I’ve been mixing down “Earth Song”; a haunting little two track melody i wrote ten years ago and later added sixteen tracks of guitar improv with Erik Cartwright ...
the composition is a three minute cycle that transforms seven times to make a twenty-one minute arrangement ...
we did eight takes of one channel each while only listening to the original melody ... individual ‘takes’ had portions of bliss, but playback of all eighteen produces a wonderfully cacophonous blend of creative energy and improvisational discourse - akin to Stravinsky and Hendrix tripping to the “Rite of Spring” ...
whatever it turned out to be - it was fun ...
i had just set up a music studio in the newly renovated barn in 2000; Erik was back from a national tour of tech’ing with the Allman Brothers Band - living up-river in Marshall’s Creek, and it would turn out to be one of the last times we would make music together before he hit the road again ... until fate reveals ...
Erik was two years older when i met him in a garage-band-type jam when i was seventeen - unknown to me at the time, he’d already achieved regional legendary status as a guitarist with major ‘chops’ - from Hendrix and Clapton, to Airplane and Jeff Beck ... all i knew is he had an ear, intuition, and hit notes that resonated to my soul ...
first time i saw him jam publicly was in ’69 with G.E.Smith - [another Stroudsburg musician who went on to Hall + Oates, SNL, and Dylan] at a free jam-fest doing some killer blues - without a bass player, mmm ...
we also shared some mutual O.C.D. behavior around our equipment - an elitism for vintage quality, reconfiguring electronics to maximize tone and volume, and an innate ability to play off each other in a jam - plenty of reason to form a band - so in 1970, we did ...
both of us had pretty much outgrown our respective ‘circuits’ by that time and were ready to spread our wings to go on the road - we were ripe for it - but the times, they were a changin’;
Nixon, Viet Nam, rednecks, and stuff that didn’t sound like rock n’ roll anymore ...
we had a renegade inclination toward loud jam-band music which was losing popularity - but managed to survive until it was time to decide to jump in all the way or wade along the edges ...
music and travel didn’t leave enough time for art so we said our existential goodbyes as i went off to college and Erik on to music ...
He did a stint at Berkley, played some well known Boston bands, then went on to Foghat ...
twenty years passed till we played again - it was like we never stopped ...
we both have a wide-ranging repertoire of improvisational skills that cross a lot of dialects - but more importantly in a jam, we share an intuition that i’ve never found in anyone else ...
others have said the same; and if it wasn’t for Erik, i doubt that i would have found the level of joy and appreciation of music ...
as we usually say;
“Take care man, we’ll do this again sometime” ...
