Derek Brown Interview by Monk Rowe - 3/5/2021 - Zoom

my name is monk rowe for the phillies jazz archive and i'm very pleased to have on a friday afternoon derek brown with me and we are not together but uh we're going to be together for about an hour thanks for joining me yeah thanks for having me monk i'm glad to be here congratulations on your uh was it last year you did a 50-state tour yeah like a year and a half ago 50 gigs 50 states we made it all nine months in an rv you couldn't think of anything challenging to do eh no no and and my wife and i she she got to come with and uh yeah we both love to travel uh and usually i'm doing gigs by myself you know like flying here or there to i've done europe a lot of times and a lot of times she doesn't get to come with me and so we were trying to think of you know what i should do more stuff in the u.s and maybe i could string them all together and when we started putting feelers out for if something could work we were getting a really good response from all over the country and we're like i wonder if we just go a step further and why don't we just try to get all the states you know why not make it a nice theme like 50 states 50 gigs well this isn't really a musical question but did you learn anything about america uh let's see yeah i'm sure i did um i mean i learned it's i mean it's an extremely beautiful country uh such a variety of landscapes um even people but you know we often think of when you want to go on a vacation well some people do like you got to go to other countries you got to go to europe but man we have it all here um people often ask me like what my favorite states were and i have to kind of go along with the cliche that yes hawaii and alaska were pretty amazing because they're both so exotic but you know there was so much beauty out you know in the the we we were in the fall in the northeast so around like uh the finger lakes um and we did the adirondacks right around right when it was beautiful colors and my wife was really good about uh kind of almost forcing me i have to say that forcing me to have to not schedule a gig every day so that we could have like a trip to acadia national park or you know to see the grand canyon and right um so i'm actually quite grateful for that so instead of my memories of the great united states just being oh yeah i saw a lot of cool concert halls it's like no i saw these amazing forests and these valleys and the oceans you know so it was quite an experience all around i want to i want to come back to that uh later on about the role music plays in your everyday life but yeah i'm wondering if you had um incident when you were young as a kid that in retrospect seemed to set you on this path that you're on and when you when you say that do you mean like professional musician or like the kind of solo saxophone uh more like okay just being a musician okay was there something that happened to you way back yeah well the the ironic thing is um when you know i have fairly musical parents they've both done choir my dad was in the uh university of michigan men's glee club chorus um my dad's a pastor and so he was always involved with music at the church and things like that and i remember growing up and doing a little bit of like the hand bell choir and kind of singing but the ironic thing is when fifth g fifth grade came around which is of course the year most schools around the us offer a band program and it's encouraged to do that i actually did not want to play an instrument um i just thought i'm happy doing what i'm doing and i don't i don't why would i want to learn an instrument and my parents forced me to pick an instrument and i remember when i went to this like band introduction day and they had all the instruments on a table as i was like kind of thinking okay what instrument am i gonna have to play which one am i gonna pick and i remember the saxophone was particularly shiny you know they let us touch the instruments all these buttons and valves you know like just this machine but i also remember thinking like this looks really expensive so if my parents are gonna make me play they're gonna pay for it i'll play the saxophone that looks like it's worth the most you know i can sell it later on when it doesn't work out um and so it's funny that then you know that's now my career um and i think i think a huge thing because you know i do master classes all around uh the country in the world and i end up saying a lot of a lot of a lot of the things over and over and one of the things i really stress with people is that i don't think i have any natural gifts for music some people might argue otherwise um but when you you know when you hear me doing my solo stuff and i'm doing like four things at once with the stomping and the rings and the you know jumping back and forth which we'll probably talk about a little bit um the only reason i can do that stuff is just because i put in the time you know and i'm sure a lot of other musicians would say this if i have any special ability it's the ability to sit in a room by myself you know for three to five hours every day and just practice instrument just slowly sometimes painfully slow practice it and so when i when i started playing the saxophone at school i don't think there's anything special it's just the big thing was my parents got me into private lessons efforts and we were in a very small town in michigan but i just had a private lesson teacher once a week and because of that i actually like wanted to be prepared for my lessons you know it's not a crazy idea um whereas most of the students in my the other kids in my band they were just doing band and you know didn't have a big reason to be motivated and i had a teacher that was you know giving me new stuff i like to please people that's another talent or bad thing i don't know okay okay cool but but i like to please people so much that i like don't want to let them down and so that naturally just made me want to practice more and oh wow they were impressed with my a2 last week i i really want to get this one up for next time um you know there's like the two trains of thought there's the uh have you seen the movie whiplash yes okay there's that school of thought where it's like you beat it out of the kid and it's like you stink until you practice and get better that oh my gosh does not work for me what works for me is the complete opposite someone's saying that was really good and then on my own it's like my gosh the next time what if they hear me and i'm not as good they're going to think i'm terrible so i need to practice even more and and then just doing that year after year here i am what was the first um sort of public performance was it in church or in school um i think it was at school and i remember the first band concert so it was like at the end of that semester when we started and i had been doing private lessons i was probably the only one in my school that had done in my grade that had done private lessons and so my director gave me kind of a prime solo spot you know we were playing merrily we roll along in unison as a band but then there was a little mid-break there might have been a couple other students that did something special and i got to do i played uh this version of amazing grace with a p with solo piano um and we still had the video footage of that you know it sounded terrible i remember i was squeaking so much but i remember like all my bandmates were like so amazed which is so funny that it's you know it's just so far ago um and and yeah you know it's it's that wanting to please people and i'll admit at times in my life i have been addicted to the you know the the applause and like uh just like wow hey that felt good um and and i hope in within that it's not just the applause but maybe i can i can tweak that and say i i love or i'm addicted to seeing the power of music the effect it has on people making people happy um that's the less selfish way to to phrase that well there's been jazz artists that have not found that motivation i think that they're playing more for themselves and so that's another way to think about it you were born in uh 83 is that right very good yeah so a couple things were happening then one of which i'm not sure how relevant it is but the the change to um compact discs from lps i wonder if lps had any role in your life because i was one of those guys who used to read the liner notes like to get my jazz history yeah well okay the bad news is it wasn't lps but the good news is because this is still before spotify and napster the cds they were smaller of course but they often still had booklets and uh i loved that stuff i was just talking with a friend a little bit a little bit ago about how every cd we owned it was just that you know top to bottom every word you read i mean it was one it was just kind of something to do while you're listening to it um also you know being kind of i was kind of newer to jazz like my parents didn't raise me so much on jazz so to speak um i would say they raised me on some some good music some some oldies we it wouldn't be strange to hear the occasional classical music or like my dad had um brubeck's time out um a couple other things um but when i'm kind of new to that and it's like what's this instrumental stuff there's no words it's like well i might as well kind of read this stuff here and then that learning the history you know makes you appreciate it a little bit more so i am grateful for those for really yeah for those liner notes and reading that um because i think it builds on each other you know listening to good music makes you want to learn about it learning about it makes you want to hear it um and so i think that was that was a key thing into my kind of foray into jazz was there a first saxophone player that you were you heard and you wondered all right who is that and then you started looking for that name yep okay so here is where some people are going to judge me but whatever i'm going to let it all out i'm going to let it go you're going to say boots randolph right no i'm gonna go even further i'm gonna go um because yeah i actually wasn't introduced to boots until much later but i'm actually gonna go all the way smooth jazz and i'll say cause i i mean like we said i was born in 83 i listened to a lot of pop music growing up so the big name if you want to guess kenny g yes him and then even even more i think my first two saxophone cds i was given was kenny g and dave kaz so another smooth jazz guy uh and i remember you know and like i said i grew up with pop this was basically pop so this made sense to me um but it was done by a saxophone it was done by the instrument that i'm playing and it sounded really good to me and i i'm really grateful for those first two cds because it was that music that got me to kind of i think break outside of the box in a way in the way of like kind of taking it as my own instead of being given music and assignments from my private lesson teacher which is great you got to start somewhere or my band teacher i'm just doing what they asked me to do i'm just doing what they asked me to do here i was given a cd wasn't asked to do anything with it and yet i wanted to like hey is are there transcription books with this i want to play along with this and then i remember taking the cd into this little boom box that i had and we'd go out i would go out to the garage and this was in michigan and and in the winter it would get really cold in the garage but it didn't matter i would go in that garage because it had the best acoustics in the house you know this nice reverb and i would put on that dave cars and i had my little transcription book and i would just close my eyes and play and it got me also to kind of play out like i don't i don't listen so much to smooth jazz these days um but a lot of the tone of these musicians is really nice and i think a lot of people could learn from the tone of smooth jazz plays just kind of like really putting air through the horn and making a beautiful sound and listen to those albums i just i would close my eyes and play along and i'd kind of have the dream of like man well i could do this on a stage one day you know this is great and it was it was once again it wasn't an assignment this was me doing something for the first time on my own with music it seemed small but i think it was a big step very significant i did the same thing with the cannonball adderley ah yeah talking about filling the horn yeah yeah playing it from this end to that end and what a great sound yeah um and also in the mid 80s the uh rap music started to become quite popular and i i just wondered if that entered your consciousness because you're so you're such a percussive guy i am yeah yeah it's it's funny i well i didn't get into rap when i was younger mainly because my parents would not have approved i was and i was very much a goody two-shoes you know i talked about wanting to please people i really wanted to please my parents it worked for me i was happy that way not kind of like stretching the boundaries when i was a kid um though we did listen to i would often just say just just all the pop music we listen to the 80s pop 90s pop where there's always a back beat on two and four um just such a universal thing and you listen to my music nowadays almost always there's a back be on two and four i will never until i until i die i will never get sick of that i just i love that and it's it's it's this thing with that people say uh like they've done studies on this the music you listen to when you're a teenager it's gonna stay with you your whole life and so it's like it doesn't matter how cheesy it seems nowadays it's nostalgic for me when i hear that like brian adams tears for fears whatever that heavy reverb on two and four and those synth it's it's so nostalgic to me it just like warms my heart in a way that and i'll be honest in a way that sometimes a lot of jazz maybe doesn't uh just because i didn't grow up with that during that time and i think it has to do with you know when you're a teenager your first kiss first dance experiencing all these things that's the soundtrack of your growing up and it's like life is too short to like move beyond that and i've learned to just embrace it it's okay i like this stuff and i it's okay if this enters my playing um yeah so that's so did have you ever been playing one of your solo numbers and the audience gets into it and they start clapping on one and three the worst no yeah yes it definitely has happened um yeah there and there are some places maybe that do that more than others um that yes but it's very sounds like you could do a sociological study about where that demarcation is totally totally yeah um and it's yeah any and i mean i just love that they're they're the fact that an audience is clapping to the music means that it's connecting in some way um and like you were saying for me so much of music it's connecting with others it's not just for myself there is a lot about for myself of course but so much is about sharing this it's a communication it's a language i am thinking about the audience i want to say something and i want them to be there with me so i don't know if this is part of your thinking but you have a sound you have a musical hook and you even have a descriptive title for what you do i'm wondering if your career path has been more calculated than some people who just take advantage of serendipitous opportunities almost like you are going to start a business and you need a business plan yeah yeah yeah that is a that's a really good question um i think all of that is is involved but definitely i have thought about the business end um and i have preached that to others um i've heard you know i i forget who it was someone at berkeley was like the music business person there and they said if you want to make it in today's industry it's going to be 10 your craft which is like the practicing and the music 90 business and i'm like what if i'm practicing like six hours a day that's only 10 of making it like there's not enough time okay and maybe it's not quite and i wouldn't say i've devoted nine times as much uh to the business side but it is something that i just think today's musicians you know gone are the the labels that are looking for young talent we're gonna make you a star and you're gonna make it rich when you go to new york city and you get discovered and look at these huge jazz clubs with thousands of people in them that's where the heck no um if you want to make you have to think of yourself as an entrepreneur um unless you maybe have these extremely serendipitous moments and i i think that's still you have to be kind of lucky also um but yeah it takes a lot of thinking i mean we we have these amazing i often i often tell people today this day and age in the music industry not counting the pandemic that we're in because we'll get beyond this but today in the 21st century it's the best of times and it's the worst of times to be a musician it's the best of times in the sense that we have this amazing technology we can record albums in our bedroom as i did my first two albums with a free program that was pre-installed on my computer garageband i made my entire album from garageband with two microphones that cost 100 bucks each you know that that's unreal compared to 30 years ago and i i think it sounds good you know to me it does um so that's amazing and we have this technology where at the touch of a couple buttons we can upload our music and videos for free that's crazy and it could has the chance of being spread around the world i mean that's crazy however the flip side of that is that well that technology is so easy to use so inexpensive everybody's using that technology everybody knows how to use it everybody is making an album it's not a big deal anymore um plus with stuff like the internet youtube social media everybody is posting videos all the time and a lot of them are really really good and so that question that million dollar question uh becomes like what what makes me unique what what is it that i have to say why would anyone listen to me over the other ten thousand sax players that are probably better than me probably prac there's always someone practicing more there's always someone better and so i've had a lot of these just kind of hard moments where i'm just i just have to like listen to myself really honestly and this is a thing a lot of us musicians are afraid of doing just artists in general is like sitting back and do a hard listen and saying like is this something that i would actually enjoy is this something i would seek out would i pay money to listen to this when i watch this whole video myself and i think a lot of us are afraid of asking that i i find myself all the time still doing that i have to force myself to ask that um and and and those things and then also just this idea of how do you get noticed if you have a really good product so many musicians so many jazz musicians are famous well not famous but they're it's notorious for these amazing best players in the world and they're playing in some dark tiny little closet practically in some tiny city or big city and no one knows who they are and for a lot of people that's fine and that's great and maybe they have a day job and that's and that's great you know good for them that's awesome um but like i said to you for me music is a language it's a communication and i i actually want to think about is this communicating is this is this getting to people doesn't mean i have to dumb it down but like just putting myself in the audience shoes and like like i said would i listen to this um would this grab my attention you must have grabbed your attention your personal attention when you realized that you had the facility you had like this super ambitious probably didn't happen overnight but definitely not you you can um realize in a practice room somewhere okay i can slap tongue now what's the next step and you start adding these things on and i'm trying to think of what my question is but you're talking about what i listen to that and so when was the first time you tried that by yourself in front of an audience doing this oh yeah yeah well the a cool thing is that i was able to do it online first in the sense of posting a youtube video um yes i had experimented a little bit before i was i was teaching down in uh texas abilene christian university i was a full-time instructor for six years um and that time was really good for me because so i went i did undergrad hope college graduate school university of cincinnati and when you're a student you you're learning so so much but there's also kind of this underwritten kind of competition um there's this intensity of kind of always comparing yourself and that i didn't do so well with that like i think it was good for my growth and getting me to practice because wow they practice a lot that's what i'm going to do but i almost kind of burnt out at that point and that was when i was i i didn't know what i had to say i didn't know what kind of music i wanted to play i was studying kind of more or less traditional jazz but then it took me moving down to texas and being a professor and i had income coming in uh i had free time on my hands and it was like you know oh yeah i have the saxophone here am i going to prac i should practice this what i want and it was just freedom to like if i'm going to play this thing i'm just going to play it exactly how i want to play i'm not going to play it i'm not going to do the things that i think that other people want me to do the things that a good jazz musician is supposed to do yeah sometimes i would do that stuff because i wanted to be good at improvising but it was like that slap tonguing thing that i remember hear people hearing i want to really figure that out that's really cool to me and so i don't care if it's been if i take three hours just straight up working on slap tongue each day i'm gonna do it because i can um and i know not everyone has that luxury and i i'm even grateful if i think if i had moved like to new york city right after grad school and into that scene i don't think i ever would have kind of come across this solo type of playing because i would have just been hustling trying to get into every gig every group i could do i'd be doing you know wedding bands bar mitzvahs all and that's good stuff and some people and i don't want to knock that stuff because some people do that stuff they love it they thrive with it and they still have time on their own to do that but for me it was really good just kind of taking a little bit slower after i had already worked on these skills of improvising and good tone in college and now what do i want to do if i'm really honest what do i want to work on because i don't have to play this music and that was kind of freeing for me i don't have to play it and so if i'm going to play it i'm going to play it how i want to and just slowly i realize i like this percussive stuff and some of the people i was listening to like like the eddie harris's you know the jumping around to the octaves and then the big one for me bobby mcferrin of course not a sax player a vocalist but hearing him perform and just one guy no no electronics no looping one guy on a stage and just some of the most amazing stuff you've ever heard and the most creative stuff and just being like i want to be able to do that but on the saxophone um and so then slowly over the years progressing and adding this oh what if i could get a i have this pop sound i wonder if i could kind of get a hi-hat sound and then thinking also thinking of other instruments i'd explored i'd play drum set a little bit and thinking okay so where's my bass drum sound where's my snare okay can i do like a roll sound and then okay i have a bass can i do the mil and all of it slowly came together soon enough it was like oh i have a song here i'll post this online let's see what happens and this fir this video that i posted maybe i don't know if it was like seven years ago i called it catch em up is the name of this composition that i wrote and yes by then i had kind of thought of a name beatbox sax um just thinking like it kind of makes it sound kind of sounds like beatboxing i guess even though i don't actually like i've never practiced vocally beatboxing and that video did really well surprisingly well like it got up to like a hundred thousand views in a couple weeks and i was just like what oh my gosh wow okay i was a little you know once again kind of like a little addicted to the applause so to speak um and then it's funny because then right from that i was like oh i need to i need to do more and i'll do a cover song of a pop tune and i remember even getting into the whole game here and this is what you have to be careful with these days as a as a musician is thinking okay my first video got this number of views this next video is going to be even better it's going to be a cover song how can i do the angle what's going to be the best way to get more okay every breath you take by the police here we go i put it out it does like half as well and i am depressed it still got 50 000 views which is um you know a month ago i would have been amazed but it didn't matter so much in life is comparative you know we're just comparing and and it's just like only 50 000 and i was depressed and from that point i learned it's not about the numbers yes i want my music to communicate i want to reach people but i'm not going to obsess over everything of like oh is this what's going to get the best look what's what's going to get the most views the most it's got to be fun for me first and foremost um and then it's icing on the cake if it connects with well more than icing on the cake but it's just like that's the sweet spot if it's something i truly love and it's resonating with people that is the sweet spot that's what i want to be doing all right well speaking of sweet spot you um your description of developing your thing reminded me of a a quote i was able to interview harry sweets edison the trumpet player from the basey era and he was talking about when he was a young man this would have been the late 1930s he said this about the already established musicians like louis armstrong and coleman hawkins and his what he said was everybody had a sound of their own a sound that could be recognized that was our ambition in my day to not be an imitator but an originator we would rather be the world's worst originator than the world's greatest imitator huh yeah i can resonate with that yeah i i i was thinking about your sound and then the the incredible breadth of um saxophone sounds that have happened since you know the 20s and so you're in a lineage you're in a current lineage um of what's going on now because sometimes i wonder how does it get harder to come up with your own sound i mean how do you go beyond john coltrane's harmonic innovations and so if i can't do that what can i do yeah yeah well i mean i had a like kind of a musical mid-life crisis in grad school that period where i was working really hard but kind of like burning out at the same time and it came from i specifically remember the moment i was second year grad grad school student i was a grad assistant so i was supposed to be one of the top people i was getting paid to be in school i was in charge of a quote unquote beginning jazz combo with some freshmen in it and in came this punk saxophone kid who played circles around me he was twice as good as me i was five years his a older he was twice as good and it just drove me nuts i i'm sure other musicians can relate to this um it's it's imp yeah it's impossible not to compare ourselves um as sad as that is but it drove me nuts and i remember thinking like i'm twice his age why surely i've practiced more than him does he just have something in him that's gonna and it made me think if i'm not the best one in this room i'm not the best one at all in cincinnati i'm definitely far from the best how am i going to make a name for myself out there how am i going to get noticed and thinking about all the internet things and what is it that i why would anyone listen to me when there are people twice as good as me and i worked so hard for this that is so hard now i wish i could say that then something switched and is like oh i'll do beatbox sax and i'll do solo concerts and i'll do all these extend no of course it never works that cleanly and you go through some really dark hard times but that was right around the time that i got that teaching gig in texas and so i had that time to just realize you know what i'm going to stop just completely only trying to imitate people because i like i wanted to be the next sonny rollins he was my guy at that time um and just when i yeah i realized there's 10 000 other sax players that want to be exactly like sonny rollins and then the crazy thing is none of us will ever be exactly sunny rollins um because you know he had his way of playing and he had his own life you know influences will never be that same way um and and so it was just like once again if i'm going to play this instrument it's going to be exactly how i want to play it i wasn't even at that point i don't think thinking dreaming so much about a performing career i think i was probably thinking it wasn't going to happen when i got that teaching job not saying that it was like like i was giving up or anything because that was a great great gig but it did allow me to kind of relax like i said and just pursue what i wanted to pursue i don't think i would have said at that time i'm seeking my own unique sound it was just truly seeking what i like and that's another thing with that whole honestly listening to yourself i think we all more musicians or a lot of musicians need to be honest about what they truly like in music um it's kind of like when i um when i was a teacher and i was teaching some of these saxophone majors they were a major in music they wanted to perform for a living and like let's say it was a classical student and then i'd say hey have you listened to this piece um what recordings do you like and they're like no and uh have you listened to have you listened to any classical saxophone and it's like they don't listen to classical saxophone at all like like almost never and it's like you're you're pursuing this full-time like this is going to be your thing you want to do your thing and you don't even really like the music you know that seems strange or and that's an extreme example you know there are other people i think who are just they're imitating someone because that's who they think they're supposed to like or in the typical jazz hierarchy or the evolution of jazz you're supposed to start you know like if we just look at coltrane you start with blue train but then you move on that's too simple now you move on to giant steps really fast harmonic language you move on to a love supreme where he opens it all up and and then you move on and you kind of don't look back and you kind of you know it's like that's a lesser form of music and for some people that's great you know if avant-garde jazz is your thing and that's what gets you up in the morning go for it that's awesome we need people in this world that are excited about what they're doing but if you're doing that just because that's what the other kids you know the other sax players are doing your heart's not going to be in it and i don't think you're going to have what it takes to push through the highs and a lot of lows of a music career you have to absolutely love and be obsessed with the music you're pursuing and that was kind of what i was getting closer to when i was coming across the music of bobby mcfearing and eddie harris and that kind of idea well you just said uh that was very informative and you said a word that i was going to get to um do you think you're obsessed with your music career because i know that how my mind thinks if i'm working on an arrangement or something and i take the dog for a walk i'm like working on this thing in my head and i forget that i'm what i'm outside to do like i'm just standing on the sidewalk and the dog's looking at me like yeah and i wonder if you are constantly trying to think what's next for me i i mean i definitely am um yeah because i have i have two little ones as we talked about both under age two and just the other day yeah walking him in his stroller and i was thinking what's another kind of song a different approach i could do to a live gig and oh wow we're already at the park you know so i know that happens i i think i have i have worked on the skill and i think you have to learn it of also trying to be present in the rest of the world like in my marriage and with my family but i've learned it the hard way in the sense of like having a lot of stressful moments where i literally call my dad and say dad i need your help i don't know what to do it's just and then my dad's saying hey maybe you need a day off i mean i had this conversation literally six months ago um this pandemic is bringing out a lot of issues i think for us musicians and it's a lot of good stuff we need to deal with um if we deal with it um and it was maybe you need a day off have you ever taken a complete day off from the saxophone and it's like no that's like the number one i think i preach is practice every day um and yes there's different types of people some people need to hear that some people actually need to hear like too much like go see a movie you know some people need to hear different things and i was that person i needed to be told hey you're only going to get this moment once when your kids are this little this pandemic thing there's a silver lining here this could be a blessing um and and don't overdo it you're never you know it's those cliche things we've heard and on your deathbed you're not going gonna say i wish i had just practiced a little bit more you know or i wish i had worked a little you're not gonna have that it's i wish i was with my family more and so that has been a hard thing but ultimately good that i've had to learn like a day off it's important maybe it's not the best thing ever for my music but i think it's the best thing for me as a person and i hope that the best thing for me as a person also is maybe in a way the best thing for my music um i was reading i was just i just finished uh a biography of um uh leonardo da vinci um and it talked about how a lot of his biographers kind of lamented the fact that you know he was notorious for putting things off not finishing projects working so much on like theatrical stuff that we don't even have any records of what he did he studied anatomy that didn't even have to do with his art like into how the brain is shaped and and some biographers were like lamenting the fact like it's too bad that he didn't finish more or that he didn't put that energy instead of opening up all these bodies why didn't he put that energy into like doing more paintings but then this biographer was really good at saying like no that made him that made his it made him who he is it satisfied his curiosity if he wasn't doing those things he probably wouldn't have been so curious to do these amazing things and who could fault leonardo da vinci for anything you know for not not doing enough um but yeah it's one of these things where like i hope that the better person that i become it translates itself some way into my music similarly to just if we want to just look in the idea of music when i practice like drum set i think that's going to make me actually a better sax player or when i practice the guitar and think about that it's going to make me a better sax player and i can speak from experience there are so many direct relations where wow that idea went completely from drum set to saxophone i think like a drummer in that sense or the visualness of the of the keyboard it it it definitely made me who i am and helped me kind of find my voice um just experiment with all these things did you ever experience um playing in in combos where you found it dissatisfying did that have anything to do with you choosing to be mostly a solo artist yeah which it's funny i'm kind of coming around to the other side where my last two albums have now my the last one i just had was february 26 with jeff coffin a duo and it's just the two of us playing saxophone uh and then the one before that uh i wrote a big band album and it's kind of my sound it's called all figured out and it's with a complete big band i wrote all the parts it was just it's called all figured out as an ironic way of like i don't know what the heck i'm doing but this is fun for me and now i'm realizing oh it's kind of fun playing with other musicians especially in this pandemic where like you literally can't it's like man i miss that but yeah you know when i was i was talking with with jeff coffin uh we've been talking a lot since the album um and we were both saying how frustrated we get sometimes with other people and we always feel like we have to kind of take it all on our shoulders you know i mentioned being kind of the goody two-shoes of school but also i was that like teacher's pet or the one who like i hated group work group assignments in school where it was you know okay you five you're gonna do this play and you have to write some lot and it always ended up just being me doing everything because i like wasn't satisfied with like you guys aren't doing anything you know i'll just do it myself and then you know that could apply i think to some music things or you have band rehearsals and like everybody in chicago everybody was late all it was like just normal to be 30 minutes to an hour late and it's like come on this is like wasting my time it took me an hour to get here and and um also just not not only the sense of like wanting to play by myself but also like kind of organizing everything myself you know we talked about the music business side the entrepreneurial thing and you know there were times where i was hoping oh okay because i have these videos now i have a couple of endorsements with some saxophone products like legeres and people okay things are going to start to come my way they never never come my way and i remember one moment where i was i had just kind of gotten connected with this company and was like oh they they were saying some things they're going to do some connections they had none of that came through and so i remember just being like okay screw it i'm gonna do this all myself i'm gonna find a list of every jazz festival uh and i came across a really great email a website that had everyone in europe listed it was like 1200 of different festivals and i was like i'm going to send an email to every single one and at the same time i'm listening to like music business podcasts about like how you how to write an email how to have your web page how to do follow-ups and so it's like oh i can't just do one email i gotta send follow-ups okay every two weeks i'm gonna send another email i would send up to five emails to each of these places and i'll tell people like that first year i got like probably like six gigs in europe six gigs one way i could look at it is six gigs out of like six thousand emails that's pretty bad it's pretty pretty low return rate but compared to what i was doing the year before that was six gigs at jazz festivals international jazz festivals in europe that's amazing and people don't have to know how many emails i sent how i did it but man i sure put it on my website and hey international musician nice and then the next and then hopefully yes i can't send 6 000 emails every year um but hopefully it does get a little bit easier and it has as your name gets out there but you have to keep you have to keep doing the work and this industry it has a very short attention span it seems even shorter now with social media where it's just like you got to be putting stuff out all the time um but just i mean just a month ago i i did another email round completely by myself my dad helped a little bit but i sent another thousand emails or two and this is thinking i don't even know if festivals are like planning stuff i don't know if universities are opening but i i gotta i gotta get stuff out there i was feeling the urge to make stuff happen you know some things never change i i recall when we started this project uh 25 years ago that i would be interviewing people like clark terry of that level and i would be surprised afterwards that some of them would would hit me hit me up for a gig and the reason it surprised me is i just thought you know being a fan of these guys um that they by this point in their career they had it made yeah right they just wait for them not in this genre i guess not it never changes no um i listened to the uh the big band thing on your website uh a simple gesture oh cool beautiful and there's a part in the middle about three quarters the way through i think it's like a b flat sus vamp type thing and and you're blowing over it and i'm wondering beyond the percussive effects and the the melodic lines you're playing what's going through your head are you uh do you have music theory in your head do you have modes and scales and yeah so i mean i definitely studied all that um and when i was teaching in texas i was also in addition to being the jazz and saxophone guy i was also the second year music theory guy um so all that stuff is floating around there the diminished chords the augmented six chords however a lot of that doesn't necessarily find its way into my music um i i do think i am pretty visual as as lame as that sounds when it is an aural sound i do think of kind of chord shapes um arpeggios i think of i also think of the numbers a lot which it sounds lame when i'm talking about it like this but let's just say that's how i practice a lot of times i practice a lot of patterns i do a lot with modes i'm definitely not the one to be pushing the harmonic boundary um you know definitely if i if i have something new to offer the saxophone world if you want to call it new and of course everything's borrowed it's it's of course yeah the percussive the rhythmic elements the putting together of the bass lines and the melodies at the same time and the percussion but if you listen to my solo stuff or my big band stuff you listen to the chords it's pretty pretty simple stuff and that's the way i like it i have tried to break out of that and like i'm gonna write something really compressed something my or complex something my you know my fellow faculty members would like and it never i can never finish it it just doesn't feel like me i can't it's just like i gotta have that backbeat it just feels so good um and so yeah in my playing it's it's it's very tonal i'll sometimes do a little inside outside i'm i'm a huge fan of dissonance resolving to consonants um yes i mostly do consonants but i'm i'm not against dissonance at all hey i love movies and what is a movie without dissonance and sometimes the deeper the dissonance the better the resolution i wish i need to preach to myself right now because i i i could go further with that and like take the audience to more dark places to then resolve but i do have to say i'm not a huge fan of music that just like never resolves um sometimes it's okay you know life doesn't always resolve and that's okay um but when i listen to music i want to hear that but then i also want i need that release um and another thing in my music i just need something to hold on to um yes i can get lost sometimes but man if there's like some percussive element or some repetition i eat that stuff up and that's that's one thing i wish some more not all but i wish some more jazz musicians uh would embrace repetition wouldn't be so afraid of repetition you know i think of a jazz drummer um who who is always dance all right always the beat is always somewhere different and it's like constantly changing up when man sometimes do that feels so good and you can see it at like a jazz club where you you got the musician and people might be into it but as soon as the the drummer start going even if it doesn't belong everybody starts bobbing their heads and it's just like yeah and then they move on four seconds later yeah and and yeah that's that's fine but like i love repetition you know i think there's probably something natural naturally human you know we could probably look at like uh uh the words are escaping me but in religions when there's or like spiritual experiences i'm blanking on the the phrase but like the repetition longevity yeah yeah and i'm i'm so glad you said that because i felt the same way i felt so out of it um some of the current music i hear it's it's it's not only the drummer who's like playing everything but the time but it's the bass player too right or the copying or the copying and like i feel like i can't even tell what time signature this thing is yeah yeah and um i'm i'm sure you guys are good but i'm not enjoying it yeah and like i said sometimes that can be cool if you're thinking like taking the audience on a journey we're gonna go to an unknown place mystery but then oh okay here's a little bit of home back on the trail you know i think a lot of humans we just need that and another thing is like i don't want to tell musicians like how to change their music or say like you need to like make it simpler for the audience no like it all comes back to being honest with yourself and the music you listen to if you only listen to music where it's like super confusing you can't tell where one is or the tonality that's great and it would make sense that you would like to play that stuff but if you don't listen to that like what yeah it's just being real to ourselves and then i i do have to say i'm i'm i feel grateful that the music that i like to make has reached somewhat of an audience of course we always wish it was more and we can always compare it to more um but i'm very grateful because like we said there are some people that truly like to make this music that's so esoteric and more power to them if they have the energy to do that but i am i am grateful and that's where a little bit of luck comes in that the music that i actually like to make actually has connected with some people and so i'm i'm very grateful for that cool well i see a tenor behind you there it is it's always behind me yeah everywhere i go [Laughter] did you have to fuss with your um with your gear to so that your gear helped you get where you wanted to go with the way you play yeah a little bit i mean i i love saying that like man it's you know it's the player that makes the the music it's not getting the right gear that's going to make you sound better that is so so true um and i could do this beatbox sax stuff on any horn um but there are certain things that maybe you know this this mouthpiece this joey jazz mouthpiece a little easier or i like the feeling of the the new mechanics there are some small things um like the fact that i'm this would get really technical i won't go all the way there but when you slap tongue on on the sacks uh my my tongue is making a suction on the reed and it's pulling down the reed and releasing and you're hearing the sound of the reed slap against the tip of the mouthpiece you can also go and get that kind of snare snug but that's the sound of the reed slapping against the mouthpiece and most typical jazz mouthpieces are really that have a big tip opening and so when you do that it's just it's just much much more tiring to do that plus to get that sound you have to bite down on the reed to it's kind of like a slingshot you have to put pressure against it and so when you release it it slaps if you do that with a really open mouthpiece the pitch is going to go way up and so a lot of my earlier career i was fighting with out of tune-ness where my slap tongue notes were really sharp and tiring and so over the years i've been trying to find kind of the the perfect mouthpiece where it's a smaller tip opening but still gives me that power i need and actually jody ospina of jody jazz made me a specific mouthpiece they call it the dv beat box even though like it makes it sound like oh if i get this i'll be able to beat box on the saxophone like derek it's just a normal mouthpiece it has a smaller tip opening but it works it's just good for me so if you had five minutes before um going to you know babysit your kids and you picked she'll be doing right after this interview yeah i i i assume so i've been there and by the way they're going to be saying this particular sentence fairly soon and that is dad do you have a gig tonight i could imagine so i'm enjoying that they don't have to say that all the time but yeah yep and they'll say it was such sadness wait this is exciting right no yeah what would you choose to play if you had a few minutes i mean can you give us a would you think of a key and a tempo or a groove yeah well it depends on what you want so um like do you want me to kind of explain the process of how i put this together you want me to improvise you want me to play it yeah maybe just a little improvising and then afterwards you can talk about how come i did that yeah okay um i will play because i've been i've started doing this more and more just straight up just improv uh solo saxophone um so yeah like a lot of times i do think of a key so like i'll think kind of d minor here and we'll see if it stays there um let's see it's always weird playing sitting down but i'm gonna i'm gonna give it my best shot [Music] [Music] uh [Music] i'm realizing i could just keep going and going but um thank you i loved it and and uh i was thinking about the fact that you do sit at the drum set and play you know because i can hear the bass drum going and yeah and i'm stopping i don't know if it's coming through but i have a box here that i'm i'm stopping and that was yeah realizing drummers use all of their appendages why can't i use my feet um guitarists sometimes hit their instrument you know in certain styles why can't i put a ring on my thumb and hit my saxophone on the i'm hitting on the thumb hook there it's the one finger my right hand thumb that's not playing in a a note um but yeah and a lot of what you're hearing in there is uh my the biggest realization for me was realizing that i could kind of in a way get both a melody or harmony and a bass line at the same time adding this percussive stuff sometimes with the mouth sometimes with the hand and that was a huge thing was was bobby mcfearing um we're just i realized when he's doing his solo stuff he's often he's got like this kind of percussive thing going on his chest but it'll alternate between this low deep voice and then this high falsetto voice and he you have to be really accurate and really confident and he's got this and it makes it sound like when you step back you know you could realize okay technically nothing is happening at the same time but it's happening so quickly and so fluidly that it kind of sounds like there's two singers you know there's a high soprano and a low bass and so that just got me to practice you know kind of coming up with my own exercises of way of almost of getting like independence between higher register and lower register so like playing you know like a repeated note in the bass and a scale up top so like [Music] or reversing it repeated note up on top scale on the bottom and then where it gets tricky is now maybe i could do like a two note ostinato in the bottom while doing a scale in the top or whatever start to improvise or do the reverse of that [Music] and now i'm working on because i want to be even better at improvising at this and i'm even trying to do more like kind of traditional like swing stuff and so i'm trying to think like oh what would a bass player do like a walking bass line maybe i'll separate it but can i do like a scale it's not like uh let's see [Music] so trying to do kind of a little stepwise in the base yeah but you can see over here i have like these exercises on you can't see right here okay and i just have them numbered base down three up three number two base up three number three base four one through ten of different bass lines and on the right a through h different melodic stuff that i can do and now i'm just piece by piece going through each one it's painfully slow not fun to listen to day after day but you know like i said i'm i think i'm a slow learner but all that matters is i just do it you just get to it um that helps i think that that you seem to be rather an extrovert ah i have fooled you i am a i am a performer for sure maybe more of an actor okay when i am one-on-one or with my family yes you'd say derek is definitely an expert when i'm in front of audiences derek wow you're so lively so much energy a lot of people say the word energy when i'm on stage um but that is that is a thought out thing that did not come natural to me i'm i i think i'm definitely more of an introvert uh i would prefer when the gig is done to just go to the hotel and read a book by myself and i can just whoo and you should see me backstage before a gig like i'm i'm i get nervous every single time i play every single time and one of the ways i trick myself is i try to kind of like ins rephrase it instead of thinking nervousness i think excitement take that those butterflies and instead of think calling that nervousness call that excitement and then when i go out on stage when they introduce my name i almost always run out and it's just my way of being like i'm from the beginning oh derek is excited to be here and it's me tricking myself i'm excited to be here hey everybody um and so you know and that did not come natural i had to you know the first when i would do concerts early on i would write everything down and memorize it you know and just like anything else i had to learn it and there's no shame in that of course it doesn't matter if you came naturally or you learned it you still have it you know and so that's where i am that's great well we've talked for almost an hour and this has been really very informative um thanks i want to know if you've ever had this circumstance you you do a clinic at a school and you know you show them your thing and a week later you get an email from the band director saying something like thanks derek all my saxophone players are slap tongue variations yes i knew you were going there and i love that i have the most direct example of that um i should pull it up on my phone but it was i mean it was a couple years ago and it's happened a few times but but it was at a specifically a middle school and i worked with the saxophonists and i showed them all how to do a basic slap tongue some of this stuff is really hard to do and so like you can't just learn how to double tongue easily you can't even learn how to slap it took me nine months to slap tongue but i have some other percussive sounds i taught them um and i remember getting an email the next day he enjoyed the clinic and i could tell people enjoyed it the next day i got a text and it was a it was a video of a student and and he was just going and it just said it had a word that said thanks period but then but then the kicker here's the big here's the the best thing but then a minute later he sent another another text and it said but you know what he actually took his horn home and worked on this and then the next day he had he sent a video of a tune that the guy wrote using it where he was kind of doing a note and then he did a pop and then a different note it was really basic but he said he wrote a tune he's never written anything and i was like yeah that's that's what i like to see um yeah that just just to excite to excite people i'm not expecting or wanting to other people necessarily to copy me but if i can do something that inspires some young people in some way i know it's going to annoy some people i know there's going to be a time it already has kind of happened where i see on social media other people kind of doing way too much poppy stuff or it's not quite there and it's just like oh boy this is people are gonna hate me for kind of like encouraging this but if it gets people to find new enjoyment out of their instruments where maybe it wasn't and like like i said not everyone has to do this no one has to do it but if it does that's that's that's that makes it worth it for me um just to inspire people to think differently um you don't have to play a certain way you know there are different things you can do and yeah well on that note i really enjoyed talking to you and likewise i'm gonna i'm gonna let you get back to your everyday life yes that needs to happen yes indeed so thanks a lot derek you're welcome thanks for having me monk and thanks for doing what you're doing this is awesome all the all the interviews um i was able to check some out inspiring stuff and really important to hear from all these generations of musicians it's as i said it's been a dream gig for me that's awesome yeah all right thanks a lot you're welcome

Channel: Fillius Jazz Archive at Hamilton College

Views: 165

Rating: 4.3333335 out of 5

Keywords: BEATBoxSAX, slap tonguing on saxophone, Dave Koz, extreme saxophone, percussive saxophone, Kenny G, saxophone tone, business of music, Jeff Coffen

Id: SQLAoBDp4Bo

Length: 63min 14sec (3794 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 11 2021