Happy birthday, Louis Armstrong!

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"(Armstrong was) the key creator of the mature working language of jazz. Three decades after his death and more than three-quarters of a century since his influence first began to spread, not a single musician who has mastered that language fails to make daily use, knowingly or unknowingly, of something that was invented by Louis Armstrong."  -- Dan Morgenstern, Oxford Companion to Jazz

"Armstrong is to music what Einstein is to physics and the Wright Brothers are to travel." - Ken Burns

"He was born poor, died rich and never hurt anyone along the way." - Duke Ellington

Louis Armstrong wasn't just a smiling magic Negro with a handkerchief and a horn and a growl in his voice.  He was a citizen of the world, a consummate performer, an ambassador of jazz and an innovator in his own right.  He was an unrepentant pot smoker.  He was elegant. He was New Orleans personified.  He was more than gifted -- and he was nothing short of brilliant.

His image and sound have so permeated the popular vernacular that it's an astonishing thing, to look into his beautiful African face and listen to him explain his life in his own words.  As a jazz vocalist, I can't veer too far away from his work.  I have two box sets that have been in heavy rotation lately and I'm looking for another one.

Strangely, it augments my forays into harmelodics with James "Blood" Ulmer quite nicely. I have no idea why.

On the road again...!

As of today, January 22nd, I'm on tour in Europe as vocalist with guitarist James "Blood" Ulmer's iconic band Odyssey. For tour dates, click here -- and if you'd like to follow along as I blog all about it, please go to This Rock 'n Roll Blackgrrl's High Life -- A Cautionary Tale. Danke!

Here's what Odyssey sounds like -- via a live performance in Tokyo, 1983 -- doing one of my favorite songs Are You Glad To Be In America?

Tender Moments with G. Calvin Weston, Part 1: "In my office! NOW!"

Having started his 30+ year career as a musician with harmolodic saxophonist/composer Ornette Coleman at the tender age of 17, it's safe to say that G. Calvin Weston is a drummer of epic proportions.  It's his innate musicality, however -- a seemingly indefatigable desire to emote vocally, as a countertenor would, augmented by a verve towards sound and vision -- that makes him four dimensional as an artist.  One would think he was from the deep South.  Calvin is grounded and yet he is ethereal, a heady mix of what can only be described as a sophisticated hick that is refined and aware, set adrift upon the performance stages of the world.

We just came off a European tour with James "Blood" Ulmer, hopscotching all over creation and then some.  I would say that Calvin and I became what most people would describe as fast friends but that isn't exactly true. The truth is, Calvin and I met and realized that somehow, we already knew each other. At least, that's the way it felt on my end.

How does he describe it?

It was after the gig, when we were at the bar at Kunst & Kulturhaus in Oblarn, Austria that Calvin turned to me and said, with a great deal of astonishment, "Do you realize we only met four days ago?" Then without warning, before I could fully express my mutual wonder and admiration, he smiled broadly, threw his hands up triumphantly as though he'd just made the touchdown of a lifetime and yelled at the top of his lungs, "It's like you fell out my balls!"

If I wasn't mortified the first time he said it, the third time probably sealed it for me.

Of course, the back end of the bar roared its approval and applauded raucously. I opened my mouth to scream but nothing came out. All I could do was cover my face with my hands. Later, I remember thinking, well that was a compliment, really -- as only Calvin could give.

And that's pretty much G. Calvin Weston -- in a nutshell, so to speak.

Once they were up and positioned and tuned, Calvin had the habit of calling his drumset his office. There were too many moments when he would insist that I photograph him there.  It is with this in mind that I give you a pastiche of images from any given soundcheck from our happy jaunt through the Rhineland and beyond -- Calvin, hard at work, in his office.



Rehearsal, Music Hall Worpswede -- this is our sound engineer Joerg Mohr's home base.






Porgy & Bess, Vienna Austria



That's a glimpse of Joerg, moving and repositioning that drumset for the 5th time.



Cinema Paradiso St. Polten, Austria





Altes Kino, Landeck Austria



BIX Stuttgart Germany





A-Trane, Berlin Germany -- with Joerg checking Blood's monitors.



The view as I tilt open the backstage door.



At Altes Plandhaus in the round, Cologne Germany

ah, graduate school

i'm going to the campus of my alma mater, the new school, for their graduate school open house today. i'm not sure what i'm looking for, exactly. i was accepted to their media studies program a few years ago, but i couldn't afford to go. they gave me a scholarship and a grant but they didn't make enough of a dent. the attendance grace period expired and i forgot about it. so what i really want is for someone to tell me how i can come up with the money to pay tuition without taking out more student loans. that's what i'm looking for -- a way in that won't have me making payments in my golden years.

why do i want to finish a master's degree program from the new school? i'm so glad you asked!

a rather wise lester bowie once told a somewhat clever kelvyn bell: "don't be in new york city for 15 and 20 years and have nothing to show for your time." although i never met mr. bowie, i clung to those words for quite awhile, and in the telling of that little antedote, kelvyn gave me a precious gift. both lester and kelvyn are musicians from st. louis, missouri. they well understood the sacrifice that happens on this whole other level when you want to live in new york city, much less accomplish anything of merit here. when you're not from new york city, you don't have the luxury of not knowing exactly what you want and how you want to go about getting it. everything around you constantly says, time is of the essence. you don't have the luxury of a home court advantage.

and yet even with the best intentions, you can spin your wheels ad nauseum and end up with nothing that's tangible to show for your time.

what mr. bowie said caught me early in my time in the city. it changed the way i thought about my art and my life in general. i became much more focused in a different way. doing it wasn't enough. i wanted results. and i got them. i went back to college, finished my BA and became a working professional. but that wasn't enough. so i started writing and creating work for myself and i haven't looked back since.

i've got a decent reel but i'm still transitioning into film/tv. i've got two music projects to finish. i'm working on another one person show. and blood wants to make another album. so as usual, i'm flying by the seat of my pants. graduate school would be another log on the fire but it wouldn't be an impossible thing to do. it's a two year program -- and anyone that's lived here for more than a month knows that time moves differently here. two years goes by in new york city in about six months. i would have a chance to study semiotics in theory and in practice. i could take an audio component and finally learn pro-tools. concentrate on screenwriting and develop some ideas. make little art films. think and grow in another direction. i'd get to explore certain theories and ideas that would make me a better rock star. basically, all of that reading and writing and free expression would augment who i am creatively in a profound way.

the thing is, their graduate degree program isn't anything that i'd have to stop the world to do. that's the beauty of it. all of the coursework is offered online, so i could do it anywhere, at any time. and i suppose i could just take class here or there but ultimately, i want something quantifiable and tangible, and that's where the degree comes in.

it feels quite sane, to fly by the seat of my pants.

that statement reminds me of a story about james "blood" ulmer. early in my time in new york city, he used to sit me down and make me tell him everything that i was doing. i can still see him in my mind's eye, sitting at his kitchen table, leaning to one side towards me, smiling at me sideways, holding my hand and listening to me tell him all about it. one day he told me that i was a harmelodic person. that's why it was so easy for me to do everything all at once. he said that people wouldn't "get" that about me, that this was a difficult thing for most to understand -- especially certain free jazz musicians, ironically enough. i told him that i didn't know enough music theory to understand harmelodics, so i didn't really know what he was talking about. i was just being myself, really. but that's just it -- you don't need theory, he laughed, you've already got it!

evidently, he was right.