I feel like Rocky. What can I say? All day I’ve had the theme in my head.
First the intro:
Dun, dun dun dun, dun dun Dun, dun dun dun etc…
Then the main theme:
duh duh duhhhhhhh duh duh duhhhhhh.
Seeing my album, my fucking album, number 9 on the iTunes Top Jazz albums? (insert, next day…number seven!). I can’t even describe it.
It’s the culmination of hanging in there a long, long time. Twenty years have gone by since I first imagined something like this, going to concerts by my heroes, Chick Corea, Mike Stern, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Micheal Brecker, Strunsz & Farah, John Scofield etc… I remember thinking there is NO reason, metal fans wouldn’t dig this. Maybe not all of it, but some of it. And I’ll bet there’s a way to dive into this music, appreciate it on a higher level, capture some favorite moments and rethink it in such a way that would be enlightening to fans of other genres, specifically metal.
I knew it would take years, if not decades of study. I knew I might be relegated to playing jazz only as hobby, not professionally. I knew I risked alienating all the fans who had liked my work this far. I knew it would require starting over as a musician.
Yet I had to go for it. Even though it made sense to no one, everyone seemed to think I was crazy, it was what was in my soul. There was no other choice.
Ten years later, I could finally speak the language. I’d been living in New York and had just released my first jazz album (‘Goodbye To Romance: Standards For A New Generation’). That was how long it had taken. Ten years!
I was very proud of that first jazz release. We got unexpectedly good reviews, including some from mainstream jazz publications like Downbeat and Jazziz. There was a buzz. People took notice. Jazz radio stations played our music. Yet many doors that we needed to open didn’t. Record labels, including some majors, expressed interest in us, then folded. Many jazz festivals and clubs weren’t ready to take a chance on a guy from a thrash band. After all, it was completely unheard of. Guys like this don’t play jazz! Right? And we should take a chance on him because..?! It didn’t help that the entire music industry was going through a combination revolution and recession that continues to this day.
During the period that followed, every foreseeable change would come up: business challenges, life changes, line up changes. I began playing metal again, and became committed to do proving that one could do both genres of music on a high level.
Anyway, almost ten more years have gone by! And now we’ve reached Top 10 on the Jazz Charts in iTunes.
Who knows what the long term implications of this are if any? I know the reality. I know it’s ‘release week’, it’s a nice surprise to have such strong initial sales, but you really can’t get too attached to numbers. They’ll probably go down quickly, that’s when the work really begins. Hopefully they’ll go back up again.
But you know what? I’m going to enjoy this moment! Right now, our album is up there with Miles, Wynton, Nina, Nora and company. This is proof that if you set your mind to it, feel it in your heart, are realistic about your progress, understand what it takes and devote years of stand hard dogged determination, anything is possible.
In a way, this is the the mirror image of my metal situation: I was extremely young to be in a national metal band (eighteen on the first record) Now, at forty-two, I’m a little bit old to be an ‘emerging artist.’ Yat that’s exactly what this feels like. Why it took so long to finally get here? I don’t know. I’m just glad to arrive. Doing something very different, even though its taken forever to get across, has given my life a purpose. And having the support of so many awesome fans makes it all worth it.
I’m asking only one thing: if you know anyone, anyone at all, friend, relative, colleague etc… who might like this music- please let them know about it, ok? And please: encourage them to BUY the album, either digitally or on CD. Real album sales are necessary in order for musicians to have a future on this planet.
Thank you, everyone!
Links:
Some early reviews:
