“WHAT IS MORE FITTING…THAN TO BE TAUGHT BY THE MAN WHO TAUGHT THE MAN?”
Andre Moreu
Scaramouche
MOST FANS OF THE GUITAR KNOW THAT JOE SATRIANI IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SIX STRINGERS AROUND. HE’S THE RARA ARVIS OF ARTISTS WHO HAVE CARVED OUT A CAREER FOCUSING ON ROCK AND FUSION INSTRUMENTALS, RELEASING ICONIC ALBUMS LIKE SURFING WITH THE ALIEN, THE EXTREMIST AND TIME MACHINE.
RECENTLY INDUCTED AS A MEMBER OF THE METAL HALL OF FAME, SATRIANI’S LATEST RELEASE IS A JOYOUSLY HARD HITTING AFFAIR, SHAPESHIFTING, THAT HAS HIM ON FIRM FOOTING IN THE SWINGING JAZZ ROCK TRADITION.
AN UNDER-APPRECIATED ASPECT OF SATRIANI’S MUSICAL VOYAGE IS THAT HE ALSO WEARS THE HAT OF A TEACHER, HAVING A LIST OF HIS STUDENTS INCLUDE STEVE VAI, KIRK HAMMETT, CHARLIE HUNTER, ALEX SKOLNICK AND LARRY LALONDE.
EVEN MORE INTRIGUING IS THE FACT THAT SATRIANI HAS BEEN TAUGHT BY TWO OF THE MOST IMPORTANT INFLUENTIAL BEBOP PIONEERS, NAMELY GUITARIST BILLY BAUER (WHO GIGGED WITH CHARLIE PARKER) AND PIANIST LENNIE TRISTANO (WHO CREATED HIS OWN HIGHLY PERSONAL COOL TONED METHOD OF JAZZ). THIS ASPECT OF SATRIANI’S LIFE HAS NOT BEEN LOST ON HIM, AS HE SHOWS HIS APPRECIATION OF THOSE WHO HAVE GUIDED HIM ON HIS MUSICAL PATH BY PASSING ON THE WISDOM OF HIS OWN MENTORS.
WE RECENTLY HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO HAVE A CHAT WITH JOE SATRIANI, WHO, LIKE HIS MUSIC ITSELF, WAS FRIENDLY, ACCESSIBLE, THOUGHTFUL AND COGENTLY ENJOYABLE.
YOU’RE ONE OF THE LAST PEOPLE ONE GENERATION AWAY FROM CHARLIE PARKER. YOU WERE TAUGHT GUITAR BY SOMEONE WHO GIGGED WITH BIRD, BILLY BAUER. TELL ME ABOUT THAT
(chuckles) It’s interesting how my musical path crossed two greats that happened to be in the same band, Billy Bauer and Lennie Tristano.
I’m growing up in Long Island on a little section of Westbury, and two miles down is Glen Cove. I didn’t know that Billy Bauer even existed let alone was teaching.
I was working really hard at being a self-taught musician; I was getting great music theory instruction at the local public high school, but I told my parents that I was looking for somebody to teach me some secrets of music.
My mother was a teacher, and somebody mentioned to her that this guy from her era (Bauer) was teaching. So my mom asked me if I’d ever heard of him, and I hadn’t, so she set up some lessons.
What was really great about those few lessons was that Billy had these pamphlets that he had written himself. They revolutionized my view of the guitar, because they had scales in three octaves, scales on separate strings, arpeggios all over the neck.
Up until then I was only teaching myself rock music and hadn’t yet put together my theory education in school with the actual fretboard knowledge. There was just a little here and there. Billy was the first one who said “You just need to learn ALL of this stuff in every single key. Don’t worry about this, that or the other thing; just get this in your brain as quickly as possible.”
And he was a sweet guy. I was just a punky little kid, and he took the time to be nice to me and teach me a few secrets. I took a few lessons in the summer, but I really studied those pamphlets and took it to heart.
HOW ABOUT YOUR MEETING LENNIE TRISTANO?
About two years later I enrolled in a new music college called Five Towns College. It wasn’t going too well; I didn’t like the teachers…I thought I was wasting my parents’ money.
One day I was asking my friend, “There’s gotta be somebody out here who’s a guru of music that can teach me some secrets but doesn’t want me to play like them. He said, “You gotta see Lennie Tristano. He’s my teacher, and the greatest guy ever”. I wasn’t even aware of who he was.
So I spent the next few weeks immersing myself in The Father of Cool Jazz, Lennie Tristano, and I was overwhelmed. I got a chance to meet him, he signed me up and I spent about two months taking lessons from him, and then had to bail because I had to go on tour with a disco band, of all things (laughs). A kid’s gotta make a living!
Those few months going to Lennie’s every week were just the most amazing musical experiences I’ve ever had. I’d never had to practice so hard and so thoroughly, and I’ve never interacted with someone with so much musical power like that. It was really something.
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“I’d never had to practice so hard and so thoroughly, and I’ve never interacted with someone with so much musical power like that. It was really something”
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HOW OLD WERE YOU? DID YOU APPRECIATE THE TIME OR DID YOU FIRST THINK “ WHO ARE THESE OLD GEEZERS?”
I was 18, and I definitely appreciated it because I grew up in a household where my parents were listening to jazz all the time. I had been hearing them play but just didn’t know it was them. Miles was being played, all the way back to Benny Goodman. That was also the first time I heard Wes Montgomery, Stanley Turrentine and a lot of that went on in my house as my parents went from that generation to one that started a family in the 50s in the suburbs but followed their music of jazz all the way into the 70sI, when I came of age.
So, I was excited and thrilled to be sitting in the same room with Lennie Tristano. I still think that he’s one of the most brilliant musicians to come on the planet.
WHEN YOU WERE TAKING LESSONS, DID YOU FEEL THE URGE TO GO THE JAZZ ROUTE, OR JUST WANT TO TAKE THESE GLEANINGS INTO YOUR ROCK STYLE?
Lennie never brought up the idea of changing style. He just wanted everyone to be themselves. There are still some key points that I work on today that were like Zen lessons.
On one exchange, he was asking me to improvise after some intense tasks, and after my performance I said something that really irked him. I said “should”, and he stopped me and said, “You know, all you kids from the suburbs have this ‘Subjunctive Disease’ in that you’re always worried about what you should have played or could have played, but you never play what you want to play”. He was laughing, but he was very intense and gruff.
He said “You have to learn everything down pat. You can’t leave any dark or unexplored part of your musicianship alone. You have to learn your instrument, the notes, the chords, the melodies, the harmonies, every string, every key everywhere, and then play only the notes that you want to play. Don’t ever play something you don’t want to play, and never be judgmental when you’re improvising.”
It was one of those lessons where you realize “I’m going to work on this until the day I die”. It was a way of life, which was part of his wonderful teaching. It set you on a path that made sense to make a living as a musician.
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“He said ‘You have to learn everything down pat. You can’t leave any dark or unexplored part of your musicianship alone. You have to learn your instrument, the notes, the chords, the melodies, the harmonies, every string, every key everywhere, and then play only the notes that you want to play. Don’t ever play something you don’t want to play, and never be judgmental when you’re improvising.’”
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ANYTHING SPECIALLY TECHNICALLY THAT YOU GOT FROM HIM?
On a practical note, there were little things that made a big impression on me.
He was making fun of somebody playing guitar where the vibrato was instant everywhere, and he said “Does that mean he feels the exact same way about everything that he’s expressing?”
He asked me to play “one note with noting on it”, and I realized I had never done that. I’d never thought of playing a note without wiggling it. He said “Play a note, and let a microsecond pass where you don’t do anything to it where it’s perfectly in tune, well annotated, then you add your feeling to it with vibrato if it’s supposed to be there or not”. He didn’t want me to think about it while I was improvising, but just as an exercising, he wanted to see “if you’re any good”, in other words to “just play a note and see if it’s in tune”. His whole thing was de-programming.
That’s what he did in the late 40s; he would take this band and deprogram it. He wouldn’t just regurgitate these licks they learned to be cool. You have to strip away all of that affectation, play pure music and express yourself in a pure way.
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“You have to strip away all of that affectation, play pure music and express yourself in a pure way.”
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WHEN DID YOU FEEL THAT YOU ACHIEVED THAT?
I don’t think I ever have; it’s something that I love working on.
WHAT IS IT WITH GUITARISTS (AS OPPOSED TO DRUMMERS, PIANISTS OR BASSISTS) THAT THEY HAVE TO PLAY 50 DIFFERENT GUITARS?
Yeah, isn’t that weird?
I think that a different guitar requires some other approach from your fingers that leads you down a different musical path.
For example, the difference between Gibsons and Fenders is that the structure is really different. The string tension is different, the scale length is different and often the pickups are different.
Acoustic guitars are even more weird. Just think of how many variations of 6 string acoustic guitars there are. There aren’t many variations in horns; you just have tenor, alto and soprano sax.
Guitars are strange because they aren’t linear in that you can play the same note in four different places. It’s just convoluted, and all of the guitars have to be held differently because their weighted differently.
So, guitar players are always in search that one arrangement of the guitar that finally sets them free. (laughs)
Having said that, on this new record I did bring fewer guitars, but I brought a variety that really helped me out. It’s surprising; the guitar that got the most amount of work was my Signature model that I play all the time and enjoy playing the most. But there were a couple of songs where it just wasn’t the right guitar, whether it was a rhythm part or a harmony to take over the melody at some point that was too slick, easy or familiar to me. I had to pick up something a little unfamiliar that would push back on me a little bit.
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“Guitar players are always in search that one arrangement of the guitar that finally sets them free”
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BUT NO MATTER WHAT GUITAR IT IS, CAN YOU STILL HEAR IT AND SAY “THAT’S ME”?
I don’t know. I think musicians can’t really hear themselves. We’re immune to when people say “that sounds so much like you and your style”, as I don’t know what they’re talking about. I’m just trying to make music; I don’t know what I sound like.
But, I know what it feels like. Guitar players are really in constant physical feedback. We’re feeling our fingertips; one hand is doing this, the other hand is doing that, and then there’s the electric component. If you play the electric guitar you realize that you’re also playing the amp, as it’s part of the instrument so you have to engage.
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“We’re immune to when people say “that sounds so much like you and your style”, as I don’t know what they’re talking about. I’m just trying to make music; I don’t know what I sound like”
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SO THAT COVERS THE TEACHERS THAT TAUGHT YOU. YOU’VE TAUGHT SOME PRETTY HEAVY HITTERS LIKE STEVE VAI, KIRK HAMMETT AND DAVID BRYSON. WHAT DO YOU TRY TO EMPHASIZE TO EACH STUDENT?
When I think of Charlie Hunter, I knew his mom very well. She was a luthier for the store where I taught. One day, this wonderful woman said “Joe, will you do something with Charlie? He’s driving me crazy!” He must have been around 10-11. He comes in and sits down, and although he’s a beginner, he’s so musical.
He was going to the same school as all of these thrash metal kids like Alex Skolnick, but Charlie is unique.
So what I did with Charlie, and all of the other guys, is just find out all of the good stuff this kid has inside of himself and see how I can add to it or maximize it.
The biggest thing I try to avoid is to influence them stylistically. That’s what I learned from my high school teacher who was a pianist trained at Julliard. He loved classical music and had his own style of jazz that he liked playing.
We students didn’t want to have anything to do with it. We liked Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Hendrix, but he never discriminated against us. He had a way of teaching music that had nothing to do with style, and I thought that was brilliant. He reached kids like me and Steve Vai, who went to the same school and have known each other as kids.
I’ve carried on that tradition by saying “I don’t care if it’s Charlie Hunter or Kirk Hammett; I’m going to make sure that they memorize all the scales, all the notes and all the chords. We then determine what their assets are in terms of their physicality; are they going to be ‘fast’ players ? Are they able to bend strings? Are they better at vibrato or picking faster? Let’s maximize all their best attributes and not waste time beating their heads against the wall.
In a particular case, you’ve got a guy with smaller hands, so why bother torturing them with chords that require big stretches? Likewise, if you’ve got someone brilliantly and “right” but they’re not shredders like David Bryson, he wasn’t even interested in it. He wanted to know the secrets of harmony, chord sequencing, scales and key signatures. It was great, because once they were motivated I could focus on the information to guide them, but never make them sound like me. That would be the worst thing ever.
My experience with teachers is that they’re trying to get students to just imitate them.
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“He stopped me and said, ‘You know, all you kids from the suburbs have this ‘Subjunctive Disease’ in that you’re always worried about what you should have played or could have played, but you never play what you want to play'”
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DID YOU MAKE IT YOUR GOAL TO “GO AS FAST AS YOU CAN” AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS, OR DID YOU WANT TO HEAR A CERTAIN SOUND, AND HAD TO BUILD UP CHOPS TO ACHIEVE IT?1932. IN OTHER WORDS, WHICH COMES FIRST?
Every musician comes to the realization of their physicality at a different point in their life as a player. My experience with a lot of young players is that when you’re really young you don’t even think about limitations; you just assume that whatever grownups tell you to do you just assume that it leads to success.
I know that because I teach 8 year olds and it’s the opposite when you’ve got a 50 year old in front of you and you realized that there’s decades of a brick wall that’s been built up. The more you experience, the more you get turned off to the possibility of surprise.
That’s why a young boy or girl of 12-14 years old decides to play an instrument, everything is pointing in the right direction. The body is firing on all cylinders, the nerve endings work faster than you can ever think and they are so single minded. It’s the blessing of youth; they’ll keep trying and push themselves until they really feel some push back.
If you start by 12-14, by the end of the teenage years if you’re going to be blazingly fast it’s going to happen. If after 4 years of practicing really hard, if it’s not happening it’s probably not going to, and I hate telling that to people. But that’s what I’ve seen.
Alan Holdsworth started really late, and he developed a blazingly fast way of playing, but he didn’t do it in the traditional way. He wasn’t trying to imitate Al DiMeola; he applied his own way of playing legato from his years of playing violin that changed the way that all guitar players play today. It was a flamenco technique that he wasn’t aware of, but worked its way through him into the electric guitar world.
It validated what I was working on. I always thought I wasn’t as good a picker as the best. I learned early on-I’d been a player for only a year, but I was already teaching younger kids. I saw younger kids like Steve Vai who had better picking facilities than I did, and I thought “WOW. You really reach your limits at an early age in terms of technique.”
One day in high school, my music theory teach Bill Wescott wanted me to do a new lesson. He said “I want you just to sit at this table with some manuscript and a piece of paper and write music without any instrument around.”
I asked him how I’ll know what it sounds like, protesting like any teenager.
He said, “Consider this; at some point you are going to reach physical limitations and you won’t be able to get any taller or bigger. You’re going to grow up, but your musical mind never stops growing. So I want you to teach yourself how to grow your musical mind”.
It took me a long time to figure that one out, but what he saw as well as a teacher is that some kids come along whether they are 7 or 17, and they can just play better than everyone else for no other reason than Mother Nature made it happen. You can’t take it personally, but what’s a musician to do?
So, the lesson of developing your musical mind is so important because that is what I started to do, and it led me to be a composer and realized that it’s more rewarding for myself musically to be concentrating on composition and then ask myself “what technique do I need in order to learn how to make it happen”. 2446
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“If after 4 years of practicing really hard, if it’s not happening it’s probably not going to, and I hate telling that to people. But that’s what I’ve seen”
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SO HOW DO YOU HANDLE A STUDENT LIKE A STEVE VAI WHO HAS MORE CHOPS THAN YOU DO?
You just see how far you can go with them. You congratulate them and say “Man, you are really amazing!” You keep showing them players who are up to their level, making sure you give them everything they need to do.
It’s sort of like a trainer. The basketball coach is nowhere near as the people they’re coaching. But, you want someone watch you play your game and say, “You know, you’re turning your foot the wrong way every time you make that shot.”
YOU MENTIONED DEVELOPING YOUR MUSICAL MIND. HOW DOES ONE DO THAT?
Learning ear training was probably the biggest step for me.
I didn’t have perfect pitch when I decided to become a musician. I played drums until I was nine and didn’t think about guitar until I was 13, so it was too late to develop perfect pitch.
Bill Wescott taught us how to organize our brains to learn relative pitch, and this way when you hear one note and then another note, you can judge the distance between them. It doesn’t matter what the first note was as long as you can judge the distance from the C or F then you have a way of remembering it, whether it’s something you’re composing in your mind or you have a way of responding to it if you have an improvising situation with other musicians. So, you can know how to respond by raising it up or bringing it down.
This was paramount to me I do a lot of composing in my head. Before then it was just beautiful noise that I didn’t know how to transfer to the guitar. But after Wescott taught me and grilled me on it, and tested me every day in school. It got to the point where I’d be walking down the street, hear something and in my mind think “I just hummed something that went one flat seventh, sharp four five” and remember it when I got home. Then I’d pick up my guitar and BAM, I’d play it.
That meant that I finally connected the real world to my musical inspiration.
DID THE FACT THAT YOU GREW UP PLAYING DRUMS HAVE AN IMPACT ON YOUR SELECTION OF DRUMMERS LIKE VINCE CALAIUTA, SIMON PHILLIPS, CHAD SMITH ETC. WHAT DO YOU LOOK FOR IN A DRUMMER?
My drum teacher was this really cool jazz guy named Mr. Petrikis. He was a slim guy and wore shark skin suits, and had a cool 60s hat. I don’t know where my parents found him. I started with a two piece kit, and worked my way up as he saw fit.
For three years I was tutored by this guy and just fell in love with him and his whole idea of “the swing”. I was a young kid, and he would show me things like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, but I soon realized that everything that he played for me made sense to me physically; I just loved the way he played. It was the most natural sounding drumming I’d ever heard in my life. He made my drums sound beautiful, while I made them sound horrible. It was like magic.
He was my introduction to good musicianship. They way he made my crummy drums sound beautiful was remarkable.
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“He was my introduction to good musicianship. They way he made my crummy drums sound beautiful was remarkable”
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IS THAT WHAT YOU LISTEN FOR NOW?
I think so. If I don’t hear that swing, I get really suspicious.
The generation that learned in the 50s really learned a different way of playing than today. They became the rock drummers that I grew up listening to, so I just figured that everyone was like Mitch Mitchell or John Bonham. All of those drummers were different, but also in the same way when I hear Ringo play I think “That’s what I want!”
They had a swing to them. Even Black Sabbath’s first four records had that “wow”.
All of the guys that I play with are all really great.
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“If I don’t hear that swing, I get really suspicious”
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IS THERE ANY BOOK, RELIGION OR PHILOSOPHY THAT HAS INSPIRED YOU?
I have this problem with authority when it comes to spirituality. (laughs)
I always have, probably because I grew up in a Roman Catholic environment. I had to go to Catholic school and lasted until about 5th grade, and finally my parents said, “you need to go”.
So when I got to public school, it felt more like reality.
Because of that, I’ve always had this suspicion of “Why can’t people just be good to each other”” and make that the religion?
I understand that philosophies that get people to focus on being good are always good. It’s just that they all seem to bring up an exclusionary clause, that “our way is the only way”. As soon as I get a hint of that, I’m out the door.
WHAT GUITARIST WOULD YOU PAY $1000 TO SEE PERFORM?
You never know what performance is going to change your mind.
When I think back to all of the gigs that I should have liked, and the ones that totally blew me away, it makes no sense.
I remember going to see lots of rock concerts as a kid, and for different reasons I’d get impressed by something that happened at the gig, even if it was a disaster.
There was this Black Sabbath concert I saw in 1974 in Long Island. It was a crazy explosion of heavy metal hedonism. Lynard Skynard opened the show, Blue Oyster Cult failed to show up, and Cozy Powell’s Bedlam was there.
Sabbath came on an hour late. While they were making everyone wait for some reason all of us Long Islanders took our coats off and started fires on the ground of the Colosseum. The Fire Marshall came out and sprayed us all with fire retardant. It was complete mayhem, and then Black Sabbath finally came out.
I just remember Geezer Butler’s sound being the most all enveloping bass sound I’ve ever heard in my life. I remember Ozzie had a cold, but I went home thinking “whatever he’s doing on the bass guitar is something I need to remember”.
YOU’VE LED THESE G3 SUMMITS WITH THE BEST OF THE BEST GUITARISTS. HOW DO YOU NOT TURN IT INTO A TRAIN WRECK WITH SO MANY AXES OUT THERE WITH ERIC JOHNSON, ROBERT FRIPP, STEVE LUKATHER OR KENNY WAYNE SHEPHERD?
It is the greatest sense of camaraderie up there. It’s really amazing.
Just a few years ago I did four months with John Petrucci and Phil Collins for the US run, and every night ****we were excited to play with each other and to see who would pull something out; something we hadn’t heard before.
Every single night that we walked off the stage, the first thing you’d hear out of our mouths was “Hey! What did you do? That was so cool; you’ve got to show it to me!” It was always sharing, laughing and congratulating each other while trying new things and helping each other. It’s a wonderful experience doing that.
It makes your playing better; just to stand next to other great guitar players and realize that you’re not selling your new album, you can be there like a normal guitarist and celebrate the guitar with the audience. It’s a unique experience.
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“We were excited to play with each other and to see who would pull something out; something we hadn’t heard before”
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WAS IT DIFFICULT TO GET ROBERT FRIPP TO JAM WITH YOU GUYS? HE SEEMS SO INSULAR IN HIS OWN THING.
Robert is such a great person. He has some parameters in terms of physical performance, as he doesn’t like standing up in the front of the stage, so he’d ask “do you mind if I sit in the back and please don’t put any lights on me.” But, everyone’s got something. Some people like stage left or stage right. He was a very generous, humorous and intelligent character, who just happens to play music like a wizard.
The last G3 we did together he was actually on the bus with us and we spent a lot of time hanging out with each other. He’s a lot of fun.
WHAT DID YOU GET OUT OF PLAYING WITH ERIC JOHNSON?
Eric Johnson is like Mozart.
He doesn’t know this, but very often when he was deep into his performance I’d be standing off stage, watching him while also looking out into the audience. I think “I hope these people know lucky they are that they get to experience Eric Johnson, because he is it. He is like one in a trillion. He’s so dedicated to what he does, and I’m always impressed with his musicianship.
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“Eric Johnson is like Mozart…very often when he was deep into his performance I’d be standing off stage, watching him while also looking out into the audience. I think “I hope these people know lucky they are that they get to experience Eric Johnson, because he is it'”
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WHAT DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO SAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
“Oh, just get on with it” (laughs) There’s still plenty of living, so I hope they get along nicely without me.
SINCE WE HAD OUR INTERVIEW, JOE SATRIANI HAS POSTPONED HIS TOUR DUE TO THE PREVALENT EFFECTS OF THE COVID-19 VIRUS. WHILE WE MAY NOT BE ABLE TO SEE HIM IN PERSON, PLEASE CONSIDER HIS LATEST RELEASE AS AN INVITATION TO ACCEPT FOR A RAIN CHECK’D PERFORMANCE.
IT’S INSPIRING TO HEAR MUSIC AND WORDS FROM AN ARTIST WHO STILL HAS LOTS TO SAY, SIMPLY BECAUSE HE STILL FEELS HE HAS SO MUCH STILL TO LEARN. THAT’S A LESSON WE CAN ALL LEARN!