Group Mind

It's odd and difficult, the vacuum of the solitary, solo performer and recordist. Even with my collab-by mail interaction with others I miss and (sometimes) long for the interaction and give & take of live musicians in the same room. To this end I have started to work with a group again. A drummer and guitarist asked me if I knew a bassist or maybe keyboardist interested in quirky, jazz-influenced, electric instrumental music. I said, "sure, I play bass!" We got together a couple of times to "jam and see what happens" and it was kind of fun - the drummer is good and can put up the Elvin Jones polyrhythm stuff, and the guitarist is interesting in that he is more textural than note-y. Last night things changed for the much better as an alto sax player showed up and we all got quickly into a harmolodic funk straight out of Prime Time. Wow! It was terrific and at that moment things changed from being a fun little Sunday night jam with friends to something much more serious and vital - at that moment we were involved with something more real and important. Things got even better when the keyboardist showed up, dialed in a Rhodes sound and we got all Bitches Brew. Everybody was listening and responding to each other musically and we immediately (I feel) developed a "group identity" (rather than just being individuals playing in the same room together, as the earlier jam sessions had been).

I'm looking forward to seeing (and hearing) what happens with this!