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the obligatory biog. hmm. i read a lot of em. some are noble, others pretentious...some are words of truth, others are blatant fabrications. however, most of the time they remain unread. (maybe this shud be in the blog section?) jack handy...deep thoughts.
anyway, to be honest, i'm completely humbled by music. inside, i'm just a jazz cat... trying to find new ways of soloing over altered dominant chords and super imposing other harmonic structures and modes over bass lines to form new blankets of sound and emotion to attack from a linear level. (so much for avoiding pretentiousness.)
i'm a music lover first. sometimes its pretty easy to lose sight of that when fully immersed in the music industry. but i think it always comes back to that. i play keyboards. learned on the piano, studied it thruout my life and even earned a degree in piano performance at university. there isn't a day that goes by that i don't sit down and learn something new about the instrument (except on long 2 day bus rides from LA to ATL on a tour bus). lately (last 5 years i guess), i've developed an incredible attraction and fascination with the hammond's role in music. i guess this is where i am presently. making money is a necessity, but for me, so is developing left and right hand independence. boring? sorry...
i've been fortunate enuff to work with some talented people in my career. after college, i found myself in philly and caught the up swing of the whole soul renaissance movement, later foolishly dubbed as 'neo soul'. record execs love slapping labels on shit. well, no label, no marketing i guess. at any rate, after a bunch of crazy jam sessions and studio sessions with some of the most ridiculous musicians i had ever played with, i became music director and keys player for jill scott. since then, tours and performances with raheem devaughn, stevie wonder, jazzy jeff, mos def, vivian green, heather headley, musiq, etc have been the norm. all very incredible experiences.
in between the madness, i started producing records with jazzy jeff as part of the 2nd reincarnation of the touch of jazz camp. 2 years later and i had produced for cats like herbie hancock, jewel, jill scott, raheem devaughn, dwele and the discography started to build. jeff gave me the opportunity of a life time - a production/live studio and the free will to express myself musically- and for that, i'll always be indebted.
6 months ago, i moved to london...where i am now. new vibes, new faces, new musicians, new music, new influences... from remix sessions with phil asher, to tv dates with cyndi lauper, i can definitely say that i'm enjoying myself. londons a wicked place with strengths and weakness's, just like every other place in the world.
don't hesitate to get in touch. the world of music is a challenging, difficult place...and sometimes, in between tours and production sessions, we need to be reminded of why we entered it in the first place.
above are some of the tracks i've produced from albums that i'm grateful to be on. just picking 4 songs is a bit limiting, but keep posted...got many to cycle thru...peace
