Autobiography - Part Two

This is a continuation of yesterday's post (February 8, 2010), answering the autobiographical question, Where did I come from?

Not much will make sense if you begin here, which I suppose could be fun if you are in the right sort of mood. Either way, I hope it sheds a little light - for you, about the motivations behind this project, and for me, about the direction for its final recorded product.

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Life was candied peaches as I quickly became the best drummer in school. After failing at everything else that could gain me some popularity, it was nice to find a niche. I even began making friendships with other students in the band. It was a year of bliss.

Enter Jameson McCalister. My percussive empire crumbled in an instant as this wahoo waltzed through the double doors of Barrington Middle School. Hailing from Texas, Jameson enjoyed instant celebrity status. Gaggles of girls swooned at his locker between classes, his perfect chestnut hair flapped around his chiseled face as he scored goal goal on the soccer field, and he could throw down beats on a drum set better than fellows twice his age.

My first drum set teacher also taught Jameson, often in the time slot right before me. Dail Bienkiewicz, a lady drummer, was one of the greatest teachers from whom I studied. A Berklee School of Music graduate, Dail knew how to lay down some rhythms. She even looked the part, sporting a 1980s rock mullet that rivaled Garth Algar. Taking lessons from Dail was like enrolling in Berklee Lite. She taught from many of the same books, play-alongs, and worksheets that she picked up while there, and she had a fantastic way of simplifying the information so my junior-high mind could wrap around the concepts.

I have Dail to thank for an introduction to jazz drumming, syncopated beats, and the music of Dave Weckl, a master of the trade. She picked up on my growing love for jazz music, and recommended that I study with Artie Cabral, a first-call big band drummer with beady eyes, double-bridged glasses, and a shiny head. He smelled like corn. As great of a teacher as he was a drummer, I enjoyed lessons with him through the end of high school.

It was clear to my parents that I was not fitting in socially nor excelling academically in Barrington public schools. They made arrangements for me to visit a number of private institutions, which were all too hoity-toity, too far away, or simply too expensive. After a half-dozen such visits, we found La Salle Academy in North Providence. This parochial school was a stalwart of Rhode Island education since 1871, and some of the Catholic brothers have taught there since the school opened its doors, or so it appeared.

The good news: not all of the classes were instructed by the brothers. In fact many laypeople were on staff, some of whom were excellent role models of faith and insight. La Salle had its issues, but overall it provided a positive educational experience. One such layperson was Jim LaFitte. Hired to teach general music in the small, basement-run arts program, Mr. LaFitte had a rabid love for jazz, blues, and pop music, and ran a dynamite after-school program teaching small ensembles in each genre.

I auditioned for his ensembles my first week in school, and it is safe to say that he enjoyed having me around as much as I enjoyed attending rehearsal. I was placed in two ensembles the first year, one that focused on r&b and blues, and another that worked out jazz and fusion tunes.

Mr. LaFitte was the archetypal teacher under which any student of music would hope to study. He was first a trombone player, and had gigged on the local circuit for decades. His teaching post paid the bills, but he poured tremendous energy into that as well, working far longer hours than anyone else on the faculty to run ensembles that were not given space during coveted school hours.

In the jazz/fusion band, Mr. LaFitte would often sit in with his trombone during rehearsals and performances. What a delight it was to spend my high school years keeping rhythm with a professional musician.

On many occasions, I would slip down to the music room after school after the final bell at 2:10. Mr. LaFitte would spin some discs - often John Coltrane or Miles Davis, sometimes Chick Corea or the Mahavishnu Orchestra. I was enamored with the sounds of post-bop and fusion; musics so complex and dynamic with new details revealing themselves with each listen. We would sit together in those ancient olive hard plastic chairs, the ones with the three slits in the back, listening to tunes, enthusiastically discussing their merits. Mr. LaFitte taught me to get lost in the music and shed illuminating beams onto a path I would eventually attempt to walk.

I occasionally showed up on Thursday nights at a little dive called CAV, where a masterful Hammond B3 player named Lonnie Gasperini hosted a stellar jam session. I was by far the youngest and greenest player to darken the door, but the musicians chose the route of encouragement and welcomed me to their small, carpeted stage. The driving feeling of that bass thumping in my left ear as the curly bari sax wailed away in my right is indelible as a first kiss.

A small, final musical victory of my high school days: I auditioned for the Rhode Island Music Educators Asoociation (also known as All State) Jazz Band. Though I placed second and did not make it into the band, I beat out Jameson McCalister, that drumming wonder from Texas, who made fifth. And I felt pretty good about myself after that.

Gordon College accepted me into its music program, mostly because they desperately needed a percussionist. Gordon is a small liberal arts school on the north shore of Boston, Massachusetts - about two hours from home. I lived on campus and studied the rich history and inner workings of the western classical tradition. My percussion instructor was a little off. He had a smooshed face with a creepy tidy mustache hanging from his bump of a nose. He was a no-hair-on-top, long-hair-on-the-bottom kind of fellow, wearing striped shirts with at least three buttons open on top and the initials GJS embroidered on the left pocket.

The short of it: this teacher couldn't teach, and he couldn't play. Totally uninspiring. I became so fed up with my lessons at the college that I enrolled in private studies at Berklee School of Music with drummer extraordinaire Jon Hazilla.

Lessons at Berklee were an all-day affair. First a drive from the north shore down to the Wonderland ballroom in Revere, then Blue Line into Government Center and green line (B, C, or D Train) to Hynes Convention Center. From there it was a four block walk to the basement studio where the rhythmic magic happened. Lessons were two hours in length, followed by a reverse travel route.

(There is a large clue in the last paragraph about the subject matter of a song I wrote last month and posted as a scratch recording called 'Slips Away.')

The ordeal should have been exhausting and prohibitive with all of my concurrent academic pursuits, but I found that nothing motivated me more. Lessons with Jon were a time warp. I would marvel at his musical aptitude, his honed abilities, his brush technique, his ear for cymbal selection. He taught me to love Jimmy Cobb and Philly Joe Jones, Tony Williams and Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock, Bill Evans and Red Garland. He instructed me about stick click and the uses of rivets, the merits of mounting the bottom hi-hat on the top, the motions of swishing convincing brush patterns, the way to hold a maple stick so it breathes. Known as the drum doctor, this guy could pinpoint the least bit of tension in a stance or a grip and conjure up fifteen exercises that would melt the problem away. I have never learned so much from a single individual about anything as I have about drumming from Jon Hazilla.

He was friends with a modern legend of Manhattan jazz drumming, John Riley. Author of three renown publications and professor of drum set at Manhattan School of Music, I thought these three degress of separation may be my ticket into one of the finest jazz masters programs on the market. During my senior year, I made the four hour drive to Riley's studio in a lush suburb up the Hudson, where I took an emotional beating for two hours. Any hope I ever had of making it in the music industry popped like bubble gum as the master offered his honest opinions about my sad excuse for jazz drumming. He was right, but it was a wound that still makes me shudder when I think about it. I spend a good part of the drive home in tears.

I graduated from Gordon in 2002 and married a week later to a kindhearted, affirming woman of gentleness and warmth. Best decision I ever made. We towed a U-Haul behind our Ford Taurus Wagon, burning out our brakes as we descended Lookout Mountain down into Georgia. We landed in Atlanta, where I was accepted into a masters program of jazz studies at Georgia State University.

The two year program had its ups and downs... mostly downs. GSU is a mismanaged behemoth of a government school with astonishing masses floating through its ivory gates on taxpayer dollars and lottery revenue. I chose this program for one reason, and one reason only: Kinah Boto.

My parents moved to the Atlanta area when I was halfway through my bachelors degree, and during one school break, I paid a visit to Churchill Grounds, the city's premier spot for local live jazz. Boto was on the docket that night, and he blew me out of my chair. His groove was as wide as the ocean, his intensity as strong as a six foot wave. With dreadlocks flailing and heavy coke-bottle glasses dancing on the tip of his alert nose, he combined rhythms in ways I never imagined, percolating and simmering up an infections concoction of sound. Jon Hazilla ably explained perfect execution and technique; Kinah Boto taught me how to feel the music.

While I do not have fond memories of the university that hosted my masters degree, I had some good experiences in the school of music. I met many top-shelf Atlanta players like Gary Motley, Neal Starkey, Gordon Vernick, and E.J. Hughes, some of whom took me under their wing and had me out to a few gigs. When playing with the local masters, I would often become so worked up beforehand that I would break into a cold sweat and sometimes vomit. I spent most of these gigging years feeling judged and inadequate, and my sense of identity was greatly skewed by the uneasy emotions.

I paid my way through school working as a teacher's assistant for professor of ethnomusicology Oliver Greene. A fine professor and as good of a man, Dr. Greene spent many hours discussing music and life with me in his seventh floor office. He opened my eyes to many important subjects, including a breathtaking array of musics from around the globe. I learned as much from assisting in World Music classes as I did from all my credited studies.

Upon graduation, which I did not attend, I decided to lay the drumsticks down. Taking a job as a graphic artist (a skill I also studied during my undergraduate years), I tried to forget about my failed attempt at becoming a world-class musician. Each time I would feel a longing creeping up from my soul, I would shove it back down my throat, telling myself that it wasn't sensible to pursue music as a career move. This was and remains true; music is the worst thing I could possibly do for my career. But that fact did not (and does not) make it any easier to give it up.

My initial post as a graphic artist blossomed as many people learned about my work and freelance opportunities arose. Eventually I launched a small business, designing graphics from home, often in my jammies. My wife has since joined me in the effort, working as an accountant and a web programmer. We have been going strong for three and a half years, and we seem to be weathering the economic downturn fairly well.

What used to be my whole life made an occasional appearance whenever I played the drums at church or pulled out a guitar in the living room. Mostly I tried to let those rich experiences become faint remembrances of a former existence. My efforts to convince myself that I was happy without music continually failed, but I stuffed the ears of my soul with the proverbial bananas of growing a business so I couldn't feel the sadness, or at least to dull it a bit.

Roughly six months ago, a good friend with a similar musical wrestle invited me to join him for weekly music making on the computer. I was wary of getting back to music in any form, but this guy is a hero of mine, and I find myself willing to do anything that will earn his friendship. So off I went each Wednesday to his quaint home in Avondale Estates to foray into the unknown world of electronica.

It was a world of beeps, blips, and shebangs, with all kinds of matte silver gear strung up with USB cables, strewn around the table like stainless steel spaghetti. My combined background of music and computer-aided graphic design lent an intuitive sense of how to create compositions with digital audio workstations. We mostly used GarageBand for those early experiments, feeding playful sounds to it through microphones and midi devices.

The music we continue to create together may never change the world, but it has awoken in me a delicious part of life that was forgotten for too long. I have this friend to thank for reviving the spirit of music in me. It is because of his initiative that I eventually concocted the premise of the Redline Project. Thanks David - love you my brother.

Subsequent chapters to this musical journey are yet to be written, which is a big deal to me as I thought the book was already closed, collecting dust on the shelf. This month and a half of the Redline Project is a renaissance, an unquenchable fire that has me in its hot grip. I am not delusional that I may become famous or wealthy through this odd and vital adventure. I only hope to take what is on the inside and get it to the outside. I hope to make music. I hope to get heard.