Inspired Part 1

Stevie Ray Vaughan stands on stage tearing huge concrete slabs of sound out of his Stratocaster, hat pulled down over his eyes, big globs of sweat pouring down his scrunched up face. At times it looks like the guitar is just going to snap under the pressure. Every note of every song is played like it’s going to be his last. Although I never saw him live, I’ve seen a lot of video and I’ve never seen him slack off, not for a single millisecond.

I’ve seen Buddy Guy live three times. The first time I saw him was in a small club where I was only ten feet away from him the entire show. At one point Buddy bent a note, a long sustained scream of a note and we locked eyes, from ten feet away it was like we were connected by a high voltage wire. The note sustained and his eyes stayed locked on mine. After what seemed like a beautiful eternity he smiled and let loose with a fountain of notes. I’ll never forget that moment. Oh, by the way, Buddy was in his 60’s at the time and he never slacked off for a moment either.

Wynton Marsalis came to our town and gave a clinic and a concert. At the clinic, geared towards teens, he called for players to come on stage and perform for him. A bunch of younger players clamored on stage and one adult, a local sax player, Dick Adams. Everyone performed a short scale or melody for Wynton, who made a few comments about their tone or technique. When he got to my friend Dick, Wynton made a positive comment about Dick’s sound and then something about his humility. That’s what struck me the most as well, Dick Adams is a fine sax player who has tremendous ability and never holds back, and I thought that it showed enormous humility for him to stand up there with those kids a third his age and be willing to ask for pointers.

I am inspired by people like this, people who come from all walks of life and do what they do with intensity, focus, honesty and a sense of humility. Not going through the motions, not mimicking emotion or intensity, but honestly attempting to express themselves’s through whatever medium they choose.

I am also deeply inspired by those who are always seeking. Not satisfied with where they’re at, not sitting around fat and comfortable playing their patented “beef stew” licks, but always striving to learn new things and to improve their abilities.

Some players, like my friend Grammy Award winning drummer Steve Mitchell, are always happy to be playing music. Steve could easily sleepwalk through most gigs and still sound great, but he is always alive and focused on making great music. So many of us musicians who’ve had the opportunity to perform thousands of gigs over the years become jaded and bored with our music. It’s so easy to just go through the motions, to fake it. (Like counting the notes going out into the space and attempting to calculate how much you’re getting paid per note while comping during the keyboard solo.) It’s so easy to simply play the notes and chords while rarely, if ever investing anything of yourself in the music.

This, it seems, is the real challenge as we grow and learn to perform at a high level. Not to lose that sense of awe for what we can create with focus and intensity. To play every note like it might be the last and not to lose your love for the music as you use it to make a living. One of my teachers once told me that in those moments when I was disillusioned with my music, to think back to and connect with the feelings that brought me to music in the first place. To look at it through a child’s eyes … "no one dreams of going through the motions of playing music" he said.
To be continued…