Why, you ask?

In this business-centric socio-capitalistic playground we call the here and now, I sometimes get asked why I still bother with the whole “music thing.” As if it were an adolescent phase that should have been outgrown long ago.

Unlike seemingly most of the “serious” musicians out there, I did not come from a home in which music and the arts played a fundamental role. I was not a prodigy. No one in my family played an instrument or took more than a passing interest in music. The first concert I attended was a punk rock show at an Elks Lodge when I was 16.

In many ways, I’m still in there at the Elks, watching the Combat Hamsters furiously mangle their instruments before a sparse but enthusiastic crowd. Though I joke about how I’ve “tried to give it up” it’s pretty clear (to me) that music is what I do - and possibly what I do best. Bank accounts be damned.

So… why? Why do I bother? Well… I recently came across a quote that sums it up well enough. Take it however you want and for whatever it’s worth…

…to be faced with unclothed art is a somewhat frightening proposition, even for the most astute critics and constituents, but all any artist asks is what drummer Ted Robinson said to Amiri Baraka in 1965: “Since God has bestowed me with the want to execute the sound that I feel, I shall proceed.” *

Enough said and amen.

*From: Bill Dixon: The Morality of Improvisation
By Clifford Allen
Published: August 20, 2005