About Me.... - April 4, 2009
When I was thirteen years old I visited my oldest brother, who was living in Asheville, North Carolina. My brother was nineteen at the time and playing every night with a reggae outfit named the Mental Roots, an assembly of grizzled road-dog musicians from different parts of the South; a backwoods guitar player named Law-Dog, seven-foot tall Rasta front-man Ras Dave, drummer Neptali, and my brother Isaac. This was the crowd that greeted me when I arrived.
No one asked how old I was, no one asked where my parents were, all they asked about was what I was carrying in my case. I pulled out my alto and they immediately began teaching me horn parts.
My horn proved to be an I.D. card that granted me access to a world unlike any I’d ever seen. Despite the novelty of my age I didn’t feel like a trained monkey on display, I just felt like a musician: a professional.
For the next week I played shows with them on my sax, I recorded with them, hung out with them, and just immersed myself in their music. The experience profoundly changed my outlook and left me hellbent on being a musician for good.
I had always loved music before then, but that was when I really caught the bug for performance. I worked hard at being the best instrumentalist I could. Since then, I’ve studied with some serious musicians who have taught me a great deal. But several years ago while I was studying ‘Jazz Saxophone Performance’ in college it dawned on me that I was no longer stretching myself in that field of study. Learning other saxophonists’ licks was no longer a stimulating educational or musical endeavor. It was turning me off from music, and that was a horrifying prospect. I could never stop playing, as it’s a huge part of who I am, but I felt drawn to study other things.
So I switched my major to English and a funny thing happened. While finding out that I actually loved studying literature, I began to gain a certain level of success in the music world. I’d hear my name mentioned in clubs, I started getting placed in better gigs, and the real feather in my cap: I had been tapped by an artist with a big record deal to co-write songs on his upcoming album, while simultaneously in talks with various record companies over my own material. All those years of solitude and practice, all my hard work seemed to have gotten me to a very special place.
Through the cloud of near-success, I was still able to perform well academically, intending to graduate and immediately dive right in to a successful career in music, but sure enough, that cloud lifted and those hard earned musical prospects promptly disappeared. The songs I wrote didn’t sell. Record companies stopped calling. I felt betrayed. I was so discouraged that I couldn’t even turn on the radio. I had spent so long working at and fostering such a special bond with music. It was my best friend, and I felt like it had turned on me.
It wasn’t until I visited my childhood home a few weeks later that the disillusionment finally left me. I walked by the white Yamaha upright piano my nephew was playing. Actually he was only playing one note (he’s four) but that in itself seemed so unusual - someone so young with so many keys to push all right there in front of him, and he was dialed into a singular B flat. His face showed genuine pleasure and fascination with that note, and when I sat down next to him to accompany him, he was beaming. We both were.
No one asked how old I was, no one asked where my parents were, all they asked about was what I was carrying in my case. I pulled out my alto and they immediately began teaching me horn parts.
My horn proved to be an I.D. card that granted me access to a world unlike any I’d ever seen. Despite the novelty of my age I didn’t feel like a trained monkey on display, I just felt like a musician: a professional.
For the next week I played shows with them on my sax, I recorded with them, hung out with them, and just immersed myself in their music. The experience profoundly changed my outlook and left me hellbent on being a musician for good.
I had always loved music before then, but that was when I really caught the bug for performance. I worked hard at being the best instrumentalist I could. Since then, I’ve studied with some serious musicians who have taught me a great deal. But several years ago while I was studying ‘Jazz Saxophone Performance’ in college it dawned on me that I was no longer stretching myself in that field of study. Learning other saxophonists’ licks was no longer a stimulating educational or musical endeavor. It was turning me off from music, and that was a horrifying prospect. I could never stop playing, as it’s a huge part of who I am, but I felt drawn to study other things.
So I switched my major to English and a funny thing happened. While finding out that I actually loved studying literature, I began to gain a certain level of success in the music world. I’d hear my name mentioned in clubs, I started getting placed in better gigs, and the real feather in my cap: I had been tapped by an artist with a big record deal to co-write songs on his upcoming album, while simultaneously in talks with various record companies over my own material. All those years of solitude and practice, all my hard work seemed to have gotten me to a very special place.
Through the cloud of near-success, I was still able to perform well academically, intending to graduate and immediately dive right in to a successful career in music, but sure enough, that cloud lifted and those hard earned musical prospects promptly disappeared. The songs I wrote didn’t sell. Record companies stopped calling. I felt betrayed. I was so discouraged that I couldn’t even turn on the radio. I had spent so long working at and fostering such a special bond with music. It was my best friend, and I felt like it had turned on me.
It wasn’t until I visited my childhood home a few weeks later that the disillusionment finally left me. I walked by the white Yamaha upright piano my nephew was playing. Actually he was only playing one note (he’s four) but that in itself seemed so unusual - someone so young with so many keys to push all right there in front of him, and he was dialed into a singular B flat. His face showed genuine pleasure and fascination with that note, and when I sat down next to him to accompany him, he was beaming. We both were.