I recently visited my home of Minnesota and spent some time with my high school trumpet teacher Brad Shermock. I began taking lessons with him during my junior year of high school. It was through him that I first learned about the UNT Jazz Program. He did his undergrad there in the late 80s and early 90s and played 2nd trumpet on the album The Translucent Two by the UNT Two O’Clock Lab band. He stressed trumpet fundamentals and we rarely (if ever) worked explicitly on playing in the jazz styles. Regardless, he made sure to warn me that UNT is an easy school to go to, but a hard school to stay at.

We hung out for about 4 hours, and I could’ve hung out for 4 more, but I was meeting some friends in St. Paul. Talking with him during my trips home usually encourages and re-energizes me about music. I’m ready for my sixth and final year at UNT, after which I’ll receive my Master’s in Jazz Composition.

So Brad is one mentor in my life, the second is Phil Holm. I think I’ll collect my thoughts and write about him soon.

Oso Closo, a band filled mostly with friends of mine, is scheduled to be the rock band for several productions of the Who’s Tommy this September.

Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of the first Pat Metheny Group album. In response to this, I just purchased the album Fictionary, by Lyle Mays, Marc Johnson and Jack DeJohnette.

Also, I’m still listening to tons of Steely Dan, in anticipation of their Grand Prairie show next month.

My summer has consisted of a good bit of practicing, and recently a fun project. My friend, drummer Sean Philly Jones called me to do some keyboard parts on a track he’s recording. The idea is to meticulously recreate “Rock With You,” from the Michael Jackson album Off The Wall. This project was started so Philly could learn to use his recording program, Digital Performer, better. At the beginning of the week, all Philly had down was a completely accurate drum part.

One day, I played the main rhodes part and a functional synth bass part. Over the next few days, we added synth string parts (which will later be replaced with real strings) and additional synth parts. Yesterday, Scott Mulvahill added the true bass part and Kelyn Crapp laid down the guitars. I also played most of the flugal and trumpet parts. The track has a ways to go (Quincy Jones as producer made the original track immensely and intricately layered), but it already sounds really good. I may post it when it’s finished.

Even though Philly is doing all the tracking and mixing, I’ve probably been the next most involved person and I’ve adopted it as my own project too. The most likely candidate for our next project is “Peg” from the Steely Dan album Aja. Philly, Brian Stark and I are going to see Steely Dan in August when they come to the Nokia Theater in Grand Prairie, TX.

1. Halloween, Alaska – Drowned

2. Jackson Browne – These Days

3. Wilco – Nothing’severgonnastandinmyway(again)

4. Amy Winehouse – Tears Dry On Their Own

5. Halloween, Alaska – The Four Corners

6. The Hold Steady – Citrus

7. Ozma – Immigration Song

8. Guster – Come Downstairs and Say Hello

9. Halloween, Alaska – Call It Clear

10. Wilco – Jesus, etc.

Halloween, Alaska is one of my newfound favorite bands. They are a Minnesota group and they very much remind me of the Postal Service, but with less formulaic melodies and structures. Dave King of The Bad Plus drums for Halloween, Alaska.

A name I immediately recognized was Keith Carlock’s, whose band Rudder I’ve seen a few times. He’s incredibly energetic and is pretty influential among the young drumming crowd, even though he is still young himself.

I also recognized the names of trombonist Jim Pugh and saxophonist Walt Weiskopf. Jim visited UNT last fall for some master classes and the inaugural performance of the U-Tubes. Steve Wiest and I listened to some of Walt’s nonet music during composition lessons this past spring.

Steely Dan is one of those groups that I start appreciating way too late. Only in the past couple years have I really gotten into them, and I still haven’t seriously listened to either of the Donald Fagen albums, the Walter Becker album, or Steely Dan past Gaucho. Almost everything on the Citizen Steely Dan Boxset I’m at least slightly familiar with (if not deeply love). I need to step up my listening and get those albums on rotation.

A brief Wikipedia expedition has revealed that Prince was recorded and released at nearly the same time as Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall. The bassline in “I Wanna Be Your Lover” by Prince reminded me of that of “Off The Wall” and I subsequently checked on those facts.

Prince played most of the instruments on this album. The production is very tight, subsequently. Every so often, there is a musical curveball, which I like. The early syncopation of the main riff of “Bambi” (1, &2, 3) caught me off guard. The track as a whole is more rock than the funk/disco inspired first half of the album, which is a good change of pace.

There is a strong presence of the IV-iii-ii progression, which I am fond of and have used sometimes in my own pop music.

I will certainly be giving this album repeated listens. Minnesota music is something that I have been increasingly interested in in recent years.

She and I talked about how strange the gaps in our knowledge can be. For instance, at this very moment in time, I could tell you more about the first Miles Davis Quintet than the second. I know (hopefully) a lot about the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, but couldn’t tell you very much about the Mingus Big Band.

My trumpet teacher from my high school years, Brad Shermock, told me not to let people try and insult me for not having heard a record or not knowing the names of all the players. It is good to know these things, but everyone’s experience is different. Last fall in Dr. Murphy’s graduate jazz history course, we talked about the difficulty in establishing a true jazz canon. There are so many levels of “importance” that one can ascribe to any given figure. Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington are two artists that everyone, even people with even a cursory knowledge of jazz will deem important. Of course, if you were a stupid person that wants to argue just to argue, I suppose you could even dispute those two, but you’d be wrong. After them and a few others, it’s pretty much impossible to judge importance and relevance objectively.

I have been and will continue to slowly fill in these gaps, so that my knowledge of jazz will become more comprehensive. Specifically, I need to listen to more of the second Miles Davis Quintet and the offshoots from that group: Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. All of these guys are too important for me to continuing not knowing that much about them.

My friend Q will be designing me a bitchen new website. I have no doubt that it will look awesome. A lot of my friends who are registering their own domain names are opting for the popular Dynamod Web Portals. These generally look good and do their job well, but I don’t think they are for me. That my friends are using Dynamod and not just Myspace Music, is a fact to be applauded. Sometimes you have to dress for success.

The completion of my last final exam this coming Wednesday will mark the end of my first of two years of grad school at UNT. Thursday will be my first rock music performance since the dissolution of my old band, Chestnut House. My band will now consist of me and members of The Grasshopper’s Dying Words, who will also be playing the show. The Grasshopper’s Dying Words is an amazing band led by ridiculously talented and soon-to-be-degree-holding multi-instrumentalist and composer Brian Stark. I would advertise this event, but it’s doubtful anyone will know of this blog’s existence in the next few days. For posterity’s sake, the show is at 9PM this Thursday, May 8th at Art Six Coffee House in Denton, TX.