Merry Christ­mas, merry merry Christmas,

I’m a gros­beak, it’s some kind of bird.

Frankly I like peo­ple who,

Eat a lot and when they’re through,

They go out­side and and watch cows moo,

Upside down, all around, moo moo moo moo moo.

Who?

Thanks to all and to all a good night

To those who eat food processed in Arkansas,

By Friends of Bill, they ain’t that bright.

My mama ain’t Obama my daddy ain’t no Pep­per­mint Patty,

Things to do, peo­ple to see,

Hee hee hee, hee hee hee.

Up front you can see the moon as it makes fun of the sun,

Some­where, over the rainbow,

I lost my car keys.

Have you seen my car keys?

They’re in a vat of chicken blubber,

Only Chick­ens don’t have blubber,

So I guess they’re in my pocket.

In con­clu­sion,

I pro­pose that

The last

PERSON

Leav­ing the room

Turn out the lights.

MERRY CHrist­maS!

I’ve been read­ing Vonnegut’s Slaugh­ter­house Five and wish­ing I could be “unstuck in time” like Billy Pil­grim, because there ain’t enough of it in the dimen­sion where I cur­rently reside.

A few things:

The Larry Ochs-nearly-getting-arrested-for-playing-free-jazz thing has been get­ting yucks. I wish I could find it funny, but it just depresses me.

That and the weather.

Wyn­ton Marsalis jumped in and offered a reward to the guy who com­plained about Ochs. Assum­ing that report is authen­tic (which on the one hand is hard to believe, yet on the other, given M’s track record, totally belie­ve­able) could there be more bla­tant proof of M’s utter jerk­i­ness? Last I heard, the com­plainant was main­tain­ing anonymity. Per­haps unlike M he has a sense of shame.

Not Cool has got­ten a cou­ple more nice write-ups, which I greatly appre­ci­ate. As much as I like good reviews, just as reward­ing are the kind words I’ve received from peo­ple and musi­cians who’ve given an enthu­si­as­tic thumbs-up to the music. You know who you are. Thanks to all of you.

The book is com­ing along. It’s tak­ing a much dif­fer­ent form than I’d orig­i­nally intended, but that’s as it should be.

I’d always sus­pected writ­ing a book was dif­fer­ent than writ­ing for mag­a­zines, but I never real­ized just how different.

It’s fun, for one thing.

Speak­ing of fun, 2009 was a great year for me, in no small part because of what I was able to do here. To every­one who’s shared the expe­ri­ence with me, and to all my friends, rel­a­tives, and fel­low musi­cians … and even my fel­low crit­ics, I extend my deep­est thanks and wishes for a healthy and pros­per­ous New Year.

See you in 2010!

I just got another Face­book or e-mail or tele­pathic mes­sage from some musi­cian adver­tis­ing his lat­est project, “So-and-So Plays the Music of Some Famous Dead Jazz Guy.”

While they don’t seem as wide­spread as they were  a few years ago (maybe I’ve just become inured), notices about these gim­micky jazz trib­utes still come – once a day or week or every fif­teen min­utes – and I still want to say the same thing to each and every one of those pre­sum­ably well-meaning musi­cians search­ing for a hook to hang their gig on:

If I want to hear the music of Some Famous Dead Jazz Guy (hereto­fore referred to as SFDJG), I’ll play his records. In fact, it can’t be done any other way.

(Just so you know, I don’t pre­tend this is any great revelation.)

It seems child­ishly sim­ple, bla­tantly obvi­ous, yet many among the most recent two or three gen­er­a­tions of jazz musi­cians do not seem to under­stand that you can­not Play the Music of SFDJG unless you are either a sound repro­duc­tion device, or are actu­ally SFDJG, in which case you are dead and there­fore unable to play any­thing.

I under­stand that most of these musi­cians mean that they will be per­form­ing the “com­po­si­tions” of SFDJG, but in jazz – an impro­vi­sa­tional art – play­ing tunes writ­ten by some­one is not the same as play­ing their music.  Play­ing “Ghosts” is not the same as play­ing the music of Albert Ayler. Ayler’s music so much more than any  melody he might have con­trived to use as a plat­form upon which to launch his improvisations.

The same goes for jazz musi­cians whose rep­u­ta­tion is based pri­mar­ily upon their com­po­si­tions. Elling­ton is not Elling­ton unless Elling­ton con­ducts the band.

In jazz, no one can play the music of any­one else. Period.

Reg­u­lar perusers of this space might’ve noticed that my writ­ten out­put — once pro­lific — has now slack­ened to a more leisurely post-and-a-half per week or so.

I assure those read­ers that there’s noth­ing leisurely about my present pace of writ­ing. I am, rather, com­pos­ing a book, which has taken some prece­dence over my blog­ging. I say some prece­dence, because the blog is actu­ally the first place I go with an idea, and will there­fore not fade from view any time soon.

In fact, much of my book will con­sist of mate­r­ial that first saw light of day here. Impro­viser that I am, I tend to write off the top of my head. A blog is the per­fect out­let for a writer like me. Unlike a jazz solo, how­ever, the writ­ing process also affords the oppor­tu­nity to revisit, refine, and even expound upon the orig­i­nal impro­vi­sa­tion. That’s some­what the point I’ve reached in the writ­ing of my book.

I’m at the Duke Elling­ton stage, where­upon I take riffs, motivs, and the occa­sional con­tri­bu­tion by a side­man, and arrange them into some­thing coher­ent and hope­fully pro­found — some­thing big­ger and bet­ter than the mere sum of the parts.

As an impro­viser, I have no prob­lem lay­ing it out there for imme­di­ate con­sump­tion. In going back and fit­ting it all together, how­ever, I find that I’m a bit obses­sive over mat­ters of form and struc­ture. Per­haps that’s why I’ve always felt uncom­fort­able lis­ten­ing to live record­ings of myself, or stu­dio record­ings in which I have no say over the final prod­uct — in such cases there’s no chance of revi­sion. In con­trast, writ­ing a book allows infi­nite oppor­tu­ni­ties. I like that, but writ­ing some­thing that com­prises so many dif­fer­ent ele­ments takes an enor­mous amount of time — time that I can’t spend writ­ing new blog posts.

I am writ­ing new mate­r­ial, though, and you’ll get to read it, if you’re inter­ested. I can’t quite see the slight at the end of the tun­nel, but I can’t see the light at the begin­ning of the tun­nel, either. That means that I’ve either made some seri­ous progress, or this tun­nel is a hel­luva lot longer than I thought.

Sponge­Bob (as “Grouchy Squid­ward,” mock­ing the real Squid­ward): “Everyone’s an idiot except me!”

The real Squid­ward (under his breath): “Well, it’s true!”

If it’s late November/early-December, then it’s time for us jazz writ­ers to com­pile our end-of-the-year–Top-10-Albums-of-the-year list (as opposed to an actual Top-10-albums-of-the-year list, which would by neces­sity be com­piled AFTER THE DAMN YEAR IS OVER!).

I tend to think it’s an exer­cise of lim­ited effi­cacy. (Quick, what album did Leonard Feather choose as best of 1968? Nobody remem­bers or cares.)

I’ve always felt con­flicted about putting artists in com­pe­ti­tion with one another, so I don’t usu­ally make a Top 10 list.

How­ever, when Fran­cis Davis, who I esteem as a writer, asked me to par­tic­i­pate in the Vil­lage Voice poll after I’d abstained for the last sev­eral of years, I acceded out of respect, know­ing that I would be able to frame my choices on this blog – some­thing I would not have been able to do in prior years.

And I would com­pile it accord­ing to my own rules.

Many writ­ers have already posted their lists, on their blogs and else­where. Some albums are show­ing up on sev­eral lists. It’s almost like there’s, well, a crit­i­cal con­sen­sus form­ing around them, which I find strange.

How can a con­sen­sus form in so short a time with so many albums in need of hear­ing? I sup­pose it’s pos­si­ble that there was another Kind of Blue released in the last 12 months, but it’s gonna take a few years before it emerges from the pack.

In the old major label days — when there were fewer releases, and the mar­ket was dom­i­nated by the big boys — con­sen­sus picks could be some­what expected. But given the pre­pon­der­ance of indie record­ings, and assum­ing the crit­ics are as free-thinking and inde­pen­dent as we’d like to believe they are, it should be expected that very few records show up any two lists.

Yet sev­eral do.

How, for exam­ple, does John Hollenbeck’s Eter­nal Inter­lude—a per­fectly fine, skill­fully writ­ten yet for­mally con­ven­tional big band album released on a small indie label — show up on so many lists, while Gra­ham Collier’s direct­ing 14 Jack­son Pol­locks—a vision­ary and inspired work that’s utterly unlike any big band album released since the death of Gil Evans (except for, I assume, those made by Col­lier himself) — has yet to appear on a sin­gle one that I’ve seen?

I decided if I’m to make a list, it will con­sist entirely of albums not cho­sen by any­one else. Given the wealth of fine music I’ve heard in the last year, that restric­tion is in no way confining.

Every­thing on this list is of exem­plary qual­ity on a level with the pop­u­lar choices. Indeed, some show­ing up on mul­ti­ple lists — Ste­fon Har­ris’ Urbanus, for instance — wouldn’t make my top 50, much less top 10. Dif­fer­ent strokes, etc.

In the inter­est, then, of bestow­ing props upon some wor­thy musi­cians who as of this moment haven’t got­ten their due (and keep­ing in mind that there are many oth­ers I might as well have picked), I give you my Top Ten Jazz Albums of 2009.

(They will likely appear in this order in the VV poll, but are not meant to be ranked in any way. Num­ber Ten is as every bit as good as Num­ber One.)

• Gra­ham Col­lier, direct­ing 14 Jack­son Pol­locks (jazzcontinuum)
• Dom Minasi, Dis­so­nance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (Konnex)
• Von Free­man, Von­ski Speaks (Nessa)
• Geb­hard Ull­mann, Don’t Touch the Music (nottwo)
• Lau­rent Coq, Eight Frag­ments of Sum­mer (88Trees)
• Myra Melford, The Whole Tree Gone (Fire­house 12)
• Rodrigo Amado, Motion Trio (Euro­pean Echos)
• Fred Ander­son, Stay­ing in the Game (Engine)
• John Blum, Who Begat Eye (Konnex)
• Ellery Eske­lin & Sylvie Cour­voisier, Every So Often (Prime Source)

Any­one who wants to rag on me for deign­ing to make a list, feel free. I feel a lit­tle dirty as it is.

It goes with­out say­ing that I con­sider my own Not Cool wor­thy of inclu­sion, but I’ve been told that it’s on at least one other writer’s soon-to-be-published list, so it doesn’t qual­ify for mine.

From the rave review of Not Cool ( … as in, “The Oppo­site of Paul Desmond”) at the ven­er­a­ble Improvi­jaz­za­tion Nation site by the always insight­ful Rot­cod Zzaj: “I can tell you folks, this is some of the fresh­est free-base I’ve cooked up in one long, LONG time… or, rather, that Kelsey & his part­ners have cooked up … these guys attack each song like it’s the last piece that will be played on the face of the globe … HIGH energy, no pris­on­ers approach that I def­i­nitely dig on.  Their inter­ac­tion is vol­canic … if you’re into freeform jazz at all, you’ll agree with me when I declare this to be MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.” Read the entire review, as well as other riffs on recent releases, here (scroll down about two-thirds of the page).

A word to the sax play­ers in the audi­ence, espe­cially those think­ing of gift­ing them­selves a horn for the holidays …

Sat­ur­day in Sam Ash I saw a Selmer MK VI alto priced at $8,500 dol­lars. The only way I pay that much for a horn is if it is enchanted and allows me to talk to gophers.

One day a few years ago I stood in line at another NYC music store as a teenage girl hemmed and hawed over whether she (or, more likely, her par­ents) should buy what I assume was a dif­fer­ent Selmer MK VI alto. That one was a mere $4,500. I butted-in and told her to buy a new Yamaha. The sales guy cursed me for jeop­ar­diz­ing his com­mis­sion. I don’t know if the girl bought the Selmer.

A few years ago, I bought a Wurl­itzer Lyric tenor on eBay for about $200. The Lyric was actu­ally made by Mar­tin in the late ‘40s or early ‘50s. I liked it so much that when I saw the same model alto for $180 a few months later, I bought it, too. I had the horns over­hauled, and they play great. If there were a Lyric soprano from that era, I’d snap it up, but I don’t think any were made.

Mark VIs are good horns. I played one much of my life, and I’d love to have one now. But no way is it ten times as good as my Mar­tin, as their rel­a­tive costs would sug­gest. A cult has grown up around Mark VIs. Their prices are out­ra­geous. Bet­ter to buy another of the great vin­tage horns avail­able on eBay for less than a grand. Nab an old Mar­tin or Buescher or Conn, bud­get $500 for an over­haul, and you’ll have all the horn you’ll ever need.

That over­haul will also send some love in the direc­tion of your local instru­ment repair dude. Trust me, in the cur­rent eco­nomic cli­mate, he’ll appre­ci­ate it.

The player makes the horn, not the other way around.

My per­form­ing career (such as it is – I’ve never been the world’s most pro­lific con­cer­tizer) took a big hit in 1998 when I moved with my wife Lisa and infant son Jasper to Mount Ver­non from New York’s Lower East Side. Mount Ver­non is almost a sixth bor­ough, but it isn’t Downtown.

Being off the scene had a price. The num­ber of live gigs I played declined pre­cip­i­tously. They dried up almost com­pletely when, three years later, after the birth of our daugh­ter Meret, we moved even far­ther – much far­ther – upstate. As it turned out, the lack of per­for­mance oppor­tu­ni­ties did not augur the end of my musi­cal life’s work, but for a while I was concerned.

New York had been my home since 1986. All of my musi­cal col­lab­o­ra­tors lived there. Many if not most of the per­for­mance spaces that skew to my type of music are located there. Leav­ing the metro area and mov­ing to Dutchess County was like being cast out of par­adise … a smelly, fetid, skanky par­adise, but a par­adise all the same.

I stopped play­ing alto­gether for a time, but that proved unten­able. After a year or two of self-imposed jazz exile, I real­ized I needed to play if I had any hope of stay­ing sane.

If I wanted to play, I’d have to go where the music was. It wasn’t com­ing to me. There are vir­tu­ally no free jazz per­for­mance oppor­tu­ni­ties in Dutchess and its envi­rons. There are a few nice play­ers in the area, for sure, and I played with some of them and enjoyed it. But most of my guys lived in the city. I guess I’ll always be a New Yorker … musi­cally, at least.

It’s hard enough to ask a guy to cart a bass or a set of drums upstate for a well-paying gig. When the occa­sion is  a mere rehearsal or an infor­mal jam, for­get about it. You can’t do it.

Con­se­quently, for the past decade I’ve mostly had to make the trek into the city if and when I want to play music. Dur­ing the week, I have kids to pick-up from school and cart to Brownie meet­ings and soc­cer prac­tices. My wife works in the city and doesn’t get home until after 7:30, so I often have to cook for every­body and get the kids ready for bed. That’s my day gig, and it’s a great one, but tem­po­ral con­cerns  demand that low– or non-paying musi­cal gigs and rehearsals (“Are there any other kind?” asks the jazz sax­o­phon­ist) wait for the weekend.

I spent a few of those week­ends in Man­hat­tan and Brook­lyn this past sum­mer, rehears­ing my band and record­ing our recent album, Not Cool. I spent another in the city over the Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day, rehears­ing for and per­form­ing my first NYC gig in I-don’t-know-how-long at The Brecht Forum. I had a great time, and it reminded me of some things I occa­sion­ally for­get: namely, why I moved out of the city in the first place, and how lucky I am to still be able to go in and play.

Any time I spend in front of an audi­ence is pre­cious, but Sun­day night at Brecht was extra-special. It was the first time in many years that I was able to take my two chil­dren — Jasper, now 11 and taller than his mom, and Meret,  a very pre­co­cious eight — to one of my concerts.

Jasper first attended one of his dad’s free jazz gigs at the Knit­ting Fac­tory in 1998, when he was only a cou­ple of months old. He seemed to dig it, in that he stayed awake and didn’t cry dur­ing my set, but he hasn’t been to many since. Meret says she remem­bers hear­ing me play in a library once when she was very lit­tle, but I’m not so sure. Maybe her mem­ory is bet­ter than mine. In any case, Sun­day was def­i­nitely the first time they had heard me play my orig­i­nal music in pub­lic in a long time.

We piled into the car at 5 pm on Sun­day — mom, dad, two kids, three sax­o­phones with assorted equip­ment, and a big goofy yel­low lab beg­ging to come but fated to be left home alone — and drove the one-hour-forty-five-minute schlep to Lower Man­hat­tan. We parked on an ancient brick-paved street a block away from Brecht Forum and unloaded my stuff.

Back when I only played soprano, car­ry­ing gear was a breeze. Now that I’m play­ing three horns, I’ve dis­cov­ered that a lit­tle help is a won­der­ful thing.

Jasper grabbed my alto, Lisa my soprano, and I car­ried my tenor and bag of assorted nec­es­sary things. Meret car­ried my sax stand — a long, ungainly con­trivance with hold­ers for alto and tenor, and pegs for soprano and clar­inet (the lat­ter goes largely unused) — without com­plaint. Watch­ing lit­tle Meret stride pur­pose­fully down West Street in her skinny jeans, haul­ing that strange con­trap­tion that’s almost as long as she, her long blond hair blow­ing in the autumn breeze, is a sight I won’t soon forget.

We arrived early. Since my band was slated to fol­low tenor sax­o­phon­ist Ras Moshe’s Music Now! Ensem­ble, Lisa and the kids went off in search of a place to eat. I stayed behind to set up, so I missed my kids’ first time din­ing in one of New York’s famously mediocre Chi­nese restau­rants. Appar­ently, it was a hoot. My son, in his usual way, was com­pletely against it until he became adamantly in favor of it. My wife says the food wasn’t very good, but just the fact that the kids enthu­si­as­ti­cally ordered spicy squid in black bean sauce says some­thing about their chutz­pah (or the Szechuan equivalent).

They returned to Brecht Forum (essen­tially a large, well-lit gallery a few steps above street-level, with white walls and hard­wood floors, a com­fort­able couch in the lobby, a small kitchen in the back, and left­ist lit­er­a­ture scat­tered about — a very nice, unpre­ten­tious place to view art and hear music) just as Ras’ group began. The kids sat through the entire impro­vised set with nary a whim­per or a whine. On the con­trary; they seemed very engaged, as if wit­ness­ing some­thing important.

When Ras & com­pany fin­ished, I entrusted my lit­tle dig­i­tal video cam­era to Jasper and asked him to record my set. Besides being put-off that I wanted him to use my cam­era instead of his own, he accepted the assign­ment with his char­ac­ter­is­tic sar­donic enthu­si­asm (yes, an 11 year-old boy can be sar­donic, espe­cially if he’s being raised by me). I pointed out the zoom but­ton. He basi­cally said “Duh!,” at which time I left him to his own devices. I had music to play.

I’d been a bit con­cerned that I wouldn’t be able to get my head in the proper place — that the pres­ence of my fam­ily might prove exces­sively dis­tract­ing — but I had a sur­pris­ingly easy time segue­ing from daddy to saxophonist/bandleader. Lisa helped, of course, but the kids were so good, so glad to be there and so inter­ested, there were no imped­i­ments to my con­cen­tra­tion. The per­for­mance largely unfolded in the same man­ner as any other, which is to say, it was a won­der­ful experience.

As always, the jolt of play­ing to a live audi­ence, how­ever small, ener­gized the music. Not Cool is a ter­rific album, but to play those tunes in live per­for­mance was another expe­ri­ence entirely. Except for a brief, hour-long rehearsal the pre­vi­ous day just to refresh our mem­o­ries of the tunes, the band (Chris DiMeglio on trum­pet, Fran­cois Gril­lot on bass, Jay Rosen on drums, and me on soprano, alto, and tenor saxes) hadn’t played together since the record­ing ses­sion in June. The chem­istry of this group is such that we picked up right where we left off. There were a few moments of semi-awkward exe­cu­tion, and my direc­tion of the impro­vised form was a bit rusty, but the energy, pas­sion, and cre­ative syn­ergy were at an out­ra­geously high level.

This is a great band. There, I said it. I’m a critic. I should know.

In the moments imme­di­ately after the last note was sounded, as I came down from the high of per­for­mance, the first things I saw were the faces of my kids.

Meret pre­tended to be annoyed at being forced to wit­ness the entire event, but she did it with such a huge smile on her face, I could tell she was impressed and maybe a lit­tle bit proud of her dad. Meret is like that. She teases me about my increas­ingly decreas­ing hair­line (“Daddy, you are so bald, you should really wear a hat when you take me to the bus stop. It’s get­ting cold!”), com­plains about my bright orange throw­back Adi­das run­ning shoes (“They’re so nerdy!”), and feigns embar­rass­ment when I dance (well, maybe not feigns). But she never passes-up a chance for me to carry her down­stairs in the morn­ing (“I’m too tired! Carry me!”), and always comes to me first to show off her lat­est artis­tic tri­umph (there have been many, my favorite being last year’s Father’s Day card, truly a vir­tu­oso dis­play). Often after rav­ing about some­thing deli­cious Lisa has pre­pared for din­ner, Meret — always con­sid­er­ate of my feel­ings — will tell me how much she likes my cook­ing, too. She can’t fool me.

Jasper’s smile was just as big. Whereas his sis­ter some­times tries to cam­ou­flage her affec­tions, Jasper — while some­times shy about express­ing him­self — sel­dom tries to obscure the way he feels. “It was really cool,” he said when I asked him how he liked it. “But at the end, how did you know when to play that song, and how did you know how to end it the way you did?” [That’s a ter­rific ques­tion, by the way.] The music wasn’t exactly unfa­mil­iar to him and his sis­ter. Both have heard me play music like this around the house all of their lives. They’d been hear­ing this par­tic­u­lar set of com­po­si­tions for months. “I rec­og­nized all the songs you play at home, and I real­ized I was expect­ing one song to fol­low the next [like on the album], only that didn’t always hap­pen,” said Jasper. We had played loud, louder, and loud­est, but it didn’t bother him a bit. “Luck­ily, I’m used to hear­ing you prac­tice and play music so loud at home,” he said. “One thing, though, Daddy: Do you think that now maybe you’ll write some new songs? Because you’ve been play­ing these same songs a long time. I like ‘em, but maybe some­thing dif­fer­ent would be cool.”

I can dig it, son.

It was well after 11 before we got home. I can never sleep after a gig, so I stayed up after the rest of the crew had gone to bed. I plugged the cam­era into my com­puter, put on the head­phones, and watched the video. My first thought? Jasper was right. I should’ve let him use his own cam­era. My cam­era shoots at a higher def­i­n­i­tion, but doesn’t have a sta­bi­liz­ing func­tion. Jasper’s does. The video was wob­bly. Oh well.

The cam­era was held with love, how­ever, and Jasper did a good job get­ting the essen­tials. The video cap­tures the imme­di­acy of the music, and the visual aspect (while occa­sion­ally seasick-making) height­ens the inten­sity. Another video­g­ra­pher also recorded the per­for­mance, and I might use her footage for pro­mo­tional pur­poses. I haven’t seen it yet. The hour-plus Jasper shot, how­ever, gave me some­thing a bought-and-paid-for video couldn’t; I was able to see it right away, before the rush of per­form­ing had faded, which is an amaz­ing way to review a per­for­mance. More impor­tantly, it allowed me to share the cre­ative expe­ri­ence with my son, and that’s no small thing. I might have other video shot of me in years to come, but I doubt it will ever mean as much.

It’s that pos­si­bil­ity of shar­ing what’s impor­tant with our chil­dren that brought Lisa and I to this place. There are many advan­tages to rais­ing kids in the city, but you have to be the kind of par­ent that I most emphat­i­cally am not.

Rais­ing Jasper and Meret in New York would’ve been like an artist try­ing to paint a pic­ture of some­thing very spe­cific and very beau­ti­ful in the midst of utter chaos, strug­gling against the con­stant stream of passers-by try­ing to deface his masterwork-in-progress. It’s all I can do to take care of myself in that envi­ron­ment. When it came to rais­ing our kids, it’s bet­ter that we found a qui­eter, calmer place.

It’s a fact that mov­ing upstate threw a wrench into my jazz play­ing, but only for a lit­tle while. As any­one who’s raised chil­dren knows, time passes so fast. The 11 years since we left the city have gone by in the blink of an eye. In that eye-blink, I’ve watched my kids learn to walk and talk, carted them back-and-forth to nurs­ery school, waved to them through the school bus win­dow as they rode to their first day of kinder­garten and ele­men­tary and mid­dle school. I’ve cheered at their base­ball and soc­cer games and applauded their school choral con­certs. I’ve awak­ened every day for nine years to the sight of a small, beau­ti­ful moun­tain right out­side my front door that’s so close it seems like I could almost reach and touch the sum­mit. Any­time I want, weather per­mit­ting, I can step onto my porch and watch a seem­ingly infi­nite vari­ety of birds eat­ing from a feeder in our front yard. The air is fresh, the water cold and clear, and if I have to shovel sev­eral feet of snow a few times a year, or if the local taxes seem a lit­tle high, it’s a small price to pay to live in such a place.

It’s not like I’ve accom­plished noth­ing musi­cally, either. Over the last nine years I’ve made sev­eral records of which I’m proud. I haven’t per­formed as often as I might’ve liked, but liv­ing within dri­ving dis­tance of New York has allowed me to fos­ter reward­ing and long-lasting rela­tion­ships with superb musi­cians. I’ve had a unique oppor­tu­nity to grow and develop artis­ti­cally — not only as a musi­cian, but as a writer. If you were to sug­gest that I have the best of both worlds, I wouldn’t argue.

Who knows where we’ll go from here? As the kids grow, I have more free­dom to pur­sue my cre­ative pur­suits. At times over the last 11 years I’ve thought I’d have to give up music, but I can see now that that doesn’t have to hap­pen. To be able to do what I did the other night — drive into to New York, play great music with great friends, share it with my fam­ily and come home to our pretty lit­tle town and big goofy yel­low lab … well, to ask for more than that would just be greedy.

Below is a sam­ple of Jasper’s videog­ra­phy from Sun­day night …