I was born on the lower east side, of Madison, Wisconsin that is. A town where the hippies won, and colorful murals and rusting VW Microbuses dotted the streets. There were railroads running right down the middle of the street in front of my house, and I liked to walk along them with my dad, past the culvert factory and the power plant, where you could see a giant scoop come down and pick up coal to feed the fires inside. Dad had a reel-to-reel tape player with bootlegs of Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder, Fela Kuti and he had plenty of records too: Miles Davis, Albert King, Pharoah Sanders, Dylan. I formed own group in high school playing and saxophone and studied with an avant-garde sax player named Hanah Jon Taylor. Catfish Stephenson was also a big influence, my dad played spoons and jaw harp in his band and we learned a lot about piedmont and delta blues.
From this bohemian enclave, I ventured out. I saved up money, worked at a fast food restaurant and took myself to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival when I was seventeen. After that it was all over. I moved as soon as I could. Earned a degree in Jazz Saxophone at the University of New Orleans, where Ellis Marsalis held court, and headed out on the road with a jazz-jamband called, Idletime. It was grassroots. We made our own flyers and slept on couches across the country, eatin’ sandwiches in the van and booking gigs ourselves. Before the dot-com bubbles burst, and the towers fell, and we ran way behind on bills, I saw the whole country. California, Colorado, and every town with a stage in The South. New Orleans was running out of steam, but I wanted to take another look before I moved on. I got a job doing renovations and repairs in a section eight complex tomake ends meet. I found my way back to Frenchmen Street and started sittin’ in with everybody, especially old time jazz musicians. I put together my own jazz band to do originals and my favorite standards.
New York was calling....I wanted hear new music and meet new people and see what I was made of. The City put me in my place fast. I found myself starving and playing on the subway platform for tips, but I kept hittin’ the jam sessions in the wee hours of the night, nursing a lone $6 new york beer and gradually, I got better and made more friends and things started to happen. A weekly gig in the city gave me a chance to work with a ton of talented musicians and expand my repertoire. It also got me singing and I realized I wanted to write songs with lyrics. I remembered that I grew up listening to folk music, not just jazz, so I went back and checked out more of that. I’ve been recording some of my new stuff in Austin, Tx as I continue to lead my own jazz group here in the city and gradually figuring it out how to put it together.
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