Look...DON'T TOUCH (The Musician's Universal Plea)

A couple of weeks ago, I had an experience that has put me on a personal crusade to educate people about musicians and their equipment.

Now first of all, if you are a fan of mine, I hope that you will not take offense to this statement, but people simply don't have a single clue as to how expensive our equipment is and why nobody, other than the musician who owns it, should ever bother trying to touch ANY OF IT! So, with that said, here's what happened a couple of weeks ago.

I was in the auditorium of a library and was setting my gear up because I had one of my educational presentations that I do. It was still at least 30 minutes before the program was suppose to start, and I was pretty much finished setting up, when two ladies walked in. We then struck up a conversation. Eventually, the conversation went more towards just one of the ladies, while the other walked away. Something told me to look in the direction of the woman who had walked away. And, it's a good thing that I did! I was horrified to see the second woman proceed to grab my alto saxophone by the neck in order to pick it up off of the sax stand that I had it placed on. I immediately started yelling, "no, no, no!"

I arrived just in time to grab my sax from her before she could fully lift it up. By the time I reached my sax, I was actually fuming mad because I had just spent $500 getting extensive and much needed work done on it. At the same time, I was trying to stay polite and in control of my overall reaction. The lady then told me that she only wanted to look at it and that she knew what she was doing because her father had been a musician. Her comment almost made me loose it because, if she had indeed grown up around a PROFESSIONAL musician, surely one of the first things she should have learned was DON'T TOUCH. Besides, he may have dabbled with music, but was he a FULL-TIME, PROFESSIONAL musician like me? As I always say, "just because you can screw in a light bulb, it doesn't make you an electrician. "

More to the point of things, it was MY equipment that she was handling and I simply DO NOT LIKE people touching my stuff without my permission.

Still trying to keep my composure, I went on to explain that my sax was not a cheap beginner's model and that I depended on it for my livelihood. I then politely clued her in that she didn't actually know as much as she thought she did, because she was about to pick the sax up in the worse manner that you could possibly pick a saxophone up by. The neck is a separate piece from the body of the sax and can be very easily separated, even after applying the screw for the clamp that holds it in place. In other words, she would have picked the sax up by the neck, the body of the sax would have detached and fallen on the ground, and I would have been looking at anywhere between $500 - $1,500 worth of damage. Experience has taught me that, once an instrument falls to the ground, it NEVER plays quite the same ever again, no matter how much money you dump into getting it repaired.

The end result is that I managed to get her to understand the situation.

As for the public at large, people simply have no idea the worth of musician's instruments. Between the 5 saxophones that I own ( 2 altos, 2 sopranos, and a rare C melody sax), I'm looking at around $23,000. And that's just my saxophones! If you add up all of the equipment that I own for the purposes of making my living in music, the grand total is just under $41,000. Believe it or not, that isn't even on the more expensive end of things regarding what some professional musicians have spent on their gear. Todd Coolman, the esteemed bassist who was my first jazz instructor at Stony Brook University and is currently the head of the SUNY (State University of New York) at Purchase Jazz Program once confided in me that his prized bass, which is the one he uses on important gigs and recording sessions, is worth about $85,000. He uses a different bass that is worth (I think I remember him saying) about $12,000 for most of his other gigs.

Anyway, the point of all of this isn't to just give you a tally of how much we spend on our instruments and gear. The simple fact is that you should NEVER handle a musician's gear, period. It isn't even your stuff to handle in the first place! Look...DON'T TOUCH!

written by Shenole Latimer

2010 Album Project - Getting in Shape!

Earlier today, I gave a lecture about jazz history. There was something that I said during the hour long presentation that really stuck with me. My statement went something like this:

"Jazz suffers today because it is so difficult to maintain a set line up for a band. The result is that you end up with a bunch pick-up bands that are put together for a specific gig based on who may be available because they don't have a better paying gig. This means that songs, within many jazz groups, rarely have the chance to grow and develop, as is the case when you have a line up that has played together for an extended length of time, and so have developed a familiarity with each other and also a heightened ability to interact with each other during improvisations."

Now that's some mouthful!

Anyway, I feel fortunate to have maintained the same line up within my quartet for the past few years, with the exception being my good friend and pianist Kenny MacKenzie, who moved to Florida towards the latter part of 2009. I now have been utilizing the considerable services of Art Hirahara at the piano end of things. This was a logical move for me because Art has played a lot with Kyle Struve (drums) and Thomson Kneeland (bass), who are both part of my regular line up, which means that the rhythm section will remain tight, even as I continue to grow a familiarity with Art's playing style. And, every jazz musician knows that it all starts with a strong rhythm section!

But, more to the point of my statement about feeling fortunate to have maintained the same line up, I think this will aid me in my desire to bring up the level of interaction within the new selections being composed for my upcoming album. There's something to be said about the music of a band that has had time to work together and create a "sound" for themselves.

I'm not knocking my first album "Front and Center". It's just that it was hard to create a "sound" for that album when I was dealing with 2 different bassists, 2 different piano players, 2 different drummers, and all of them performing in different line up combinations based on their availability. How was anybody suppose to interact! And then, on top of all of that, all of those guys were actually sight reading the charts during the recording sessions. This is because it proved impossible to schedule rehearsals, due to conflicting schedules. It's nothing short of a testament to the skill level of the musicians that I was working with that the end product sounded as incredible as it did!

That said, I think with this next album things will be quite different. First of all, as I've mentioned before, I'm going to have the actual line up of my quartet on this one, including the amazing Kenny MacKenzie. Also, in order to gain a familiarity with my new compositions, and to get in shape for the recording, we will be performing the new tunes during concerts that we have and also during small, one hour "pick-up" gigs that we have at a few libraries. The live performance of these tunes in front of an audience will give us the opportunity to air things out and get the tunes sounding their best BEFORE we ever hit the studio to record them.

Our first big opportunity to debut some of the new material will come on February 26, 2010, when we give a concert performance at the Levitas Center for the Arts in Southampton, New York. In case you read this blog post in time and would like to check us out, you can find out more online and obtain tickets for the show by clicking HERE. You can also call (631) 287-4377.

So, short of going into "lock-down" with my quartet a week or two before the recording of the new album, I can't think of any better way to get in shape with the new tunes. If you have a chance to attend my quartet's February 26th performance, or any of the other ones we have before the recording date on May 23rd, I'd love to hear any feedback you have regarding the new tunes!

Written by Shenole Latimer

Jam Sessions

Over the past few days, I've been pondering the importance of jam sessions and how they serve a variety of functions. I think what brought this on was a college musician who invited me down to their weekly Wednesday night jam session. I tried to explain that I didn't have a lot of free time these days and certainly not the time to play without getting paid. His facial expressions made me realize that he took it the wrong way. I believe he thought I said that because I felt like I was too good to be hanging with him and the cats he plays with.

Jam sessions are indeed important to any music scene and all genres. They are a barometer of the health of a region's music scene and serve as a sort of "convention" for musicians to network with other musicians, which in turn means possibly getting future gigs. The only problem is that, unless you are with the house band, you are not getting paid for the night...and even some house bands don't get paid! This aside, I can certainly see the logic that not getting paid for one gig (jam session) could lead to several paid gigs with other musicians and bands. But, this still doesn't solve the problem I have with lack of free time.

Yes, I am a musician. But, I am also a father, a husband, and a homeowner. This places a very high importance that any excursion outside of my home, musically speaking, must result in me bringing home money...period. What gets lost by some younger artists is that, as an artist, you are self employed. And, the older you get, the more financial responsibilities you have. Thus, time is very valuable. My wife can testify to the fact that when I'm home I'm still at work. Even the very blogs that I post are actually work. How, you ask? Well, one of the primary goals for any artist is to increase their presence...especially their web presence now-a-days, as people are not going out as much as they used to for the performing arts. Posting blogs is a very efficient way of increasing your web presence, because they are a priority target for search engines.

Then there is the marketing aspect. Anyone who has studied modern marketing knows that today's western society has gone into a much more "personal"mode of thinking. In other words, people are looking more and more for very specific things that cater to their needs or wants. This is all thanks to the internet, which makes it incredibly easy for people to find things within their particular interests. Also, people have a greater interest in what is going on with the lives of others, including any artist that they may want to invest both time and treasure in. They want to have a greater (if not personal) connection with an artist and get to know about that artist's personality. Blogging is an incredibly efficient way of doing all of this. Not just because of the search engines, but because of the fact that blogs can be syndicated into feeds, which can turn the blog into a form of viral marketing.

That was a whole lot of words just for me to say that I can reach a whole lot more people just through my blog alone, than I can by playing in some venue every week in a situation where: A) most people coming down aren't fans anyway, but are other musicians, B) most listeners, who aren't musicians, are more interested in what's happening on the television screen above the bar, and C) I'm in a situation where I have to spend money on gas to get there, most likely buy a couple of drinks or pay a cover (or both), possibly pay for parking (particularly if it's in New York City), while not getting paid. All of this in turn means that, not only would I not be coming home with very, very badly needed cash, but I wouldn't even be breaking even! I would be coming home in the negatives...and how many gigs am I GUARANTEED from making it to a jam session? How many gigs would I get in a "timely" fashion to compensate for the money spent? Not at all a situation to find yourself in when you have a mortgage, an out of work wife to try and support, and a toddler who needs food and diapers.

Of course, I realize that I can't effectively do everything that must be done to grow my career from my computer desk. I think it's much like trying to conduct a war by exclusively utilizing air power...at some point you will need boots on the ground!

So, what is my final verdict on the importance of jam sessions? Like I said earlier, they ARE important and help to ensure the health of a music scene. However, I think that once a musician reaches a certain phase in their life, they have to really choose when it is a good time to go to a jam session and would it be a fruitful outing in terms of new phone numbers obtained, new ideas and information exchanged, potential gigs, etc.

For me, I already know or have access to so many musicians (be it from cats I met at jam sessions when I was younger with far fewer responsibilities, or the musicians that they themselves know and play with), that I have no need to go to a jam session for phone numbers. I don't have any problems finding gigs or creating them for myself, so there isn't too much of a need to go to a jam session to try and land a gig with someone else (unless there is someone in particular that I would like to play with, who doesn't know who I am). This just leaves the exchange of information and new ideas. I get a lot of information from my daily research sessions on the internet, though I'll be the first to admit that it isn't quite the same as receiving information first hand and in person from the person who has it to give.

So, you want to hit a jam session? By all means do it! It's an important part of every musician's growth. Just make sure to get plenty of jam sessions in before you get married, own a house, and find yourself being a parent!

Written by Shenole Latimer

2010 Album Project - Inspired!

I don't know what it's been...the financial hardship my wife and I have been facing for the past year, some new genres of music I have been exposed to that I didn't used to listen to, a special alignment taking place within the universe, or all of the above, but I'm finding myself with no shortage of ideas for songs to write. In fact, I've been feeling so inspired that I actually have a different kind of problem: Are these songs lacking a "homogeneous" sound that will keep them from making sense together on the playlist of a CD?

What do I mean by a homogeneous sound? Well, when you purchase the album of your favorite band, you pretty much have some idea of what the overall sound of that album will be, even though you may not have heard the songs yet. You know that "X" band has a guitar player that plays a certain way, a vocalist that has a particular sounding voice, and songs that have a certain style to their compositions. The problem with the tunes that I have been in the process of committing to paper (there are currently four), is that, although the musicians will all be the same and they all have a playing style and sound familiar to most of my fans, the compositions are all very different in style.

For example, on one tune I'm hearing a light hearted blues structure, with a slight funk twang to the swing feel, over a more modern and hip sounding set of chord changes. Meanwhile, on another tune, I'm hearing a more "epic" sort of sound with orchestral backgrounds, an electric guitar, and a driving rock beat...sort of like the sound towards the end of "Kashmir" off of Led Zepplin's "Physical Graffiti" album. Yeah, I know...go figure!

Well, now that I've probably scared off anybody who may have had an interest in adding this album to their jazz or music collection, let me temper all that I just said by saying that I am actively trying to pull in the reigns a bit on my creativity! I certainly don't want an album that sounds like some sort of "hodge-podge" of music.

At any rate, I guess the good news is that I'm feeling very creative and inspired!

Written by Shenole Latimer

April, 2010 Tour Plans Almost Complete

After four months of constant phone calls, carefully making travel and hotel arrangements, and all that other fun stuff, my east coast tour is almost entirely put together. I'm currently just trying to squeeze in three more stops, but here is how the tour is looking so far:

• April 6 - Vienna, VA
• April 7 - Reston, VA
• April 8 @ 12pm - Myrtle Beach, SC
• April 8 @ 6:30pm - Conway, SC
• April 9 - Jacksonville, FL
• April 11 - Day Off for Rest
• April 12 - Maryville, TN
• April 14 & 15 - Norfolk, VA
• April 16 - Day Off for Rest
• April 17 - Cape May, NJ
• April 18 - Montclair, NJ
• April 19 @ 2pm - Ocean Pines, MD
• April 19 @ 6:30pm - Snow Hill, MD
• April 20 - Princess Anne, MD
• April 21 @ 4pm & 7pm Dumont, NJ

The three locations that may be added within the next couple of weeks are:

• April 5 - Washington, DC
• April 10 - Atlanta, GA
• April 13 - Durham, NC

With all the driving that I'm going to be doing, and with the relatively packed schedule, I felt it was important to include at least a couple of days where I could get some rest and also do some of the things that people don't generally associate with touring. Things like laundry, for example!

I'm thinking about making a separate section in my blog just for this particular tour, though I don't know how much free time I will really have to make entries. My past experience with touring and road trips have taught me that, when you reach the end of the day, all you really want to do is go to sleep! Another idea may be to just have a series of Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter status reports...a sort of "Tour Tweet" or "Update from on the Road". One way or another, I do think I should find some kind of way to document the tour so that all of my fans can get an inside look at things, and so that I can reference it later for any lessons learned.

So anyway, now that the tour is only a few months away, I need to start compiling my list of media contacts so that I can be ready to send out press releases and also schedule interviews on radio and in periodicals. Fortunately, I have had some help from a very trusted and hard working student of mine. He's been busy getting together a bunch of media outlets for me to pursue.

All in all, things are really coming together and I think that this tour is going to be quite successful. In fact, I'm already in the process of planning tours for the North East and the West Coast!

Written by Shenole Latimer

2010 Album Project - Preproduction

A few nights ago on Tuesday, January 5, 2010, I met with Henning Stumm of Tierra Records and John Zych of Earth Tone Music Productions to have a preproduction meeting regarding the recording of my next CD project.

It was really an exciting meeting for all parties because it has been quite a bit of time since the release of my debut album "Front and Center", and both Tierra Records and Earth Tone Music Productions (the studio where I recorded my first album) had been anxiously awaiting the announcement of when I would be setting the wheels in motion for the next album project.

The thing is, it was actually in my contract with Tierra Records that I was suppose to record my second album no later than 2008, two years after the release of my first album. But with the birth of my daughter and then some outside issues that came up, I simply didn't have the time to write any new material. Realizing this, Tierra Records generously gave me an extension on the deadline for me to begin my sophomore effort with them. Needless to say, with nearly four years having gone by since the release of my debut, I've been more than anxious to get things going myself!

That now brings us back to the meeting that the three of us had at Earth Tone Music Productions.

Much of the meeting concerned some technical and logistical issues that we will face because of how we plan to record this album. By that I mean, instead of doing the actual tracking (recording) at the Earth Tone Music Productions studio in Brooklyn, we will be moving the studio to a different location all together. Essentially, instead of bringing Moses to the mountain, we will be bringing the mountain to Moses! The reason for this is a bit involved.

My first album was recorded without the benefit of having a real piano at our disposal. Nobody has ever really noticed this because John Zyche and Henning Stumm (who came on board the project during mixdown) did such a wonderful job at disguising the sound of the keyboard we used to make it sound as close to a real acoustic piano as possible. However, this time around things are a lot different. This time I will actually have all of the guys in my quartet available for the recording. That includes the incredible pianist Kenny MacKenzie, who couldn't make the sessions for the first album. Since Kenny is going so far as to fly up all the way from Florida to make this session, I wanted to do the right thing and have a real piano for him to play on. Plus, there just isn't anything like having a real piano. I really want to get a little bit more of an authentic "jazz sound" to this new album, without making it sound too different in character from the first one.

So anyway, back to why we are making the studio mobile.

Because John Zych doesn't have a real acoustic piano at his new location in Brooklyn, and because I don't want to do the project with any other engineer, I need to find a location that has a baby grand piano that we could use. I have come up with at least one place that will more than likely make their facilities available to me, but I don't want to publicly mention it yet until I know for sure that I have it...don't want to jinx the project before it even really gets off the ground!

In short, a whole nest of wires, microphones, computers, and a bunch of other stuff will need to be moved to this location in a very quick and efficient manner, because we will only have a maximum of 12 hours to complete the tracking of the entire album! Setting up the mobile studio in the new location alone could take upwards of 2 or 3 hours, and that's not even considering the 2 hours it will probably take to get the recording levels right. I'm praying that we will have access to the potential location before the actual start time of the recording so that we can at least set the studio up before the guys in my quartet arrive for the session.

That is just a hint of some of the technical challenges that are ahead of us in seeing this project through!

All in all, the meeting was definitely productive and we managed to iron out a lot of things. This includes the actual date for the recording, which will be May 23rd. Until then, and the eventual release of the album, you will be with me every step of the way through the posts I will be continuing to put up on this blog!

Written by Shenole Latimer

You Don't Know Unless You...

...ask. Be inquisitive. Always be curious to find out the how and why. These are things that were instilled upon me when I was in school to be a scientist (marine biologist). That is, of course, until I decided late in my sophomore year of college to study music instead.

Now, I find myself falling back to that analytical mode of thought in regards to figuring out what my next move should be with my music career. Up until now, I have done well for myself in regards to figuring out my goals and then moving towards them. Every 2 or 3 years I have come up with new goals and game plans, while also evaluating my current status at the time and then what tactics had worked or failed up until that point.

So far, I have accomplished every goal I had set for myself in previous planning sessions, except for performing at the Inter Media Arts Center (IMAC) in Huntington, New York. That goal will never happen now with both the closing of the IMAC and the death of Michael Rothbard, the patron of the arts that ran the concert hall. But, based upon the ground work I have managed to lay down in 2009, the large number of bookings I already have for 2010, and the types of contacts I've been recently having access to, I feel as though I'm in a very delicate point where my decisions will weigh much more heavily on the future than they ever have up until now.

There was a blog I posted back in October that I think was the genesis of my thinking at this very moment. The thoughts I had in that blog dealt with whether or not I had been looking enough into the careers of past and current jazz musicians, as well as my own, to see if there is anything I'm doing wrong or could do better to try and boast myself up to the next tier in the jazz scene and the music scene in general. My answer has come back to me that I am in deed doing something wrong. I'm not seeking enough advice from my peers or from certain contacts I have access to within the industry. These are the folks who can help me figure out what I need to do to get to where I want to be, based on where my career stands now.

I will not mention names, but there have been other artists that I've performed with that were, or currently are, in a similar "critical phase" of their career where making certain decisions could mean elevating their careers or just maintaining the status-quo. I can remember thinking to myself that they needed to seek some advice, or at least listen to the advice that they were given by their peers and qualified people who understood where their careers were at. Now, I'm thinking that I should heed those thoughts I had.

One of the important things that we (those artists and myself) all have in common is that we are all used to having to do absolutely everything ourselves and find it difficult to give up control or even delegate tasks to others. The thing I DO NOT want to have in common is career stagnation. This isn't necessarily a knock against those artists or where they are in their careers now or then. I'm simply stating that they all could probably have advanced much faster and further if they had seeked advice rather than try to figure it all out themselves.

So, in sum, I believe that one of the major mistakes I'm making is not seeking enough help or advice. I work so hard at what I do that sometimes it becomes very easy to make incorrect judgements or come up with the wrong game plan because of a distorted view of a situation. Forget not seeing the forest for the trees. If you have your nose buried too close to the ground, you won't even see the trees for the grass.

As for what my next move should be, I guess I won't know for sure until I ask some trusted and knowledgeable contacts that I have for their advice and thoughts.