I loved jazz records and was an avid collector from a very young age. I was enamored with the music but also intrigued by the imagery and stories on the album covers. Writers like Alan Lomax, Nat Hentoff, Leonard Feather, Martin Williams, Ira Gitler, and Stanley Crouch–introduced to me on the back of a record–taught me about the people I was listening to as well as the events, mythology, and the inherent racial and class struggles sewn into the fabric of American music. Every album I got my hands on, whether from my local library, a record store, or finding it in someone else's collection, offered me another clue as I tried to piece together a grand picture of the music I was falling in love with. The extent to which I can see humans being through perspectives not inherent in my own experience is something I credit mainly to my love of music. Both actively playing and listening have been shown to aid in developing empathy. That rings true for me.

 

I took piano lessons as a little kid, but going into 4th grade, I could choose a band or orchestra instrument to study in school. I wanted to play the stand-up bass, having heard Bill Lee (Spike’s father) play on my dad’s Odetta records, but the school orchestra didn’t have basses, and I was told I was too small anyway. Crushed, my parents told me I could pick any other instrument when we went to a Boston Symphony Orchestra youth concert soon after. That day, they featured saxophones. I don’t remember what they played or the moment I fell in love, but I started playing alto saxophone in the Peter Noyes school band that fall and listening to saxophone players wherever I could find them. I rode my bike to the Goodnow public library weekly to explore its extensive jazz and classical collection. All of the albums I checked out at first had a picture of a saxophone player on the cover—John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” Charlie Parker’s “Now’s The Time,” and an album called “The Fabulous Sidney Bechet.” 

 

I have been enamored with saxophones--the devil’s horn--since then: with playing them, with listening to other people play them, with the cult-like obsession over where and when they were built (what’s the serial number!?!), and with the specialized knowledge, bordering on voodoo, that repair people seemed to possess. I have always been drawn to fine craftsmanship. After buying a house in Burlington, VT, weathering a pandemic, and celebrating my fiftieth birthday, my growing desire to find happiness working slowly and intently with my hands led me to build a shop in the backyard, invest in a set of tools and supplies, and go into the repair and restoration business as First Chair Winds. 

 

The appeal of New Orleans roots music to me lies in its unique mixture of cultures, rhythm, lyrical content, style, and form. These traditions fundamentally impacted the development of what came to be labeled jazz, blues, gospel, Americana, and Rock n’ Roll - and influenced the broader American culture I grew up in. I hear a foundational melodic language common to all these streams that I have haphazardly picked up bits and pieces of by emulating different popular music styles that grew out of them. I want to understand and inhabit the organizing principles of these early improvisers. Finding the history of music, glimpsing the character of the people who made it, and examining my motivations and connections to it feel like essential parts of this process. In 2023, Jon McBride’s Big Easy came together, digging into the roots of the music I have played and loved. 

Recently, a friend gifted me a copy of Donald Hall’s memoir, Life Work, in which he “reflects on the meaning of work, solitude, and love.” In the Los Angeles Times, Dana Gioia called it “a sustained meditation on work as the key to personal happiness.” That sentiment lights my journey through roots music, slow culture, and craftsmanship.