My Athens Days
Nothing has been posted to this blog for a while, so I thought I would get something up here for a change. I've been looking back on my experience as a musician in grad school in Athens, Ohio. There are some interesting high points and low points. I played some great music with some great musicians.
Within a few months of my arrival in Athens, I met Jim Johanson. Jim is a great fusion drummer who was playing with a blues/R&B band called Direct Attention. I sat in with them at a wedding gig in 2002. Jim was having fun, but he wasn't getting to challenge himself. He and I got to talking, and we decided it would be cool to put together a jazz-fusion project that, instead of a band, was a collective of musicians. We could bring different musicians in every time we played, really mix it up, and get to play what we loved. We recruited the guitarist from Direct Attention, Shannon Scott, to join us as a core member of what became the Athens Fusion Collective. We played dozens of shows over the next year or so, with guest musicians ranging from more drummers, guitarists, and bassists, to keyboards, flugelhorn, saxophone, congas, electric violin, and more. To hear some of the Athens Fusion Collective, click here.
The same year I met Jim, I also met the guys from Todd Rooster. I recall that they saw a sign I had posted in a music shop looking for musicians, and they called me to ask if I wanted to join their band. I was interested in putting together something of my own rather than joining an already established band. What's more, they were a lot younger than me, and they were hoping to pursue music as a career. They called me and left a message, saying, "Here's what our guitarist sounds like," and then they held the phone up to Tyler while he jammed away. I admit I was impressed by what I heard, so I got together with them for a jam session. I could tell everyone was having fun. After the jam session, we all sat around in a circle and I explained to them that I was in grad school to become a shrink, and that I wouldn't be able to tour or do many of the things that are required of professional musicians. However, I had extensive experience in the business of running a band (nationally acclaimed jam band Somah from 1992-1998, and Arkansas-based rock group Sigmund Blue from 2000-2001) and the guys from Todd Rooster were relatively new at it. So I said that I would play with them and offer everything I knew about running a band, but if they ever hit it big I would have to bow out. I joined, and they nicknamed me "Papa Rooster" in homage to my place as the senior in the band. I was immediately impressed with the draw they were getting at shows. Take a look at some pictures of us playing in 2003:
It was an interesting contrast between the two bands. Todd Rooster was getting a great draw, but increasingly we were feeling a pull between what the crowd wanted and what we wanted. On the other hand, the Athens Fusion Collective refused to compromise what we were playing, but we weren't getting any interest from the crowd at all. My fellow Fusion Collective members and I sometimes like to reminisce about a time when, immediately after playing a great jazz cover, someone from the back of the room shouted, "Play something normal!" I was mostly able to take it in stride because I had Todd Rooster at the same time, drawing great crowds. For an interesting discussion (in interview form) between Fusion Collective guitarist Shannon Scott and I, click here. This was around the same time as the pictures above.
Todd Rooster eventually released a full-length album entitled Concocktionary. I'm working on uploading the full album to AcidPlanet here. We had a horrible album release party; the CDs were lost in the mail, so we had no albums to sell! We never did sell many CDs at all, and we ended up with huge stacks of unsold CDs sitting around. To add insult to injury, our crowd started to dwindle as well. In 2005, I quit the band to focus on my studies.
In my last year in Ohio, I really needed to play with other people again, so I joined a fusion band called Danger Will Robinson. These guys were a bit older than me, and it was a very different experience than anything I had done before. To start, they required that I tune my bass down a whole step for their arrangements. Furthermore, the guitarist wrote out my bass parts for me, so I didn't get to decide on my own parts! We practiced for 9 months, and at the end of all that, we only played one gig! However, by the end I was able to contribute a lot of my own ideas, and I had managed to change some of the bass parts to my own specifications. Our entire first (and only) show can be heard here. It was a benefit for The Gathering Place, a community support program for adults struggling with mental illness. This obviously is an issue near and dear to my own heart as a mental health practitioner, so I was thrilled to take part.
Soon after this show, I left Ohio and moved to Syracuse, NY. Before I left, I "dropped" my newest solo album, For My Part (see blog entries below, or purchase for download below).
That about sums up my Athens, Ohio experience. Oh: be sure to check back for updates on some new projects I'm starting. First and foremost, I'm doing a long-distance collaboration with Sigmund Blue guitarist Brandi Parker, who is now known in the musical world as Tella. This will be awesome. Second, I'm starting to write short stories. I'll post these here when I finish one.
Happy New Year!
Within a few months of my arrival in Athens, I met Jim Johanson. Jim is a great fusion drummer who was playing with a blues/R&B band called Direct Attention. I sat in with them at a wedding gig in 2002. Jim was having fun, but he wasn't getting to challenge himself. He and I got to talking, and we decided it would be cool to put together a jazz-fusion project that, instead of a band, was a collective of musicians. We could bring different musicians in every time we played, really mix it up, and get to play what we loved. We recruited the guitarist from Direct Attention, Shannon Scott, to join us as a core member of what became the Athens Fusion Collective. We played dozens of shows over the next year or so, with guest musicians ranging from more drummers, guitarists, and bassists, to keyboards, flugelhorn, saxophone, congas, electric violin, and more. To hear some of the Athens Fusion Collective, click here.
The same year I met Jim, I also met the guys from Todd Rooster. I recall that they saw a sign I had posted in a music shop looking for musicians, and they called me to ask if I wanted to join their band. I was interested in putting together something of my own rather than joining an already established band. What's more, they were a lot younger than me, and they were hoping to pursue music as a career. They called me and left a message, saying, "Here's what our guitarist sounds like," and then they held the phone up to Tyler while he jammed away. I admit I was impressed by what I heard, so I got together with them for a jam session. I could tell everyone was having fun. After the jam session, we all sat around in a circle and I explained to them that I was in grad school to become a shrink, and that I wouldn't be able to tour or do many of the things that are required of professional musicians. However, I had extensive experience in the business of running a band (nationally acclaimed jam band Somah from 1992-1998, and Arkansas-based rock group Sigmund Blue from 2000-2001) and the guys from Todd Rooster were relatively new at it. So I said that I would play with them and offer everything I knew about running a band, but if they ever hit it big I would have to bow out. I joined, and they nicknamed me "Papa Rooster" in homage to my place as the senior in the band. I was immediately impressed with the draw they were getting at shows. Take a look at some pictures of us playing in 2003:
It was an interesting contrast between the two bands. Todd Rooster was getting a great draw, but increasingly we were feeling a pull between what the crowd wanted and what we wanted. On the other hand, the Athens Fusion Collective refused to compromise what we were playing, but we weren't getting any interest from the crowd at all. My fellow Fusion Collective members and I sometimes like to reminisce about a time when, immediately after playing a great jazz cover, someone from the back of the room shouted, "Play something normal!" I was mostly able to take it in stride because I had Todd Rooster at the same time, drawing great crowds. For an interesting discussion (in interview form) between Fusion Collective guitarist Shannon Scott and I, click here. This was around the same time as the pictures above.
Todd Rooster eventually released a full-length album entitled Concocktionary. I'm working on uploading the full album to AcidPlanet here. We had a horrible album release party; the CDs were lost in the mail, so we had no albums to sell! We never did sell many CDs at all, and we ended up with huge stacks of unsold CDs sitting around. To add insult to injury, our crowd started to dwindle as well. In 2005, I quit the band to focus on my studies.
In my last year in Ohio, I really needed to play with other people again, so I joined a fusion band called Danger Will Robinson. These guys were a bit older than me, and it was a very different experience than anything I had done before. To start, they required that I tune my bass down a whole step for their arrangements. Furthermore, the guitarist wrote out my bass parts for me, so I didn't get to decide on my own parts! We practiced for 9 months, and at the end of all that, we only played one gig! However, by the end I was able to contribute a lot of my own ideas, and I had managed to change some of the bass parts to my own specifications. Our entire first (and only) show can be heard here. It was a benefit for The Gathering Place, a community support program for adults struggling with mental illness. This obviously is an issue near and dear to my own heart as a mental health practitioner, so I was thrilled to take part.
Soon after this show, I left Ohio and moved to Syracuse, NY. Before I left, I "dropped" my newest solo album, For My Part (see blog entries below, or purchase for download below).
That about sums up my Athens, Ohio experience. Oh: be sure to check back for updates on some new projects I'm starting. First and foremost, I'm doing a long-distance collaboration with Sigmund Blue guitarist Brandi Parker, who is now known in the musical world as Tella. This will be awesome. Second, I'm starting to write short stories. I'll post these here when I finish one.
Happy New Year!
posted by Greg Goldman at 8:45 PM
1 comments
