This morning I slept late. I made it all the way to 6:30am before I got up. YAY! The fog is starting to lift outside and I can see the mountains and the bay off in the distance. Vancouver is a rather pretty city. It's like a combination of several cities from back home in the east. At times I could be in downtown Manhattan, or the outskirts of Providence (which despite it's reputation, has a definite charm to it). One thing however, the city apparently doesn't have a mayor like Guilliani or Bloomberg as there is a deep street and homeless culture to the city, the kind that I haven't seen in New York since my early 20's. Having been to the supermarket here and seen what folks pay in rent, against the unemployment rate, I can understand why there is such a homeless population in downtown. I went for a swim and had a toasted bagel for breakfast. Today was the first day of rehearsal for the now 'SOLD OUT' performance of "The Road Forward" all of the cyber planning and discussions culminated with al of the players in the same room.
Troy Slocum is a sound and tech man among sound and tech people. Troy is the man who made it happen so that I had a viola (with rosin), and midi controller for my workstation when I arrived on Monday. A cab ride to the rehearsal space and I walk in to find a keyboard set up, plugged in and ready to go for me when I arrived.
Thanks to James Brown, and George Clinton, and Babatunde Olatunji, and James Spruill, I'm a big believer in the practical and spiritual applications of "The One" in music. For non musicians reading this and scratching their heads, "The One" is the first beat of a measure in music. In most musics evolving from the African Diaspora, it's the beat that is emphasized and ties all of the instruments together, rhythmically. In my band leader's notebook, I have "The ONE" in big letters to remind myself that as a band, we all must be on "The ONE" I finally met the other band members today and they are incredible musicians as well as very nice people. As a group building jam, our warm up song is "Pass The Peas" by Maceo Parker. A great tune to pull folks of different styles together as the musicians are rock, blues and NDN country players, as we al locked onto "The ONE".
We rolled through some of the other songs for the show and
It was a long and productive day for us all. I'm so glad to be in on this project and can hardly wait for the performance!