On Friday evening, I had the pleasure of playing with my favorite band, Keith Henderson and the Illusions. Why are they my favorite band to play with? Well, Keith Henderson puts on quite a show, and he’s won numerous awards for his tribute to Elvis. And all the guys in the band are excellent musicians who are really in touch with their personal style. But more than anything, the Illusions are my favorite band because they’re like family.

I only see these guys a couple of times a year, but when we do get together, we have an instant connection and a guaranteed good time. Everyone in the band is a great musician, but they’re all wonderful people as well. When we rehearse, it’s easy. We eat pizza, shoot the breeze, and then enjoy playing music together. When we perform, it’s to make people happy with our show.

In this situation, I find that I play my very best. When bandmates are positive, considerate, prepared, and open, music flows easily and sounds SO good. Keith can even “surprise” us with songs not on the list, and we’re able to confidently make them happen. We know each other, we know we’re safe, and we know how to listen and work together. And what sounds better than cooperation?

On Thursday, we met several very nice people in our travels around Raleigh, including the manager of the Borders Books and Music (which has a nice outdoor patio to play on) and the director of the Sertoma Arts Center (which has special events that need music AND an adjoining park where we can play informally). What we found was that, even though many of our new friends had never thought of having live music at their locations, they were very open to the possibility. So, we’re playing on the Borders patio on Monday mornings, and the park on Friday or Saturday mornings.

What I’ve learned about my town is that there are very few professional musicians here. Our state symphony attracts some excellent players, but you don’t really see them anywhere besides their symphony gig. There are a couple of freelance professional string players floating around, and some various types of full-time percussionists, but most people around here have some kind of day job, even if they consider themselves to be “pro-level” musicians.

This scenario makes it reeeeeeeeally hard to set up a salsa band, as even the musicians’ union can’t find us a decent or reliable bass player. But it is also a great situation, because we operate on a different schedule from most other musicians here. We can play a concert at a coffeeshop at 9:30 on a Monday morning! And when we do that, people are interested, and they want more music. And when the demand for music goes up, Raleigh becomes a more musical town, which is really a wonderful thing!

So, there are many rewards for getting out there and talking to people about what we do. The trick is to keep doing it, because it would be much easier for me to chill out here than pound pavement and talk to strangers. But as we’ve found over the past couple of days, when strangers enjoy good music, they quickly turn into friends!

Andrew, a percussionist, has an extremely well-developed sense of rhythm and time. My sense of rhythm is, err, sorta OK…but I am good at hearing pitches and spelling out chords. On top of this, he’s a night owl, while I’m a morning person. So, he’d sit late at night and tap out all the rhythms for every instrument. Then, I’d wake up in the morning and plug in the pitches. We ended up burning through the process much faster than we thought we would–our 1st two tunes were done in under 2 days. And, with each tune we do, our pace gets even quicker.

Talk about symbiosis! Dictionary.com has 2 definitions of the word that apply very well to Andrew and I: “the living together of two dissimilar organisms,” and “any interdependent or mutually beneficial relationship between two persons, groups, etc.” There are some things about us that are completely opposite, like our sleep cycles and our musical comfort zones. But these fit together SO well! I thought the chart-writing process would be a royal drag…but it’s quite a lot of fun when you have a great partner to work with.

Writing charts is a great way to practice a new style of music from the inside out, as well. In transcribing horn lines for different songs, I’ve started to pick up on the types of harmonies and textural devices typically used in this style of music, and the rhythms are getting much more familiar as well. It’s cool, because writing these charts is helping me learn the language of a new style of music. And once you have a working knowledge of a stylistic language, you can start saying your OWN things in that language!