the computer and manipulating what happens with the music just with my feet on a pedal-board. 

            “I’m controlling it live, and that’s the challenge: Right now I have to figure out, ‘Okay, which program am I going to use?  What are the steps I'm going to need to do?’ I want to get more fluid with the system, more spontaneous and flexible, so it’s like playing an instrument, and I can make it work with improvised music and use it as a live-performance tool.

“It's like every time I do something new, I have to learn how to do it.  I just want to develop a flow with the computerized system where it's like picking up the guitar.  I want to have the same kind of mastery on both.  When I pick up the guitar, I have ideas in my mind and the music comes out. I want that whole system to be an instrument like that.”

Daring to learn as always: “I think it can make me a better musician.”