The Black Body Anthology  is coming out on the 1st!  I’m one of 30 essayists included and it’s pretty great company!  Check it out on Amazon or the Publisher’s website.  But you can truly find it everywhere, I think.  Also come to the reading on the 10th @ Skylight Books, if you can.  All the info is listed on my [cref 1485 gig page].

Yo! It’s been so ridiculed, but why not have a Kumbaya moment and get healthcare right this time. Reflecting on the passing of Mary Travers last week, I’ve been even more inspired to be a hard core folk singer, singing out passionately for justice with a smile that can make you giggle.

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Let’s not let this moment pass. Here’s a song:

[wpaudio url=”http://groovyacousticsoul.com/mp3s/mMix_mp3s/10_A_Big_Picture_(Come_By_Here).mp3″ text=”Come By Here – from MMIX”]

And here’s a show in [cref 1279 San Diego].

I’ve told the story many times, but this morning a friend sent me a link to the show. Horace Tapscott, Billy Higgins, Michael Sessions, Juno Lewis, Roberto Miranda, and Kamau Daáood play in the Encino home of Mimi Melnick.  Extraordinary!  World-class legends playing in a hillside home!  At break, Billy Higgins, the legendary drummer on the groundbreaking, late fifties Ornette Coleman records and countless sixties Blue Note recordings pulls out an acoustic guitar and doodle for a bit.  He’s the greatest jazz drummer alive; what’s he doing on guitar?? Then during the second set he plays it in a piece with the poet, Kamau Daáood.  Amazing.  I’d been a part of the poetry community at the World Stage (the place Kamau and Billy founded in 1988) in Leimert Park for a few years at that point, but I didn’t know Billy other than hero worship and a few hellos over the years.  But today, I had to share.  He was a little in my turf, y’know!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tYrEP9F40E

I’d just recently written a song with another world stage legend, poet Peter J. Harris and the music that came out of me for that song was unlike anything I’d ever done before.  I felt Thelonious Monk whispering to me to put the dissonance of snow in Brazil into the chords.  Billy had played with Monk (Live at the Blackhawk – the first Monk record I’d owned), so to see him collaborate with a poet…I just had to take the chance to approach him.

I’d always received nothing but love from the musicians in the Los Angeles Jazz community, and they knew I was a musician.  But, because I didn’t really play “jazz,” I felt intimidated to share my music.  But that day, like I said, he was slightly on my turf, so I figured we’d have a common language, or maybe he’d at least appreciate the C 6/9 b5 that started the song.  So I mustered up the courage after the set, and while he was eating chicken, he allowed me to play for him.

His head nodded a little as I played, but his eyes were mostly cast toward the meal in his lap.  After I’d finished, he looked up and said, “Those aren’t cowboy chords!”  I said I’d been thinking of Monk when I put ‘em together.

Then the next thing he said was, “Have you ever been to Brazil?”

I said, “No, I just kind of like the idea of it.”

“In Brazil, people play like this for each other, just to make each other happy,” he said.

And with that, he took me in the back room of Mimi’s house and began to give me private concert/lesson playing beautiful chords and rhythms, singing to me in Portuguese (or Faux-tuguese Kamau told me later) for about a half hour until the house had cleared out and Roberto had to drag him away.  The whole time he played, my jaw was dropped.  He’d say, “Then you could do something like this,” and he give a little grunt and go back to that sweet voice, playing and dancing in rhythm like he’d do behind the kit.  Ever present, the magic smile I knew from seeing him originally on the screen in “‘Round Midnight,” the 1986 film I watched in Paris knowing I’d return to the US in a couple weeks.  It was just too much joy!

I got in my car and soared to the Borders bookstore where my sister worked to share the story.  Then straight in the door at home, I called Peter and told him the story.  He listened quietly.  When I finally paused, he told me – though he’d been a poet for years – when he had decided to write specifically for music, a friend gave him a tape of random things to inspire him.  On that tape was Billy Higgins playing acoustic guitar.  And “Winter in Brazil” came from that.

In the following years whenever I’d see Billy he’d shout out “Paradise!” part of Peter and my song’s refrain.

It’s amazing to see all these wonderful people in this video: Horace Tapscott and Juno Lewis (check out Coltrane’s Kulu Se Mama featuring Juno’s “Juno Se Mama”), both of these men had the warmest smiles (like Billy) and always greeted me like I was a valued young man in line to carry the tradition forth.  I’m still not really a Jazz musician, but I had this amazing conversation once with Kenny Burrell and Louie Bellson about how it was all about the honesty in approaching the music and life.  I’d like to think I do carry that tradition forth.

If you’re watching the video, I’m pretty easy to spot standing up in a plaid shirt and t-shirt.  (It was the 90s after all.)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI5o1B7rDyI

It’s January 26, 1994. I’m doing my usual Luna Park gig, so I get there early for my sound check.  The guy that’s checking has this beautiful guitar tone.  It’s electric and chimes with an extraordinary clarity.  I’m in love with this sound.  I’d been doing the acoustic thing, more out of expectation and convenience, but I missed the sustain and volume, so this was a revelation.  Then the guy starts to sing “Lilac Wine.”  I’d been doing “Black Is the Color (Of My True Love’s Hair)” for a while – it was my Nina Simone vocal workout and a song to still the room.  But this guy’s voice floored me and his presence in it was astounding.  He’d put out his EP a couple months before the show.  Mine had come out that summer.  My mom was out of town, but his mom, Mary, was there was a sweet family feeling in the room.  Jeff was from Orange County but had been living in New York and gave me a few suggestions of places to play and names of people to contact.  So I played at 1^st Street Café and Sin-é later that next summer.  He was a beautiful guy.

I didn’t stay in touch, though. I didn’t buy Grace until a few years ago.  I’d thought the cover photo was lame, and was like, “What are you doing, Jeff?”  I was a little envious when he took off so dramatically, and Lord knows I never need to hear another singer reach for his or her inner Jeff by singing “Hallelujah.” (Though he sang it wonderfully and pretty much took ownership from Leonard Cohen.)

But I saw the expanded “Live At Sin-é” EP on emusic yesterday for 6 bucks, so I downloaded it.  It took me back.  Two and a half hours of this beautiful artist.  And it starts off with another Nina Simone cover of “Be Your (My) Husband.”  He was a magical mess.  His voice gets really pretentious at times, but I recently found a 1994 show of my own on tape, and maybe that was the thing!  (Smile)  He was courageous.  Download it and feel the moment.  It was a beautiful time.   And he was a rare talent, but also just a guy whose mom came out to support his gigs.  (Though there was something in the genes, too, ’cause his dad’s Happy Sad kills me!)

So, about 2 months ago now, I went to a party and fell in mad infatuation.  Yes, with a guitar.  It was couple weeks before the Kerrville Folk Festival and I convinced Jeff Cohen, the president of Voyage-Air Guitar, that I needed to take this instrument there.  I got it the day before I left and by the second day of the festival, infatuation became true love.

I’d been wanting to get an OM bodied guitar for a while now and this thing sounded great!  The tone is sweet and balanced.  So much easier to solo on this than my dreadnought.  OM’s just kind of cut-through a little better I always think.

Photo by Susan Roads (susanroads.com).

But the most unique thing about this instrument is that it collapses!  I almost wrote “the coolest thing,” but really the coolest thing is the tone.

HOWEVER, it’s pretty amazing to have an instrument that you can fold in half, stick on in an overhead bin along with your laptop on an airplane, and you can carry it on in a backpack!

Seriously, you can put this thing on your back and people with think you play accordion!  But you open it up, freak ’em out — it’s kind of like seeing a double jointed person bend an arm backwards when you first see it — then you snap it into place.  It’s ready to play right then!  I mean sometimes you have to do a little fine tuning, but really, I’ve sat down in a circle and started improvising mid-song, inspiring jaw drops in the first couple notes!  By the middle of the fest I was becoming known as the “guy with the switchblade guitar.”  It cracked me up.

Here are some more photos from the festival of people checking it out or just being amazed: [nggallery id=26]

You’ve got to get one of these if you travel or just like to show up and jam without carrying a heavy awkward load.  The cool thing is that your hands won’t hurt from carrying that hard shell case through the airport either….  You can get at a lot of mom and pop stores and the major online retailers, plus the big boxes like Guitar Center and Sam Ash.  (voyageairguitar.com)