Tim Berne
Where did you grow up?
Syracuse, New York. We used to call it upstate and then when I moved to New York I realized that it was central New York…it’s right in the middle.
Where you surrounded by musicians in your family?
I couldn’t have been less likely to become a musician. Everybody in my family except me attempted an instrument. I resisted it stronger than everyone else. Everyone else just kind of did it for a minute and then either quit or it didn’t really matter if they quit. It quit them. One of my brothers stuck with it. He was playing trumpet in high school band and then he was the one that kind of turned me onto music in a way (or this kind of music) because he was playing trumpet and got into Don Cherry and stuff like that. I would stand outside his door and listen as he would jam with these records and then I’d listen to him play these records and then he would move on to another phase and I would grab those records. Between my two brothers, I had really good influences in terms of what to listen to. At first it was all soul music and funk and my oldest brother was way into that and then the other brother was into all kinds of stuff and got into Don Cherry, Sun Ra and more. That led me to jazz and then there was a good radio station WAER and there was this guy Joe Bova (?) who had this show and it was an amazing show. He played stuff like Cecil Taylor, Sonny Rollins, just everything across the board. And then I had a few friends whom I indoctrinated and I’d make them go to concerts. For a while, Syracuse had a really great live music scene because the university had some hip people there, they had a club, I saw Weather Report in ’72, I saw all kinds of blues, James Cotton, pretty much anybody who played blues I saw them…John Lee Hooker…I saw Jarrett solo during his first tour before Facing You. Pharaoh Sanders, Herbie Hancock/Mwandishi, all this stuff… I think Miles even came through with one of his electric bands. I got lucky, I sort of got into stuff and then we had a good record store, but this was all before I started playing.
The record stores used to be a place where you could find things and meet people who could direct you to interesting stuff.
I was very curious, so it was the fact that they had all this stuff. I didn’t really ask people but I would go in and kind of browse. When I bought Julius’ (Hemphill) Dogon A.D. I was just looking at the cover and I knew that Philip Wilson played with Paul Butterfield so I recognized that. Then I saw cello and I kind of liked Julius’ name and I was into buying records…I would only buy records that I hadn’t heard before. If I had heard something before, I usually didn’t buy it. Because it spoiled that first time listen. I loved going home, and I had this friend Larry, we would sit there and put something on and then listen to it about five times until we liked it. I remember doing that with Ornette. The first Ornette record I bought was Friends and Neighbors and we sat there and at first it was like “wow this sounds weird” and then we just kept listening to it and then all of a sudden it kicked in. For me, it meant something if I didn’t get it. It meant I could listen to it over and over and each time something would be revealed. Records were $2.99 or $3 bucks, so you could experiment.
You only got seriously into music in terms of YOU making music in college. Is that correct?
When I was 19, I picked up an alto because I was playing intramural basketball and I hurt my leg, I was bored, didn’t really like school work. I heard somebody was selling an alto for $100 and I was way into music, and I had this posse of crazy guys who would sit there and listen to all the weird shit. These guys were all musicians- I was in Oregon- and all played in high school band and then they got into other things, but they kept playing their instruments. They would have these jams and anybody could join, you didn’t have to know how to play, we would just go nuts, so I started doing that after I bought this alto and I would play along with this Pharaoh Sanders record “Thembi” because everything was in F on the alto so it was sort of easy, or at least I thought so at the time and so I just started noodling but it sort of stressed me out, cause I knew I wasn’t very disciplined and I thought I’m never going to do this if I don’t take lessons so I switched to a college near New York and take lessons. After high school I had decided not to go to college at first so I went to Europe with a friend of mine. He was probably going there to fool around and party and I was secretly going because I knew all these guys were in Paris in the Black Artist Group and the AACM, so really that was my ulterior motive (which I didn’t tell anyone). We got over there I said “Hey lets go to Paris”! We went and I had a friend from high school who had an apartment and we stayed with her and then I met Braxton. I saw Baikida Carroll play, I saw Oliver Lake, it was sort of the tail end of all that. I think The Art Ensemble had already gone back. I ended up talking to Braxton, he was just this guy. I went to this place called The American Center, we talked and hit it off which, although in retrospect probably everyone hits it off with Braxton, he likes talking to people. Having a fan from the states probably surprised him. We traded addresses and when I went back to New York we corresponded and then he said he was coming back to New York and this in about ’74 maybe. That’s when he started making Arista records and I asked if he would give me lessons. I took three lessons with Braxton. Each week was a new scale. Started out on the C scale and we went to F or D and I had a little list of things to do. Very straight forward, and then after the third lesson he said that he was getting busy because he had the Arista record deal and was getting more work and stuff so he said “Why don't you call Hemphill?” and my eyes almost popped out of my head. I said, “Hemphill? He’s in New York?” Because I thought he was in Saint Louis. Braxton said “Yes he’s in Brooklyn”. Brooklyn was like a foreign country to me. I had never been there. I called Julius and he was like “Ok, I never really give lessons, but sure”. He gave me his address and I went there. He was on Dean street in Brooklyn, which at the time wasn’t as nice as it is now I guess, or as gentrified I should say. He lived in a big brownstone and when I got there he was in his pajamas. He completely forgot. In the first lesson he asked “So what do you want to learn?”, and I said “I don't really know because I don't know anything. I’m a beginner” and he says “Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about magic lately” and that’s how it started and that pretty much set the tone. It was all over the place, in a great way, but for someone who was a beginner you kind of need to be fed information, when you don’t know anything. He gave me some information and then he’d leave me hanging and be like “Oh yeah you can do this, you can do that, you can play scales but you don’t really need me to figure that out.” We would mostly do long tone strategies and the lessons would be 3 or 4 hours. We really sort of became friends. I think he was thrilled to have a fan, because he wasn’t doing anything. He was doing one or two gigs a year so he couldn’t believe that I was there. We hung out pretty hard for two years or so and first it was lessons and then it was sitting around and talking for hours. I then started helping him with his label, setting up gigs, and doing flyers. I learned all the stuff I do now still from him. We would set up a gig, rent some place, make a flyer and then I’d run the door. He would do the gig and sometimes there would be five people and sometimes fifty. Same thing with the label, I kind of had to learn what a distributor is. I set up a network of distributors and everything was done by mail. We would manufacture the stuff. My sister would do the covers and so I learned how to do all this stuff that became and still is my thing. Seeing him do it, meant that later on I didn’t think it was beneath me to put out my own record, or do my business or set up my own gigs. The way he did it was empowering. I control my thing, I control my destiny. That was his thing, and he didn’t have a lot of opportunities. It made me feel better about that, and in fact it took a while before I sent stuff to labels because I thought “Why would I do that, this is so much better, there is no interference, no time table”. All this was pre-publicists and all that, so the playing field was a little more level I suppose and it was kind of interesting. I didn’t mind it. I had a day job and it seemed like if you’re going to choose to do this you have to be prepared to sustain it some other way. That didn’t seem demeaning to me, it just meant “ok, I want to do something I really like and that it makes sense that I’m not going to make any money”. I never saw it as the music business until I finally wanted to make a living, but it was interesting. New York was pretty vibrant at the time in terms of musicians and ideas.
That kind of answers my question about where your DIY spirit came from. I also thought that maybe it was coming from the AACM group that really seemed to have it in their mission to do things themselves as a way of controlling one’s art, destiny and business side.
Totally! Even more the Black Artist Group (BAG) because they were putting out their own records before The Art Ensemble was. The Art Ensemble always had these guys in Chicago like Chuck Nessa who had put out their records and Delmark. These BAG guys had their own label with five or six records…Oliver was putting stuff out… Julius had his own label and put Dogon A.D. out. So, I think I got more from them and then Julius kind of confirmed it and it was very easy to learn this whole thing. Less competitive at the time and up until the file sharing shit with NAPSTER happened in maybe the early 2000s. That’s when it became a less viable business model. For a while it was great, I could pay everybody, I could pay an artist to design it, I could do anything the way you do it with a label and make money, so it was incredible. It was pretty cool and then when things got difficult in the early 2000s it was harder to sell a couple thousand records, I got tired fighting and started thinking about other labels and I did a few things with independent labels and then in 2010 or 2011 I started thinking about ECM, because I had met him a few times and I realized I was going to get burnout and I needed to get some gigs, so it helped in a way, but now I’m back in the DIY.
Maybe not only these groups but also people like William Parker and John Zorn and you have shown younger generations a way to deal with some realities and take charge of one’s own work and schedule and such.
Controlling your own destiny, I’m a person who doesn’t really like having meetings, I don’t like talking about what I’m going to do. I don’t like cooperatives where everyone is like “let’s do this, let’s do that” and then nothing happens. I get an idea and I have to do it. I talk about it only so that someone hears me and then I have to back it up. I’m not that patient so I like having control and lots of young musicians ask me to put out their records and I usually say “Do you believe in what you’re doing?” And they say “Yeah, yeah, yeah” and then I say put it out yourself. If you’re not willing to risk your own money, why should I? I’m not a label. I say “put your money where your mouth is!” You can make a record really cheap now, I made a solo record for $0, I recorded it in my bedroom. You gotta back up your shit and I think some people think it’s demeaning and you need that validation from someone, which is understandable, but now in the real world although the label thing isn’t dead there aren’t many labels who will pay young artists in advance. A lot of the time you have to pay for your own thing and you just accept these terms that very few other businesses would accept. Some people stand on their principles and won’t do anything unless they paid, which is certainly reasonable, but it might also mean you’re not going to do anything. It’s a crapshoot. I like to document stuff. The people I follow and inspire me who don’t compromise (Threadgill, Braxton, Julius), they were all paying to do their own shit. Braxton still does it, even if he gets a million dollar grant, he’s going to spend it all on making a record or doing an opera. We chose to do this! It would be great if we lived in Norway and everybody was throwing money at us to do our art, but we don’t and I kind of like the idea that what I do has to sustain me. I gotta earn money. I think it’s a little hipper in some ways than just having arts funding, and sitting around and not doing shitty gigs in clubs and waiting for my own gig once a year when the opera house calls me. I like playing in little bars, that’s when it develops. I’m not saying I like not making a great living from it, but I think it’s important to appreciate what all goes in to this. The whole thing of calling it art, it’s not that big a deal. We’re just making music, we change a few people’s lives but in the scheme of things, we’re lucky.
So, you took a few lessons with Braxton in ’74 and worked on a couple of scales. By ’79 you had your own label (Empire) and started releasing your own records on it. As I listen to those recordings, they are very strong with a clear direction and a real artistic point of view. That is a very short time to get from learning a few scales to making powerful artistic statements. What happened between ’74 and ’79? You just worked your ass off?
Well, my models, I would say Julius, and all of those Chicago and Saint Louis guys with the rubato improvisation and the way they combine composition and improvisation, and kind of melded it together… The way they wed those two things. I just knew it, and I think I intuitively was able to understand that despite lacking a hell of a lot of skill. The one thing I didn’t lack was apparently nerve, which I find shocking now. I also had ideas, I don’t think I was a very strong player, or composer but I had ideas and I would almost say my concept hasn’t changed. I’ve gotten better at some things (better writer and player I hope). I’ve refined a lot of it. My fundamental approach and ideas are pretty similar now to then. Maybe more complex, even though I hate that word. As you get better, your ideas get better hopefully. The fundamental thing never changed and I got that from those guys, no question about it. I was into mainstream jazz, but not playing with people and being 20 years old I figured I guess I’ll just write music because that’s what Julius did. I started writing music when I started playing so that never was work for me. When people say “I’m having a hard time writing” I can’t really relate to that unless I just don’t have the time. When I decide to write it’s a matter of one day and then stuff happens. That’s how it happened. I don’t want to make it sound like I’m a moron but it was a very strange way. I practiced a lot, but I didn’t have some skills, I wasn’t a great reader, I wasn’t a great jazz player. I was good at being Tim Berne, apparently. That, surprisingly, isn’t easy I found out later because a number of professional musicians I was working with in the 80s hadn’t made their own records and they were asking me “how do you start a band, how do you do this”, and I’m thinking these guys have been playing music for 30 years, this seems so easy to me. At some point, you made a transition and decide you’re not going to be something for everybody, I’m going to become myself first and then when I play a jazz gig or a wedding gig I’m going to sound like myself. You commit to something. I don’t know if that’s true, it seem to be true for me by default, that’s all I could do. Maybe that explains it.
What does jazz mean to you? Do you consider yourself a jazz musician? Or is this question completely irrelevant to you?
It’s a stupid word and everybody knows what it means and everyone knows that when you say Sonny Rollins, that is jazz and when you say that I’m jazz it’s two different things. I don’t think there is a mystery. The thing I object to most is when someone is promoting a concert and they call it free jazz because they don’t know what else to call it. It’s not mainstream jazz so we’ll call it free jazz and that’s misleading. Everyone knows what free jazz is. It usually means freely improvised and to many people chaos blah blah blah. There is no nuance, just like the word jazz you have to fill it in with your own taste. I got into trouble once on some panel because I said if someone’s promoting my gig, I’m not a jazz musician. I play improvised music. I write, but if I went to a jam session and someone called twenty different tunes, I probably wouldn’t know them by heart. To me someone who can do that, that’s a jazz musician. Someone who can go and play with anybody, sit in, knows all the tunes, can play in that style. Most the music I write is straight 8th notes, I rarely write something that swings, so I was just making a point that if it was about promoting your music, I would prefer if someone would just describe the music because if they say it’s a jazz concert that’s misleading, if they say it’s free jazz from New York no one will come etc. There is a lot of composition, a lot of intense improvising, there is a lot of rhythmic stuff. People say it sounds like rock or it sounds classical. I never studied classical music and I never played in a rock band. It’s very complicated…so that’s my only objection but quite honestly in some ways if someone says that I’m a jazz musician, it’s a compliment that I may or may not deserve.
Downtown scene of the ‘70s and the Knitting Factory scene of the 80’s… do you feel that you were part of that or do you feel like you are outside of that?
I think I'm outside of it, I think I am outside of that to Zorn, too. For one thing, I didn’t play with those guys. I played with Zorn in the 80s but that was much later. I didn’t play much with Wayne Horowitz. I played with him once or twice. I didn’t play in those venues where they played except for with Zorn. I didn’t play at Tonic very often and I lived in Brooklyn from 1977 onwards and I was a late bloomer so for many reasons I wasn’t part of that scene and I don't think even now I would be considered part of that scene. I’m sure they didn’t want to even be considered part of their own scene but the cliched version of that… I don't think I am in it. With the Knitting Factory it was guilt by association because I played there a lot, which I liked, especially the first one. It was just a place to play and I didn’t do those Knitting Factory group tours, or record for the label. I wasn’t on particularly good terms with the place, and I definitely wasn’t on the planet Zorn, which is a cool planet, but I just wasn't in it. John recognized it. I’m a leader by default and so I’m not a follower. One thing I learned from Julius is that I’m a serious contrarian, I question things and I don't fit into that orbit. Stylistically, I don't feel like I do either. I was more married to this AACM and BAG thing.
In the late 80’s you were signed to Columbia Records and made two records for them. As an experience did it make sense to you?
Didn’t make sense to them but in general it didn’t make sense. I was working at Tower Records. Gary Lucas who was someone I grew up with in Syracuse came into Tower a lot and one time he came in and I gave him a copy of the record I did with Frisell and then he took a minute from that that he thought sounded new agey, played it for Columbia and convinced them to sign me, because they were started to try to cop the Windham Hill vibe and break into a new age thing. He convinced them it was new age and they signed me to the lowest deal in the history of Columbia, which seemed high to me. That was a short version of the story. So, I made this record with Bill, Alex Cline and Hank Roberts, we went to LA because Alex lived out there and he had a ton of stuff, and I liked the idea of getting out of New York. We recorded at Chick Corea’s Madhatter studio, which was $75 an hour. We were there for five days (recording and mixing) and we spent a little bit of money but for me it was amazing. I had control over everything, Gary was the producer that’s all I’ll say, and then Nels Cline happened to be there doing things that a producer would do. In the end it was a very good experience. We did that record and it was probably disappointing to Columbia that it became quite a critical success. I don't know if they sold any, but that was probably their problem. It got a lot of buzz, so as a result I had to do another one. It would have been embarrassing if they dropped me. I did another one on my terms, this time Artie Moorehead had produced it. We did it at the Power Station on a little bit of a bigger budget…did it with Joey Barron, Mark Dresser, a bunch of people…Herb Robertson, Hank. It was blast, went well and got great reviews and then I think I asked my so-called product manager Joe McCune, “am I doing another record” and he said “probably not” and so I got dropped. I had already made a deal with JMT, so we did the first Miniature record, which was a cooperative and that way I could do it while I was still on Columbia. I told them it was not my trio. I was just in the group, and they let me do it and of course I got dropped so I had another deal with this German company.
And then you stayed with JMT for another 10 years or so… seems like a very fruitful period with many great releases. I guess Stefan Winter let you do whatever you wanted?
Yeah, me and Steve Byron had a lot to do with how the records looked and who was recording but I did 10 records and in terms of documenting my music it was great and in terms of marketing it I would give it an F- but that’s complicated, and that’s not unusual. That’s another reason why I started Screwgun. I just made 10 records for JMT and they’re all going to be out of print. I put a lot of work into it, I didn’t make a lot of money, somethings wrong here, so I decided to start what I was calling authentic bootleg series, meaning inexpensive live recordings with one or two microphones in a cardboard box, no barcode, just anything I could do to rebel against the record industry and then mail ordered only and I made 10 times as much money, sold more records, and had no press. I felt like it wasn’t so hard to do, and I did that quite successfully for about 5 years and then less successfully for another 4 or 5. I still keep doing it but the financial breakdown is not so great.
I remember a JMT evening at the second Knitting Factory on Leonard Street and Stefan Winter got up to make an announcement that the label had been sold and that it would be discontinuing.
Oh god, so it was the Winter and Winter 10th anniversary festival. He got Steve Byram and his artist buddies. They basically redecorated the Knitting Factory, wall to wall art, this incredible thing and then 5 minutes before the first concert he gets up and announces that he sold the label. Talk about letting the air out of the balloon. We didn’t know this. We had been hanging out with him the whole week so later in the week Steve and I met with him and had a real blowout, a real awakening where I just said “Oh ok here we go again…”. It was incredibly disappointing and he started talking about setting up a new label and talked about getting all this money from Japan. Keep in mind, he made a shit ton of money from selling the label even though he never sold records. It was a big “oops” and then he was talking about how he wanted to get David Sanborn and Pat Metheny and I’m saying “well, Stefan, if you were so unsuccessful how are you going to do that? And it seems like you’re abandoning the people who actually made this viable.” Anyway, we had a big blowout and that’s when I said ‘fuck it, Screwgun here I come”. Disappointing but that’s what happens when you don’t do it yourself. You have no say in the matter ultimately. It’s their money and they can do whatever they want. I’m glad you remembered that (laughs)…
Regarding the music. To me it seems like your music from the late 80’s to the late 90’s forms one arc in your artistic development. Then in the early 2000’s you for the first time started using piano/keyboards extensively in groups like Hard Cell and Science Friction and the use of piano created a shift in your music that continues to this day in Snake Oil. Would you agree with that assessment?
I agree but I would add one thing. There was a serious shift around ’93 when I started Bloodcount where I really wanted it to be more collective improvisation, ‘chambery’ even though I hate that word…less soloistic and so I think the writing is different because it was a smaller group and the improvising is different. The next phase was the keyboard thing with Craig (Taborn) and it was conscious thing. I wanted to confront the challenge that I avoided for so long. Piano. I was scared to death. I can’t write for piano, I can’t play with piano players, the whole thing. I kept seeing Craig in the neighborhood and I finally felt like I forced him to come over and play even though he was a fan. We did a session with Tom (Rainey) and I said “do you mind playing electronics?” I had no idea that he even did that, so he brought some stuff over and did it and that was it. I was looking for a combination of guitar, bass and keyboard. I wanted a thing that could do anything and little did I know he was probably the world’s greatest bass player and also had these incredible sounds. That was it! I was hooked and then I started writing everything as a two part piano thing and it changed things rhythmically. I started getting these interlocking parts. He could describe it better…. Matt (Mitchell) could describe it better…. but that was the beginning of that. In the mid 2000s when Science Friction ended I didn’t know what to do so I didn’t do anything for a couple of years. I was kind of waiting to find some new folks and then I met Matt and that’s when Snakeoil started which has gone on for at least 10 years. Now I’m in a new phase probably caused by this virus where I'm by myself. Well it actually started about 2 years ago, when I started writing these exercises which became tunes and I kept it all single line, and decided I wanted to emphasize a more spontaneous approach to interpreting written music and I felt like I could only do that without contrapuntal stuff and without trying to balance two parts and be interpreting the music more freely. I’ve probably written about 40 of these things and I recorded some of it with Nasheet (Waits) and I've done it with Matt. I did a solo record with these things and now I have a whole new batch that I'm going to mess around with. First I kept waiting for me to write more parts but now I’m kind of into it and I believe it has caused me to play differently because I’m approaching things 100% melodically, very little texture, not a lot of high notes, and just trying to approach these things like songs basically. That’s the new phase and it’s pretty fun I have to say. It’s nice to do a gig and not have everyone nail down everything rhythmically and I can kind of play whatever I want and that’s kind of how I'm practicing. Sometimes I’ll just play through these things and experiment with landing on things and resolving in different places, playing them slow, playing them fast and it’s been pretty cool. At first I thought “oh this is just a cop out because I'm too lazy” but now it’s become a thing and when I did the solo thing and when I realized that wasn’t a disaster I figured “well ok I just have to commit to this like everything else”.
That is quite a departure from many of your other groups that have interlocking parts and need to be executed precisely and require lots of rehearsing.
Most of the rehearsing was by separately. One or two group rehearsals but everyone would just learn the music in advance so it made it really easy. I learned how to play rhythmic things that I probably couldn’t play through working with Ches (Smith) and Matt. They would bust me but they do it in a nice way that was like “I think you’re playing that like a triplet because I would get lazy and sloppy so we had these sectionals sometimes, me and Ches would get together and loop shit, the really hard stuff slowly for 3 hours. He was way into it and I had to play it right, I couldn’t cheat and I didn’t have Matt there and it really helped me a lot and that sneaks into the improvising I think. Also, I would say that in terms of me writing these melodies, being in that band Broken Shadows and playing Ornette’s and Julius’ music and Dewey and Charlie Haden, that also affected my appreciation for simple melodies and it became slightly more diatonic. It was kind of cool to take on a new personality and memorize stuff instead of looking at it. I feel like I did my jazz training about a year ago instead 40 years ago, which is kind of funny, but it’s never too late.
In addition to what you’ve already talked about, what are some of your main compositional influences?
Well, influences, I can tell you who I like which is Lutoslawski’s cello concerto, jazz people like Threadgill, Braxton, Wadada, Julius, Oliver, and then playing-wise I was way into Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Miles, all the obvious things but composing (I’m sure I’m leaving stuff out) that mid-west crew of rubato improvising …melodic improvising…collective improvising and then the way of wedding composition with improvising, not just playing the head and blowing over a set form which is also cool. I think because of my limitations I did gravitate towards that. I didn’t feel like I could play well enough to carry tune structures so I waited until a couple of years ago. Those are the guys who influenced me but really it was Julius and Roscoe and Braxon and the rest is people I like but in terms of trying to copy that shit that was it, I think.
Any unsung heroes?
There have been many players and friends of mine but Marc Ducret as a composer and player, beyond unsung hero and David Torn, both I wouldn’t want to say genius’ …but total innovators, and they’re not recognized like they should be. There are a bunch of other people mostly friends. Usually I can answer this question except when I’m asked, but I mean Julius for sure never got his due. I think in some ways Mitchell is still kind of mind-blowing and his solo record is a major achievement, Herb Robertson what he was doing in his 30s was unbelievable. You! (chuckles…)
Anything overrated?
Nah, I don't want to get into that. It’s so complicated and I’m not complaining because I don't expect anything, but the importance of publicists now has twisted things a little bit. It makes it hard if you don't have one, and it's hard for young artists to get people to just listen to their records. It’s almost impossible but now reviews don't really mean anything, so I guess it doesn’t matter. When I was doing Screwgun I never sent press copies. I realized I didn’t need it. It didn’t matter, but now if you don't do it you’re really screwed and then if you do it you’re just out of a bunch of money. I don’t know if it makes any difference, I don’t know what to say…it's a bizarre thing. I would say there are a lot of things getting attention that are getting attention for the wrong reasons that maybe are ok but you gotta block that shit out or you’ll drive yourself crazy. I tell students who want to learn about the music business, “the longer you don’t have to do it the better, just get good at what you’re doing, don't be an asshole and be over prepared and you have a good chance at playing”. If you want to conflate that with money then good luck, maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t.
If you could have dinner with someone from the “other side” who would you chose?
From the other side? I thinking of basketball players maybe Oscar Robertson, I bet he doesn’t talk too much but I bet what he says is really on the money. I’m gonna go with Oscar Robertson (chuckles…). Oh, wait he’s alive, oh fuck! I forgot you said dead. Louis Armstrong … I bet that would be funny! I bet we’d be hungry after the horse d’ouvres. Would be interesting and fun.
If you could do it all over again, is there something that you would do differently?
Probably start earlier and learn a lot more about things I don't know and then possible have a completely different career so I don't know. That’s a tough question, I wish I knew what to practice 40 years ago, like ear stuff that I didn’t understand. It would have been great to get that under my belt.
What do you think the post-pandemic music scene will look like in New York and beyond?
Jees! I don’t know. I don’t expect to work until sometime in late 2021. I am not expecting to do more than maybe 20 gigs next year. That’s why I’m trying to record like crazy… to keep myself project-motivated.