Babylonian Musings

My thing with music started when I was eight in North Little Rock, Arkansas in 1965. BIlly Hoover showed me the three chords to 'Gloria'. I had a little three-quarters Stella acoustic. Billy wore those pointy-toed Beatle boots with taps on the heels and had longish dark hair.   

Ever since, I have been seriously infected, and as we all know, there is no cure. 

I remember taking lessons from a guy that had a blue Mosrite electric and was into the Ventures.  After playing that damn Stella, the action on that Mosrite felt like velvet.

My grandmother was studying to be a concert pianist. She gave it up to marry my grandfather. More on this great story later after I get that page built. But to encourage me, they bought me a 'real' guitar, one that I wish to this day that I still had: a 1966 Gibson Trini Lopez.   

This is worth well over $5G now. Damn.

Here's proof I did in fact have one of these:

Yep, playing through a Fender Super Six (6x10). 

Sunrise was into prog rock. We played Long Distance Runaround and Soul Sacrifice, among others.

Then I decided for some odd reason that people like Mark Basinski were wwaayy better than me and that I could never catchup (don't ask me - teenage angst I suppose.  Silver Bullet was formed. Like all other high school musicians we had no clue how advance we were, we just wanted to do what we wanted to do. 

Note the Rick 4001. 

Then on to North Texas State University (as it was known then). I didn't major in music but I learned as much as I could, hanging with players there.  Watching the One O'Clock, Real Book reading sessions, and seeing Metheny/Mays' first concert tour ('white album' phase, immediately after Lyle left NTSU) were highlights, but there were many others. Still a great little music hotbed, Denton. 

In Denton I met another big influence on my musical life - Mike Williams, from New Mexico. I worked with the Electric Pilgrims and was introduced to the one (and only, late) Al Wing. 

Then to Austin and the history continues. 

Future chapters will include Chris Duarte, Dan Del Santo, Junior Medlow, Code Blue, and Moving Parts. For now (15 Feb 2014) I will leave you with this picture of me at the height of my bass guitar collection: A black PJ for thunder-thumb funk, a fretless with the frets filed off and a polyurethane-coated fretboard, and an Alembic. This shot is from a Code Blue show in Houston.

Chris Duarte

I met Chris when I was a consumer lender and he had come in with his in-laws for a loan. He just happened to mention that he played. I said I did, too. I am sure he thought I was some kind of amateur but he gave me his number. We got together at my place with Breno Brown, a local sax player. Somehow (I don't remember) we found Jeff and Sandy Allen, a wonderful local jazz keyboardist. I may have advertised in the Chronicle or something about forming a band. We started out playing sax-driven jazz that I wanted us to play (Weather Report, David Sanborn). Then Breno went his way for some reason and we kept on as a quartet playing guitar-driven fusion and blues, playing Paul Sessum's Black Cat Lounge and other roadhouses. It was fun because at this time the drinking age was 18 and there were a lot of people about on 6th street.

We developed somewhat of a following and through probably less-than-legal connections of which I am still unaware a recording session was financed and an actual vinyl artifact was produced. 

One night Paul Sessums, unbeknownst to us, had invited this huge black guy to the Black Cat to sit in with us. Chris knew him from the Cobras (Chris was obviously a Stevie devotee) but I didn't know him from Adam. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Junior Medlow

From left to right: Jeff Hodges, Donny Silverman, Chris Duarte, me, Junior.

A couple of cuts from KUT LiveSet 24 May 1987. First, a James Brown cover.

Next, a cut I know others have covered but I still can't find the original. Our best groove...

Us in action at Steamboat.

There followed at some point a stint with Dan Del Santo, including the opportunity to play with both John Mills, UT Saxophone professor, then a 'Professor of Pleasure' and del Santo's band had been called, and Russ Scanlon, the wonderful guitarist. In this forum I learned very much about the various Afro-pop rhythmic styles: soukous, mbaqanga, juju, soca and calypso (which would serve me will with CJ Menge) and of course reggae. I had never heard of the Quatre Etoiles 

Full horn section. Arrow's sound man came in to mix. I could hear the bass through the mains from the stage. Very much fun ! This shot is before we got started. The crowd got bigger once he pumped the bass (naturally).