I’ve been fortunate to have more than my fair share of extraordinary bands. These four gifted musicians were in one or more: Vince Ebo (vocals), Clarice Jones (vocals), Darryl C. Anders (bass & vocals), and Bruce Spencer (drums).

The suit, the bride, the cake, the hair, 1975

I met Vince when I was 18. He was working at a contemporary clothing boutique on Watt Avenue in Sacramento called Bluebeard’s. Retail-wise, it was perfectly positioned a few doors down from Tower Records.

Tower Records Watt Avenue, Sacramento, CA 1970s

I was shopping for a hip suit to get married in—something to complement Andi’s gorgeous dress. Vince was a tall, handsome man of obvious style. He helped me pick out a cream-colored suit and shirt to match my cocoa Earth shoes. I had no idea Vince was a singer until we moved to Sacramento a year or so later. Twelve years passed, and we were in a trio together with Jimmy Abegg, touring the US and Europe. Before the trio, though, there was this particular band, which included John Weber (keyboards), Jimmy Abegg (guitar), and Jon Skinner (tenor saxophone). We were ridiculously well-rehearsed and tighter than a gnat’s ass buzzin’ James Brown’s band.

In that twelve-year gap, Vince was closely associated with the legendary keyboardist and a great friend to me, Roger Smith. Together or apart, they always had something on the hook: pending record deals, house band on Soul Train, backing up some star, session work, packing clubs and blowin’ minds in bands like East Wind, Sun Bear, and Thunder Wonder. Or was it Thunda Wunda?

In my very early twenties, it appeared that they were in a different, more elevated league than me. Might have been that sleek Porsche that Roger was cruisin’ ’round flat Sac in. I had next to no style, let alone a sick ride. It was just me, Andi, a Fender Rhodes piano, and the constant wonderment of how we were going to pay rent.

Roger Smith, club-life, purveyor of the Funk

Fast forward a few years and, thankfully, we were paying the rent and more. I heard through the grapevine that Vince wasn’t doing well, though. He was living in San Francisco, not working, depressed, in trouble with the law—there were rumors, musician scuttlebutt.

I reached out to him.

Join the Band, Brother!

I suppose I invented a gig for him. “Hey man, we’re playing at XYZ next weekend. Why don’t you come up to Sac, make a rehearsal, and we’ll hit it for a couple nights—check it out—see if it clicks.” He’d known Clarice Jones for years. Clarice and Shelley Burns had been recording and playing live with me off and on between 1985–87. So, the idea wasn’t a stretch. He was excited to get a call, caught a Greyhound bus, showed up, and, to quote Vince, “Tore it up.” Indeed.

Music-wise, we clicked. We both knew the canon of vocal styles—from the early Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson records up through the latest Prince hits. I had already been leaning the band in the direction of more soul and R&B influences. Vince and I had a perfect blend, and he made me a better singer. I don’t recall ever rehearsing anything except to get a lyric right. As for making the music, we improvised in the same language. And that was enough—more than enough.

Vince was not easy, though. His highs were stratospheric. His lows, like digging in Sheol’s dumpsite. I credit the Creator, the overseer of all wounded, for giving me a dispensation of patience I otherwise would not have had. I truly possessed a love for Vinnie, and he for me.

I recall an emergency band meeting (absent Vince) where one or more bandmates insisted he had to go—now. I insisted back. “No, he stays.” And he outstayed the others (for no reason other than being great and Jimmy and I needing a change—and I had a suspicion that a move to Nashville was in the making).

The Trio, or How to Create Something Like Nothing Else Without Trying

What began as a few gigs with me, Jimmy, Michael Roe, and Vince became the trio of Jimmy, Vince, and me. It was a new kind of magic—one people didn’t know they needed—and honestly, we didn’t know we had it to give. Not until we made it—got out on the road and did it. Then it was as clear as a harvest moon.

Between the trio and band gigs, Vince was with me from 1987 into 1992, plus a few later dates. In August of ’91, he signed a record deal with Warner Alliance, got his own manager, and prepared for the stratosphere. It never arrived. Just the regular slog of the music business with only enough highs to keep you in the game. He made a fine solo record titled Love Is the Better Way.

Love Life

Sadly, this was the beginning of the end for the trio. Jimmy took to Nashville well, and it embraced him with open arms. Like Vince, he had new opportunities, too. Our last hurrah, all together, was Love Life: Jimmy, Aaron Smith (drums), Roger Smith (keyboards), Tommy Sims (bass), and Vince. Lots of wonderful guests too. We toured America and Europe with Scott Denté taking the now-vacated guitar spot.

Isolated track of CP, Vince Ebo, Kim Fleming, and Vicki Hampton Vocals on “KISS ME LIKE A WOMAN” — Tommy Sims (bass), Aaron Smith (drums), Roger Smith (clavinet)

Isolated track of Aaron Smith (drums) + Roger Smith (clavinet) on “KISS ME LIKE A WOMAN” — zoo-dirt funky

I think the last gig Vince and I played together might have been headlining the Cornerstone Festival on July 3, 1993.

By December 15 of the same year, Vince was dead from a self-inflicted gunshot.

All of us were gutted. He left a note for me. As more information came out, it was clear he had tried before. I still can’t believe the amount of time I spent with Vince and didn’t discern this possibility. I had all manner of thoughts about his particular quirks and behaviors. I just never saw the ending. The final frame.

Running Into the Wires

The band (including Vince) was playing a gig in Poland in 1990 near where the most infamous of WWII prison camps were located. I recalled the visit to the camps in Roots & Rhythm: A Life in Music:

“At Birkenau, a guide pointed out the high-voltage electric fence surrounding the camp. It was constructed, he explained, to prevent the escape of prisoners, yet prisoners routinely used it as a means of final escape. When a prisoner reached the breaking point of despair and hopelessness, he’d run to the perimeter and throw himself upon the wires. People thought of the method as ‘escape’ and never used the word suicide. They just called it ‘running into the wires.’

“My friend and longtime vocalist Vince Ebo, present on this particular trip, ran into the wires in 1993. I still don’t know for sure what it was that made him despair unto death. I don’t know about final escape with respect to a Jewish man or woman imprisoned at Birkenau. That’s a reaction to a category of evil that is impossible to imagine. That is also true of suicidal motivation as a whole: it’s hard to inhabit the space of that heavy a despair. It’s a horrifying mystery for both the people who suffered atrocities at Birkenau and for Vince. From my experience with Vince, a close friend and collaborator, I know that suicide is the rocket that launches a stream of unending question marks out into the universe and beyond. It mucks up the peace and makes you stare without seeing.”

I Am Convinced

Yet, I do see you, Vinnie, today. I see every good, righteous moment and hear every well-sung, soulful note. And I will always remember you standing next to me on stage that night in Ohio, telling me, “I’m here because I believe.” I knew what you meant. I still hold that same trust and belief. And if it is trustworthy, then so is this: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39).”

Until we meet again, remember, “We tore it up!”

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Pledge at Kickstarter Now

If you are not yet an admirer, an acolyte, then this post may help you understand Mr. Berry’s appeal. It may also, in some way, small or large, explain me. More specifically, my deepest cares and commitments as a family member, a citizen, an artist, and one ever hesitant to name himself Christian (unless the situation allows for conversation and definition)—yet another Wendell-ish way of navigating the world. As I learned from him, this is not cock-crowing denial; done well, it is care-filled devotion.

If you know what you’re looking for, you’ll see Wendell Berry’s fingerprints all over my work and play. As I was pulling quotes for last night’s memoriam post, the PDF informed me that his name appears eighteen times in Roots & Rhythm: A Life in Music. There’s a chapter title: “Imagination, Interdependence, and the Bonds of Affection.” So spot-on Wendell, it could be his book title. Surely, I must owe his estate a royalty. I suppose they’re giving me a neighborly dispensation. When I wrote the composition “Wendell Berry in the Fields at Night,” my friend Fred Smith sent it to Wendell’s daughter Mary Berry, executive director at The Berry Center. She kindly gave it her blessing with “I love the music.” I hope to retain my good standing.

My upcoming novel, Once Concealed Now Revealed, has a wisdom-figure named J. Tapley Dial. Dial is the surname of my fourth great-grandmother, Keziah Dial, who married James Ashworth. My third great-grandfather is Tapley Ashworth. In the story, my protagonist must negotiate a meeting with the revered J. Tapley Dial (a character who is equal parts an imaginative descendant of Keziah, the actor Wendell Pierce, and, yes, Wendell Berry). This inclusion of a taste of Berry’s ways of being and doing was inspired by Dr. Steven Garber and Mars Inc., of M&M’s and Snickers fame. So sneaky is Mr. Berry’s quiet influence, one might even stretch to think he may have allowed for the interdependence of a candy bar in the soil and the soul. Stranger things have happened.

This morning I woke to a sweet text from our son Sam: “Good morning. Just wanted to say that I’m so sorry to hear of Wendell Berry’s passing. I have some understanding of what he means to you both, and it’s enough to know it stings.”

Not only is this a kind note, but it’s a sign and symbol. Our children know that some part of what Andi and I agree is trustworthy is rooted in the words of Wendell Berry—and that it has become integrated into the family.

My son is at a new beginning. After many years as a songwriter for Universal Music, he’s turning his attention to the unknown, with faith that he is known and his calling is sure. To begin again, to mark the passage, he created this video, which I’m honored to share. It is his story, but it also reveals to me that he’s been listening to the wind. It shows that he knows something of the dependent humility of the maker, rotating his crops—that a little Wendell-on-the-wind has snuck in his window. For this, I am forever grateful.

Peace, love, and comfortable shoes.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Back the Novel Today

The Kickstarter for my debut novel is going well. In one week we are almost 50% there! Thank you very much to the 59 backers who have pledged support. If you’re ready and willing, let’s match last week with another 59 or more backers this week. Thank you!

Once Concealed Now Revealed is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream! For my first readers, I’ve created a signed, numbered first-edition hardcover and produced two original songs written for the book. But the music is not finished! It needs your voice. I’m inviting twenty-five readers to join me on the choruses of one song, becoming the Once Concealed Now Revealed choir. Please consider making your pledge today and ensuring we make our modest goal with plenty of time to spare. Always grateful.

I don’t see his influence waning at all. If anything, by morning, there’ll be new blooms on his legacy and thousands of first encounters with the word, work, and play of Wendell Berry. I hope so.

His story and creativity is remedy. God knows we need more trustworthy remedy for all that ails us. Perhaps I’ll end my beginning with just that: Mr. Berry, will live on as one of the trustworthy ones. An imperfect man who wrote and spoke with coherent and poetic wisdom that revealed a sustainable way to be human—a way that is Creator-, people-, and earth-loving and honoring.

I’ve been his student for a long time. Though he’s no longer present—having made the trip from life to life—as for me, I’ll still be in class, sitting under his tutelage until my name is called.

Much love, respect and condolences to the family. Thank you Mr. Berry for everything.

Excerpt from Roots & Rhythm: A Life in Music

We (Andi and me) were introduced to the multihyphenate agrarian writer Wendell Berry after our eventual move to Nashville in 1989. I took notice that our alternative newsweekly, the Nashville Scene, liked to quote and name-check Mr. Berry and a fellow named Will Campbell. With that, our bookshelves expanded to fit their works, and in particular, the Wendell Berry canon. Wendell reminded me of what I admired about (the poet) Gary Snyder with his adoration of the confluence of land and art. (Of course, there would be a direct link between where I’d been and where I was going.) Just for pure fun, I name-checked Mr. Berry in the song “Wendell Berry in the Fields at Night” on my 2018 jazz release, When Light Flashes. I’m never surprised anymore who reads and respects Mr. Berry.

I observed songwriting legend J. D. Souther perusing our bookshelves one afternoon, “Ah, Wendell Berry,” he said. I didn’t name-check J. D. Souther explicitly in a song, but I did reflect on the writer of such American classics as “Heartache Tonight,” “Best of My Love,” and “New Kid in Town,” in my song “Deep Inside a Word”:

Tall and thin, he bends with the wind

At every place a body breaks he bends

And the stories, such stories he tells

From a view very few know well

Oh the humor, the insight, and the will to never age

He’s a Texas troubadour, a California sage.1

And then the universe gets set right in some significant way with this factoid: Gary Snyder exchanged over 240 letters between 1973 and 2013 with Wendell Berry. They are bound together in Distant Neighbors: The Selected Letters of Wendell Berry & Gary Snyder.2

Two men, distant neighbors, in the great Membership of the Neighborhood. Both integrated with the land—wise, artistic, and word stewards of the highest rank. Both making evident a new mind-set of openness and generosity to people and place. One, a Christian in Henry County, Kentucky, the other a Zen Buddhist up on San Juan Ridge in the Northern California of my birth.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.3

Another Excerpt:

I’ve learned there are different economies at work. I enjoy a good wage and quantifiable success as much as the next person. But I find myself less interested in platform than in what poet-farmer Wendell Berry called the Great Economy. He wrote, “The Great Economy, like the Tao or the Kingdom of God, is both known and unknown, visible and invisible, comprehensible and mysterious.” It is the “ultimate condition of our experience” on earth, where practical questions naturally arise from our experience. It is an economy of people, place, and things with more questions than answers.

Berry’s poetic punch line? We are all implicated to give ourselves to the questions, and our consideration of those questions involves an “extremity of seriousness and an extremity of humility.”4 This book is documentation of me giving myself to the questions while incrementally living into the answers—all in the context of family, place, and art.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

What I think I’m identifying is that nothing works as it once did. I don’t mean things working in my favor. I mean a systemic and epistemic breakdown from the micro to the macro in every area of life. The cliché that there is no there, there—is now a trustworthy axiom.

The world of people, practices, systems, institutions (and their moral, ethical, imaginative foundations) has changed so much in a radically short period of time. I feel the whiplash of incoherent, rapid change draining the life from me. I’m not alone. And I don’t think it’s simply another generation regretfully saying goodbye to what they once understood as reality.

We still experience beautiful person-to-person moments, but they are far from our day-to-day norm.

My faithful family practice NP is communicating with me right now via the medical portal. It is her voice and her concern. It is authentic and recognizable. Yet, yesterday I spent twenty minutes on the phone trying to find out whether my credit card had been temporarily disabled. It began with the AI voice menu being too general and not specific to my problem. This led to several AI transfers that ended in a dropped call. I went through the entire scenario once more, only to hear what I think was a human greeting me, and then the call dropped for a second time.

I said to myself, “I can’t do this.” And I couldn’t. I could not subject myself any further, in that moment, to what the world has become. I would call it an absurd prank, a joke, if it weren’t so serious.

This sort of phone incident happens to all of us. It’s a simple, relatable example, that’s all. The example is not my reason for writing.

I’m not identifying incidents and accidents. I think I’m getting at a pervasive loss of coherence. It’s the conviction that the structures through which I encounter everyday life are no longer reliable. They fail humanity’s smell test. They no longer correspond to the purposes, values, or human needs they claim to serve.

I’ve written about this in past Substacks, but never said it this plainly:

You and me? We are being asked to carry and process an extraordinary amount of systemic and epistemic incoherence that human beings were never meant to carry or process.

Every day we encounter systems that retain the outward appearance of familiarity, while the substance that once made them intelligible and trustworthy is gone. What do we do with this?

And here’s where it really hurts. Every day we encounter ourselves and others who retain the outward appearance of familiarity, while the substance of humanity that once made us intelligible and trustworthy is disintegrating. What do we do with this?

Leave a comment

Pledge Now At Kickstarter

Everyone who loves me: “That’s different. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that before.”

Me: “Hmmmmmmmmmm.”

Everyone who loves me: “So, like a staged theatre bit for five minutes or so?”

Me: “Yeah, exactly. Except with credits, it’s a tiny bit longer.”

Everyone who loves me: “Cool. Won’t that be a lot of extra work on top of too much work already?”

Me: “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. Can you repeat that?”

Enter Pledge at Kickstarter

Preface to the scene: The three Taylor siblings (adult children of Gideon and Sophie Taylor) have gathered at big brother Augie’s posh Menlo Park condo. They’ve already had a very difficult day dealing with an ongoing issue with their mother and now one with little brother Michael. Augie is trying to reclaim some peaceful normalcy with an impromptu dinner while Michael faces a credible threat to his safety. Marie (Augie’s girlfriend) is relatively new to the family, but warmly welcomed into the siblings’ rhythm of teasing, storytelling, and affection. Soon enough the mood turns serious again. Security specialist Kalil Brown arrives and explains his plan to keep Michael and the entire family safe. While Augie and Michael step away to make a difficult call to their father, middle sister Kat and Marie slip out to the patio terrace for a few minutes of quiet, a glass of wine, and getting to know each other better.

Kat: Katie Boeck

Marie: Chloé Godard

Pledge Now at Kickstarter

Dolly. Wow. Here in Nashville: One of the most remarkable mass tributes to the wonder of Dolly Parton were the huge numbers of people lined up on the road to walk or drive by Dolly’s house last night. It was quite a sight to see and of course a loving and appropriate tribute. The hunger to draw near to whom or what has brought goodness into our world is strong. As it should be. Several years ago I took one of Dolly’s iconic photos and created this mixed media piece with acrylic on canvas and photography. It hangs in our home. From now on it will serve as a reminder that Dolly’s life was a series of What Ifs and so many of them bore good fruit. Her life is a Masterclass in class and the mastery of artfulness and joy-making.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

If you’re thinking to yourself: “Get to the link, Peacock! I already know I’m gonna back this novel, get the two new songs, and snag me some exclusive rewards.”

Then I release you: “You go, Backer, you GO NOW.”

For the average, keen to vet Substacker, not a Backer yet—here’s some alluring information. Just to make my novelizing bona fides clear, those last two words? That’s what we writers call an awkward collocation, a strained modifier, or a semantic misfit (all three of these sound best spoken in the voice of Bob Dylan). Warning: since I have a slight allergy to rules, my novel may possess all manner of catachreses.

Witness

“Charlie Peacock has been a steward of words for decades, and those words have shaped the way I think about my calling, my career, my community, and my family. He writes like a cross between a beat poet and a theologian, and I couldn’t be more excited that he’s aimed his gift at fiction.”

— Andrew Peterson, singer/songwriter, author, and founder of the Rabbit Room

Subscribe now

The Novel in Brief

Once Concealed Now Revealed is a multigenerational family saga about unexpected friendships, enduring love, and a family reckoning with its secrets. Each revelation moves the story toward its defining question: Can love survive the crucible of the whole, unguarded truth?

Why Kickstarter before the book’s commercial release on 11.17.26?

Kickstarter allows me to do several creative things that a traditional book launch doesn’t: offer an advance signed and hand-numbered first-edition hardcover, accompanied by two new songs written for the project. But that’s not all.

One reward allows 25 people to join the choir on one of the new recordings. Ready to sing? I’m ready to produce you! There’s got to be 25 of you out of the 5,200 here who can sing. Prove me right, please!

I Sing! Give Me Some Kickstarter

I’m also bundling the novel and songs with other music, books, and art prints. And for one collector, there’s the original mixed-media artwork I created for the novel’s cover.

A Book + Inspired and Involved Community

This isn’t simply a request to support a campaign. I’ve designed the Kickstarter to offer a more complete communal experience of the debut novel and the inspiration behind it. This includes producing music and a five-minute staged dramatization of a scene from the book starring two Nashville actors, Katie Boeck and Chloé Godard. Watch on Kickstarter.

Bottom line, I’d be honored to have Substackers among the first to join me today and in the 29 days to come. Let’s launch this bucket-list dream of mine out into the world. Thank you and peace to you.

Take Me To Kickstarter

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

What’s up with summer?

All I know is that I swam exactly one time at the Y and my grandkids are all either back in school already or the University students will be shortly. For crying out loud, last week I went to a scrimmage for my grandson Robert’s high school football team! This once-revered season has become less a glorious summer and more an elongated pause. Now back when I was a kid, we knew how to do a robust, creative three-month summer (insert: blah, blah, blah).

Currently, it is 96 degrees outside. That’s a Nashville 96 though, which may as well be 126. So I know summer is not really over. I won’t be going anywhere but my brown chair. Maybe Walgreens, since it seems I have to go there once or twice a day—it being a requirement of aging and all.

While I’m sitting here though, out of the heat, I’ve decided to revisit the calendar.

June had a great start. My son, Sam Ashworth, and I filmed two episodes of our upcoming songwriting show. Eager to tease this to you all, but not quite yet.

Okay, I see we had a nice Father’s Day hang too. Multi-fam, multi-gen gathering. Well done all, and thank you. BTW, any of you other Former Opening Acts lusting after my T-shirt can get your own. Just ask. Peter Frampton was one of the few people who got the meaning of it on first glance.

I see my grandson Robert finally got off the couch and committed to a fitness regimen. Well done grandson. The least a grandfather can do is set an example . . . and I’ve tried to do just that. Unlike grandson, I work hard at keeping an inch or so of soft subcutaneous tissue over my muscle mass. It’s a preference. A look. But his is cool too.

Speaking of looks. I see the always-talented, ever-imagining Jeremy Cowart took some photos of me for my book launch. That’s right. Very shortly you’ll be hearing from me about my debut novel ONCE CONCEALED NOW REVEALED. Nashvillians, go ahead and put Friday, November 20th, 6:30PM at Parnassus on your calendar now.

There’ll be plenty of opportunities for you all to get involved in the fun, including singing in a choir on one of the songs that comes with the novel. Who wants in?

Along with the very generous help of Matt Huesmann, Lipscomb University, and others, I was able to film a scene from the novel for the upcoming Kickstarter campaign. These two talented actors, Chloé Godard (L) and Katie Boeck (R) dramatized my words with craft and style. Thank you!

Also, I grew a fig. By the end of August I hope to have grown at least ten. I cannot accurately express how much joy this brings me, and Andi too. She described today’s two as “velvety.”

We’ve been doing plenty of celebrating. Lots of birthdays, including someone’s 70^th. Family from Cali came out and we made a time of it. Thank you Karoly and Clark, Paula and Boomer, and Devin for making the trip. However, because family and food have an unbreakable bond, I will not require food for at least another three days.

Subscribe now

Well, it didn’t take me long to find a hundred things that filled up a summer—we’d be here all day if I kept sharing.

In summary, Andi and I did our thing, which we love, and it’s so simple: rise each morning to a new day filled with promise and possibility—even with the steady pains and problems. I did finish my novel and it’s all prepared for release. I did get to see my grands and grown kids often. That simple pleasure of knowing and being known is like the fig. Never showy and costs so little, but always delicious and memorable.

And I did play my piano every night before bed (as is my improvisational praxis). I either make up a song or run through something I’m working on. If you’ve read my memoir then you know the Michael Omartian story and how I came to be blessed with this instrument. If not, I leave the necessary retail choice up to you. Until next time, love and peace to all.

Working title? “Ballad of the Fig”

Leave a comment

Toward that end, I thought I’d revisit one of my favorite episodes with a new post. At the time I originally posted this on Substack 2.5 years ago, I had 500+ followers. Now that we are well over 5K, it’s likely that many of you did not see this. In Episode 5, I gave props and respect to the one and only Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a groundbreaking musician and Jesus follower who merged gospel and rock music like no one else. I hope you enjoy her amazing story and contribution to popular music. Thanks to the musical greats, Tommy Sims and Jerry McPherson for joining me.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe: The True Pioneer of Gospel Rock

Leave a comment

In a time when the deck was stacked against her, Sister Rosetta Tharpe stood tall and delivered gospel performances that turned skeptics into believers. Her profound legacy was finally acknowledged with a 2018 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction.

Sister Rosetta’s role as an architect of rock guitar and the true pioneer of gospel rock is unassailable. Bearing witness with me is producer/songwriter Tommy Sims (Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, Sheryl Crow) offering his take on Tharpe’s influence. And if that’s not enough, we’re taking a musical pilgrimage to a Nashville recording studio. Here, we’ll meet session guitarist, Jerry McPherson, who will break the code on Sister Rosetta’s iconic guitar sound.

Tune in, turn up, and let’s get schooled in the art of gospel rock by the source, Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Click graphic for deep discount today!

Also available from AUDIBLE.

Jerry McPherson—Session Man! Blackbird Studios

The world’s greatest electric guitarist! As I told Jerry not long ago, he is a a wonderful mix of imagination, electrical engineering, artistry, and an encyclopedic knowledge of popular music and the role of the guitar, amplification, and effects. A guitarist without whom, my artist and production career would hardly be a blip on the screen of music history. Loved visiting Jerry in his studio for the Sister Rosetta Tharpe podcast.

After you listen to the podcast, enjoy Jerry talking about his invention. When he talks about changing amplifiers and cabinets, here’s how he does it. Keep in mind Jerry is a professional. Don’t try this at home on your own.

Peace and love and “not too blazing hot” 4th of July to all of you!

You can’t live in the past Papa. It’s 2026. The new generation is upon you and they’re bringing their arting to the world.

So world, do this Papa a solid and give it a listen. Better yet, purchase a download.

People are always asking how they can support my music better—looking for an alternative to the pittance that streaming giants dole out. I’ve had my moment in the sun. Thank you. I’m glad you care enough to still ask!

But this younger generation in their early twenties? Yes, purchase the music. That helps. And if you really wanna do Bridget Isobel a solid, purchase a download from Apple’s iTunes. Put her on the board with some visibility.

As always, thank you for contributing to the family farm, the corner grocery store of our collective music and arting adventures. Much love and goodness to you and yours from the Ashworth/Peacock family.

iTunes Purchase

Amazon Purchase

Bandcamp Purchase

Streaming Links

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Song Credits:

“Eyes Open Wide”

Written by Bridget Isobel Ashworth

Produced, engineered, mixed & mastered by Sam Ashworth

Co-produced by Bridget Isobel Ashworth

Vocals by Bridget Isobel Ashworth

Acoustic guitar by Bridget Isobel Ashworth

Acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano, drums & bass by Sam Ashworth

Background vocals by Sam Ashworth & Bridget Isobel Ashworth

The musician and educator Calvin Willard Ashworth was born in Oroville, California, on August 20th, 1933 and died in Yuba City, California, on December 5th, 1992. Heart failure in the living room. Fifty-nine years old. He’d already had two bypass surgeries. Thankfully, my mother Alice and sister Terri were there at the end. I was not.

I’d moved to Nashville in 1989, but was actually in California on the 5th, doing a soundcheck for a concert at Biola University in SoCal. I didn’t play the concert—hopped on a plane instead, from John Wayne in the OC to Sacramento. My aunt Karoly picked me up at the airport and we drove to our hometown of Yuba City. I was 36 and gutted by his sudden death. I had no idea how much worse the gutting would get—nor all the shapes that grief would take. Maybe you’ve been there and know the feeling.

My dad maintained that he had been misnamed Willard (a middle name hospital error?). He said it should’ve been William. I believe him. That’s how I got my middle name. I’m a correction. He was never called Calvin or Willard. As a child, they called him Willie. As an adult, he was Bill. Often, wild Bill.

As the youngest boy in a family of five sisters with an older brother who left home early, he was the entertainer—liked to have a good time, make people laugh. Quick-witted and improvisational, he had a facility with words. Every sentence had a little jazz in it—“Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop” (ripped from a Lionel Hampton tune). He even worked a Soviet classical composer into the mix. His most common euphemism for shit was Shostakovich. Try it next time you lose your phone or trip and spill your coffee.

Subscribe now

Dad’s father, Lee Jackson, was a logger and sawmill worker. So it was that Dad grew up in NorCal sawmill towns like Feather Falls, Oroville, and Quincy. He ended up in Yuba City at just the right time. The band director, J. Wilson McRae, championed him and was likely the reason Dad went straight from graduation to a spot in the Air Force Band (Mac had done the same). So began Dad’s musical vocation at 18. Gettin’ paid to play! He was still making music when his heart stopped beating.

Some things about my father’s life you might find interesting—even surprising.

1. At his death, J. Wilson McRae (Mac), left my dad his entire music library, including the original music manuscript for his composition “Hail Yuba City High”—Yuba City High School’s alma mater. YCHS is where Andi and I first met and where most of us in the family and our oldest friends graduated. Go Honkers!—as in Canadian geese.

2. My dad, a trumpet player, could play every instrument to some degree, from clarinet to tuba. He also taught himself guitar and piano. Later in life, he wrote many vocal songs on piano. He could compose and arrange for any size ensemble in symphonic and jazz styles. When I was a little boy, he played dances and nightclubs every weekend as a leader or sideman.

   

3. Dad was a beloved music educator, with many students who became educators or working musicians. In addition to his son (whom he taught music theory and more), Dad also taught music theory to the gospel music legend John P. Kee and his older brother, the bassist Alphonza Kee. One of his gifted students, Phil Nakamura, played guitar and sang at our wedding.

4. When Dad taught at the college level, his closest friend and fellow educator was Howard Johnson—father of renowned bassist Marc Johnson, who played with pianist Bill Evans during the last season of Bill’s life (1978–1980). Marc went on to have a long and remarkable career. This is the reason jazz guitarist and composer Bill Frisell has a song titled “Yuba City.” I suppose Bill and Marc were passing through town and stayed with Howard—Frisell made a memory.

   

5. My dad’s older brother Lee (“Jack”) was an agricultural scientist for the University of California. His research collaborator was Dr. Richard Garber, the father of our good friend, the author and professor Dr. Steven Garber, with whom I have collaborated often, including the cofounding of Wedgwood Circle. We met as adults without knowing any of this, but quickly put it together. No neutrality in the universe and all that.

6. When my dad retired from teaching, he did not retire. Once his heart health was stabilized, he taught private lessons, band at a local grammar school, and played every Sunday in church (including writing songs and arrangements for the particular needs of the church). My sister Terri and Andi’s cousin Sabine (also a former student) often played in the small ad hoc orchestra as well. Additionally, Dad served for several years in prison ministry. He wrote arrangements and programmed MIDI instruments and a drum machine. He used this as portable accompaniment to his live trumpet playing and witness of God’s grace in his life.

7. Art Heliker, long time alto saxophonist in my Dad’s various bands from the 1950s onward, was the band teacher of musician Will Littlejohn of WaveGroup and Guitar Hero fame. It was Will that founded Meta’s Music Initiative and the reason Brent Bourgeois, myself, daughter-in-law Ruby Amanfu and many more helped create a huge collection of music used on the platforms and heard around the world. Again with the non-neutrality and no stray atoms.

8. Dad always wondered, but never learned in his lifetime, why his skin was copper-brown. After all, their family of nine was white—or at least that was how the mother and children understood themselves (my grandfather kept a Louisiana secret). Had Dad lived just a little longer, he would have learned that some of the genes influencing his melanin and skin pigmentation came through his West African and Indigenous American ancestry. Dad’s 2nd great-grandfather, Tapley Abner Ashworth, along with his brothers, made history in east Texas as free Black cattle ranchers. Historians consider them progenitors of the Black cowboys.

9. And speaking of ancestry, Dad was the first that we know of in his family line to become a vocational musician. His maternal grandfather and great-uncle were musicians but worked in the logging industry in Louisiana. Dad’s youngest sister Becky has also been a lifelong musician and educator. As many of you know, my Dad’s legacy continues through his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. One great-granddaughter, Bridget Isobel Ashworth, will release her debut single, “Eyes Open Wide,” on June 26th under the name Isobel. Presale available now at Bandcamp.

The thing about Happy Father’s Day is that it’s not always happy for everyone. For some, a day of remembrance is a life you don’t want to remember. I get it. If that’s you, I’m all empathy. Wild Bill was far from perfect—just like his son. Now at almost 70, in retrospect, I see he got more right than wrong. I’m grateful for all of the goodness. He was a fun and loving grandfather, always the teacher, and ready to make a child laugh. I owe him a debt of gratitude in so many areas of life—including the music. After all, I was his student. Credit where credit’s due.

It doesn’t matter what day we’re celebrating, it’s all about the stories isn’t it? Here’s to more good ones for more people more of the time. Peace and love from our family to you and yours.

Leave a comment

More Photos below . . .

Airman Bill practicing his trumpet (circa 1954, 521st Air Force Band), cigarette and Coke in the window.

Dad makes first page of son’s memoir. As it should be.

Hail Yuba City High! This is Mr. McRae’s hand script in 1949, but it could easily be my Dad’s writing. Looks exactly like his score writing.

Yuba College Jazz Band appearing at the Reno Jazz Festival 1977. Bill Ashworth (bottom left), Howard Johnson (red turtleneck) and Art Heliker (next to Howard). If you’re in this photo too, feel free to shout out in the comments.

Dad in Air Force jazz/dance band (top row, middle trumpet player). I believe the harmon mute I have is the one in the photo.

To dispel any fairytale notions of the Ashworth men, this looks like a photo of the father making a point and the son perhaps disagreeing, wondering: How do I answer this in the most respectful way possible? Shostakovich!

It’s likely that some of you have seen the names Miles and Coltrane in your feed and wondered: Who are these musicians who spark such reverence in the year 2026? Let me break it down for you.

Miles is the trumpeter/composer/solo artist, Miles Davis. Famous enough to jazz musicians and listeners to be known by his first name alone. Coltrane is the saxophonist/composer/solo artist, John Coltrane.1 ‘Trane is known the world over by his surname and the abbreviation I just dropped on you.

Both musical artists are internationally revered stratospheric inventors and innovators.

Both born in 1926.

You get it now. 1926-2026—the Centennial birthday celebration of their singular contributions to music worldwide. This is why their names keep popping up. Note: There are months of celebrating yet to go. I encourage you to come to the party. If your first thought is, “Oh, I don’t know about that,” hang tight. I’ve got a carrot, no stick, coming right up.

As a party-goer, I’ve been celebrating John Coltrane by playing the song “Giant Steps” every day. This infamous composition is one among Coltrane’s top recordings—loved and hated. The reason for the latter is because it’s so damn hard to play!

Apparently, I memorized this historical composition sometime between 18 and 21-years-old because I can still play the head (that’s the melody) and comp (the chords) at near the original tempo (think 300 BPM). The chord changes fly by at the speed of an SR-71 spy plane. Counted in half-time most chords are felt as one beat each. It’s ridiculous—it really is. Not for Coltrane though. His playing on the album Giant Steps was next level to the next level. He changed what could and would be played on the instrument from that moment on.

I haven’t landed on my Miles song yet. I imagine it will be “Four,” “All Blues” or his version of “Someday My Prince Will Come.” We’ll see. For now, I’m obsessed with “Giant Steps.” My goal is for the challenging song to become fluid music to me and not an 18-year-old’s litmus test of jazz legitimacy. Now to the carrot(s).

If you’re a Substacker jazz novice with a willing heart, let’s begin with a recording. This way you get to hear music from the best-selling jazz album of all time, Miles’ Kind of Blue, AND it just happens to feature John Coltrane on tenor saxophone.

Secondly, avail yourselves of the many Miles and Coltrane experts here on Substack, including: , , , and .2

I’ve been celebrating Miles and Coltrane since I was a little boy. Thank you mom and dad and the Columbia House Record Club for introducing me to these iconic contributors to world history and the Black American music canon. If you’re a dedicated listener, you already know how important these two musicians are to the music of the world. Their influence has not waned one bit.

If you’re a jazz novice, but ready to come to the party, here’s a very important clue to understanding these two giants of jazz and improvisation: Their music is as diverse as their curiosity and invention. And, they recorded 1000s of songs/performances—not all equal, and certainly not all for everyone. If you enter in Door #1 and don’t like what you hear—keep opening doors. These are not find-something-that-works-and-keep-doing-it type artists. They are explorers and inventors. Always keep that in mind.

There’s so much more to say, but this PSA should be kept brief. The music of Miles and Coltrane is everywhere and easy to find. If you need more tips for listening, email me at charliepeacockmusic@icloud.com and I’ll send you some recommendations.

Let’s celebrate these giants of jazz and improvisational music and their contributions to the arts! Peace and love. More below . . .

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

That rare moment in time when your album is higher on the charts than Miles and Coltrane. You better take a screenshot fast because it won’t last. They’ll still be there when you’re long gone. That’s the difference between icon and tourist. :-)

2

Approximately fifty years ago I was a part-time assistant to professor, American historian, and jazz journalist Frank Kofsky—another story I share in Roots & Rhythm. Frank holds the august position of having conducted and recorded one of the most oft-quoted interviews with John Coltrane.

NEWS

1. Happy Juneteenth tomorrow, Friday June 19th. Enjoy my past post from last year.

2. It breaks my heart to share this news. Justin Cary, bassist for 90s alt pop-band Sixpence None the Richer passed away this morning (June 18, 2026). Justin suffered a serious stroke on last Thursday evening and was hospitalized in ICU. For those inclined to help, please visit here. I am grateful to have known Justin since the advent of the band. Our family sends our love and condolences to Justin’s wife, Linda, family, friends, and 6p band members.

   ---

   Thank you so much for reading and for your comments! If you’ve yet to purchase a book please do so at your convenience. Your support of Why Everything That Doesn’t Matter, Matters So Much and the memoir, Roots & Rhythm: A Life in Music helps to keep this newsletter coming with regularity. Both books are on sale right now at over 50% off. Peace.

"Sorta Kinda Blue, Acrylic on Canvas/Mixed Media Print by Charlie Peacock ©2021

Yeah, my blood’s so mad, feels like coagulatin’
I’m sittin’ here just contemplatin’
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation
Handful of senators don’t pass legislation
And marches alone can’t bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin’
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’

And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
How you don’t believe
We’re on the eve of destruction

In Roots & Rhythm I point to how seminal it was to 1) have my aunt Karoly as a teenage guide to popular music, and 2) have my parents sign up for the Columbia Record Club. One of the free benefits of the latter was The Headliners—a vinyl compilation of Columbia artists from various genres, including Miles Davis, Johnny Cash, Barbra Streisand, and The New Christy Minstrels.

Barry McGuire had been a folk-singer with The New Christy Minstrels. The group performed on the Andy Williams show—a man known as much for his sweaters as his smooth voice. My mother was a fan. I liked it when Andy Williams sang “Moon River.” A few years later I learned to play the melody on my trumpet, complete with an over-earnest vibrato.

As for The New Christy Minstrels, my young tastemaker aunt didn’t have time for them. So neither did I. I was just a little boy when the nascent folk scene was happening. I did dig Bob Dylan (“Blowin’ In The Wind”) and Peter, Paul and Mary (Puff the Magic Dragon”) though. Karoly was all about the pop and rock singles, new artists, new hit songs.

Andy Williams had a young wife named Claudine Longet. Born in Paris, the whispy-voiced French singer had a hit with “Love is Blue” on trumpeter Herb Alpert’s A&M label in 1968. I liked it and owned the single, along with Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue.”

Barry McGuire left The New Christy Minstrels with no certain future. But the sound of rock (or electric Dylan) was coming for him. Producer Lou Adler1 from the Dunhill label took an interest in Barry. It wasn’t long before the minstrel recorded the international and controversial hit, “Eve of Destruction.”2 On September 26, 1965, Barry’s protest song hit #1 on the Billboard Top 100 chart. Imagine that, a protest song being the most ubiquitous song in America.

Then, after Barry’s appearance in the original cast of the 1968 Broadway smash, HAIR, and a last bit of acting in Werewolves on Wheels in 1971, he became a born-again Christian.

Here’s where it all lands.

Barry McGuire phoned me out of the blue one day in 1990. He’d heard my record, The Secret of Time, and called to deliver a gracious compliment, first hand. When I heard that distinctive “Eve of Destruction” voice coming through the phone I thought it was 77s front-man Michael Roe pranking me with his spot-on impression ( a gag he used to do in the studio in the early 1980s to our amusement). Nope. It was the real Barry McGuire. He just wanted to say: Keep doing what you’re doing. No one else is. Only you can. Sage advice.

Music fans usually imagine their favorite songs are recorded in the dark of night when musicians roam the streets of creativity. Barry says his classic #1 hit (written by the 19-year-old P.F. Sloan3 ) was recorded in one take on a Thursday morning. By 7AM the next Monday, “Eve of Destruction” was on the radio.

That was the 1960s. But nothing is stopping us from doing the same today. Protest song, truth-tellin’ song, a Good Trouble song, all that—however you wanna say it. Make it. Upload it. Print the vinyl. Make another one.

Subscribe now

There are many examples of thought-provoking songs that became hits or classics (e.g., “What’s Going On?”, “Strange Fruit”, “Ohio”, “Fight the Power”, “Sunday Bloody Sunday”). Still, I’m grateful for Barry, for his encouragement, and for producer Lou Adler too. This was when music biz people had grit and guts. They had the courage to take the unrefined thoughts of a 19-year-old songwriter to the top of the pops.

I’m looking for that 19-year-old today, and a voice like Barry, and an executive like Lou. Risk or rust.

Hello? Anybody out there?

There’s plenty of questions to ask, to explore.

In his Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke writes, “Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.” He warns to avoid searching for answers you’re not yet ready to live. “Live the questions now,”4 he wrote. “Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”5

Before I’d read a word of Rilke, somehow I understood this counsel. Must’ve heard it blowin’ in the wind—or on the radio.

Leave a comment

1

Lou Adler is a music biz legend known for many things, from launching Carole King as an artist on his Ode Records label to sitting court side for 40 years with Jack Nicholson at LA Lakers games.

4

The wise Parker Palmer uses this riff for his Subtack:

Living the Questions with Parker J. Palmer

Living from the inside out...

5

Rainer Maria Rilke, Translation by M.D. Herter Norton, Letters To A Young Poet, (New York/London: W.W.Norton, Revised Edition, 2004) 27.

Prologue for Pop Music History Buffs

I first met Buddy and Julie Miller in 1986 in Berkeley, California. I played with my band at a showcase club on University Avenue called Berkeley Square where Shalom Aberle was mixing (later of Eddie’s Attic fame). Buddy and Julie were living in San Francisco then and wanted to come backstage to meet. I enjoyed them very much and would, years later, sing on one of Julie’s albums. Buddy and I talked shop. I learned he was using a new digital recording platform, one I lusted after, called Sound Designer, a precursor to Pro Tools (the music industry standard for digital audio recording).

Now, decades later, it’s respectfully ironic that the dean of all things Americana and Alt-Country helped pioneer computer-based Digital Audio Workstation recording. Buddy is one of those quietly humble, hugely talented musicians—a benchmark for grace through life and a guitar. And, like me, Buddy had a season of helping create what the Christian music industry called praise music or contemporary Christian music. His career has far too many seasons of diverse musical work, though, to associate him with a genré too small. Yet, if one is a connoisseur of the arcane, Buddy’s guitar work on Bullfrogs & Butterflies (by Barry McGuire) is the height of praise music esoterica.

Excerpted from: Roots & Rhythm: A Life in Music (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2025), 77–78, “Some Kind of Visionary Experience.”

Thank you for reading! You can show your support of this newsletter with hearts, comments, and a kind purchase of our books. Thank you—keep adding to the beauty, to the kindness. Peace to you and yours.

Leave a comment

My emotions are like a sine wave,1 no character in the peaks, no overtones in the troughs. I have just now come downstairs from my room in the hotel (after a day in bed).

Last night, I discovered that the restaurant served a tomato, basil, and mozzarella salad. I have returned for more. Jimmy, Vince,2 and our German road manager, Nicholas, have gone to the venue to sound check.

I am sick—sick in soul, sick in body, sick of being in Europe. How can I answer as anything other than sickly and hollow when I’m a sine wave?

After dinner, and after sitting for two short interviews with journalists, I took my sine wave down to Köln’s hip showcase club, Luxor,3 to a packed, exuberant audience and left after two encores.

I thought I was less than outstanding. The whole time, I was busy positioning the microphone so the audience wouldn’t have to view my unsightly cold sore cluster.

Is God talking to me through the audience? Is it as Vinny says? Could I really go out and fail by my standards and the audience love it because God is with me, for me? Is Vince a theologian or just a bandmate trying to encourage? Let me put these thoughts aside and prepare my bags for the 8 A.M. lobby call. We train to Hamburg for a concert tomorrow. Then Friday off, with concerts on Saturday and Sunday.

Hanging on the walls in my hotel room are three of the darkest, most miserable paintings ever created. Underneath the one on the far right, I’ve placed three photographs. I have daughter Molly, young, wonderfully feminine, smiling at me, Poppy. There’s Sam, with a slight grin, his eyes narrowed—a man of love. Then Andi. She’s absolutely beautiful. My girl. The photo is a Colorado vacation self-portrait.

These three photos have helped me so much on this tour. The weeks away have taught me something deep and precious about my family. I need to reserve time with my soul to fully mine the jewels that these three priceless people are to me.4

Four days till Monday and the flight home. Should a man count seconds?

Reflection

A journal entry is nothing if not an existential document—this one about music, sickness, and depletion in Köln—a place that ought to have brought me great joy, considering how much I listened to Keith Jarrett’s legendary recording, The Köln Concert (ECM 1975).5 This album, and Keith’s first breakthrough solo improvisational album, Facing You (ECM 1972) opened my 18-year-old mind to the possibility and merits of extemporaneous composition.

What I see today in this 35-year-old journal entry is disintegration in search of reintegration. I ached for the richness, stability, beauty, continuity, and delight of my family. I also key in on the difference between performance identity and beloved identity—I don’t think I had the language for that back then—not yet.

Onstage, I was always measuring myself and others by a rarely achievable standard of excellence—hence my assessment of being “less than outstanding.” But Vince, the smiling contrarian, introduced another idea. Maybe, for reasons far above my pay grade, audiences received something real and meaningful even when I felt less than and undeserving. That’s a serious challenge to a merit-based sense of self, isn’t it? I’ll just let that sit there.

The tour manager, hotels, lobby calls, planes/trains/buses, interviews, venues, sound checks, performances, encores, and restaurants form a unified system that keeps you moving, and so, keeps you moving even when you’re breaking down. Whatever shape you’re in is what the system will deliver to the next venue. This is the touring musician’s vocation, but I could be talking about any challenging vocation, right? Sometimes a trip to Europe is a dream come true. Sometimes a night in Paris is the single loneliest night of your life (true story).

I was thinking about the cold sore remark too. Very telling. The stress of touring always seemed to bring these to the surface. I don’t know why, but the cold sore became a symbol of shame and self-consciousness. There I was that night at the Luxor, the performer, trying to hide the body while offering the soul. Less gnostic, more “treasure in jars of clay” (2 Cor. 4:7).

My takeaway: The tour book may say four days left to go. But to the homesick, every second matters. Still does.

And this, from the man with a 1990 album titled, The Secret of Time.6

Leave a comment

A big welcome to all of you new subscribers! Many thanks to long-timers who read, comment, and support this newsletter. Help keep this newsletter free to everyone by purchasing my creative work, including the following books from Andi and me. Thank you!

Subscribe now

After that, I got a drum practice pad and a pair of sticks. My dad, a trained musician, was all about learning the fundamentals first: R L R L and so on—slow then faster. Then came the clarinet, because, well, I wanted a saxophone. Then I played cornet, which is a shorter, sort of squished trumpet. After I grew a bit bigger, my dad got me the real thing—a trumpet (what I wanted in the first place). These minor disappointments aside, having a musician father came with a big upside.

In my freshman year of high school, I played trumpet in Blind Horse, a Yuba City rock band led by some upperclassmen. We were, I think, quite good—had a light show, Warren’s Hammond B3—trumpet and trombone—played every song on the charts that incorporated horns.

Simultaneously, I was getting serious about teaching myself piano and guitar. My dad had built a music room in half of our garage and outfitted it with an upright piano and a Yamaha nylon string guitar. If Dad wasn’t in there, I was. It’s where I wrote my first songs and learned piano well enough to play gigs. It wasn’t long before I’d added a drum set and two 2-Track stereo 1/4” tape recorders to do “sound on sound” recording.

After Blind Horse broke up, I started playing the occasional weekend gig in saxophonist/vocalist Rod Battaglia’s band (he was maybe ten years older than us high-schoolers). He wanted me to play trumpet and an electric keyboard. Not having a keyboard of any variety, a kind elementary school band director named Mr. Matthews (the husband of my 6th-grade teacher)1 lent me a Farfisa combo organ.

I played this organ for about a year—an instrument perfectly suited for Santana’s “Evil Ways” and CCR’s “Proud Mary.” I didn’t drive yet, so this early phase of getting paid for playing music involved hitching a ride, usually with bass player, Dan Barth.

Drummer Scott Usedom, guitarist David Zook, and I considered our gig with Rod to be “paying our dues” and making good money (certainly more coin that we’d get with minimum wage jobs ). But our dream was to have a band that played the music of Jeff Beck, Miles Davis, The Allman Brothers, and Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Subscribe now

Scott’s father was the principal of Gray Avenue Elementary, and so we began practicing there, working on the dream. By then I’d returned the borrowed Farfisa organ and purchased a brand new keyboard, a Wurlitzer 200A Electronic Piano (at 15, my first big-time purchase on a payment plan).

I quickly augmented the piano with an orginal Jim Dunlop Cry Baby wah-wah pedal. Note, while we made between $30 and $50 a night, I also worked part-time for W.T. Grants (my parents were supportive but they had nothing left over—in fact my dad played his own gigs for extra money). I have no memory of the name of our band or ever playing a gig, except that we placed (second?) in a Yuba-Sutter Battle of the Bands at the fairgrounds. I do recall we performed songs from the aforementioned artists, including the Allman Brothers’ “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” (the Fillmore version) and “Right Off” from Miles’ Jack Johnson album.

At sixteen, I bought a little Datsun truck to haul my gear to gigs. A DJ at the Top-40 radio station, Rick Gibson—also a budding recording engineer—had recorded two of my original vocal songs for me (both inspired by my girlfriend Andi Berrier). I’d already been to Asylum Records on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles to personally drop the recordings off to David Geffen. He’d signed Jackson Browne. Wasn’t I the next most obvious choice? Chuck Ashworth from Yuba City with his two songs and only two songs?

By then, four streams of music held my attention most, along with at least one major country music outlier. I was devouring a bundle of jazz, blues, and funk; I played lots of rock and Top-40 pop—especially the NorCal variety; and I absolutely loved soul music like Al Green and Gladys Knight. James Taylor and Jackson Browne expressed my teen-love angst like no other singer-songwriters. And then there was Kris Kristofferson (“a walking contradiction”). Andi brought Cat Stevens, Carole King, Carly Simon, and Joni into the mix. When we first started “going steady” I bought her the latest Cat Stevens’ album.

Also at 16, I left high school as a junior, and took classes at our local community college. This was my first introduction to synthesizers. A new instructor had just come on board and talked the school into investing in a synth lab (think several Mini-Moogs and an ARP 2600).

These novelties didn’t hook me yet—synths were still only monophonic—no chords. I was ready to trade my Wurlitzer 200A in for a Fender Rhodes electric piano, though. The college had one. Playing it convinced me that I’d never get the Herbie Hancock or Chick Corea sound without one. True enough.

I had to start with a used one, though. Fender Rhodes electric pianos were twice the price of the Wurlitzer back then. Fortunately, my ability on piano quickly eclipsed my trumpet chops, and there was always a gig—even if they didn’t pay well (I’d play a jazz gig for $15 just to have chance to stretch out and improvise). I practiced many hours a day and kept that piano until we (Andi and I) needed cash more than the instrument (I was still paying my proverbial dues).

Nevertheless, that first Fender Rhodes was the piano I played when I was in the Sacramento funk/world music band The Runners for a year, when I was in The Planets (first time I wrote for a band—see below), and when I scored my first legit weekly jazz gig at The Bull Market in Sacramento with bassist Alphonza Kee2 (adding drummer Craig Kearney later), and so much more. That piano got around—more than I ever knew.

Listen to this 1977 4-Track Recording of NorCal soul-funk band, The Planets’ “I Fall Hard”— it’s a brief Rhodes piano solo. I don’t remember when in ‘77 this was recorded, so I was either 20 or 21—depends on whether it was post-August 10th or not—either way, almost 50 years ago!

Leave a comment

I share the full story of that particular Fender Rhodes piano in my book Roots & Rhythm—it’s wild. Yep, pianos can get crazy. See for yourself in the excerpt below.

2

For you pop and gospel music history fans, Alphonza is an older brother of the gospel music legend John P. Kee, who studied music theory with my father, Bill Ashworth. I met Al through drummer Aaron Smith. Al played in The Runners too. Prior to that, he was bassist with The Staple Singers and in Miroslav Vitous’s band after he left Weather Report. For a current example of Al’s incredibly soulful bass-playing see “High in the Sky.” Then dig Alphonza with the Staples on The Midnight Special in ‘76.

Years ago I participated in a solo piano-a-thon of major players recording John P. Kee songs. This included George Duke, Chick Corea, and my good friend Roger Smith. To my knowledge it has never come out. Ugh! Here’s a very low-res version of my grand piano contribution, “Changed Me.”

If you’ve enjoyed this sprint down memory highway, please support my Substack posts by purchasing our books, both on sale now at a ridiculously low price. Peace and love.

I did something yesterday I almost never do anymore—get in a room with other humans and write a song. Though my nervous system disorder took over a few times with trembling hands and fudged piano notes, I survived and even thrived. But I’m exhausted from it.

Reentering into my long life of communal music-making comes with a cost to my body, particularly my brain and central nervous system.

Still, I’m less than four months away from turning 70 and I can still get in a room with people half my age and make music. So, nothing but gratitude! And it’s especially rewarding when one of the writers is your own gifted son.

Sam invited me into a cowrite with the talented Welsh songwriter John Adams. John has been in Nashville for the week writing (with some of our friends too, like you )—and two nights ago, attended UK artist Calum Scott’s concert at the Brooklyn Bowl. Calum, a star in the UK, has collaborated with John on two of Calum’s songs, “Mad” and the 2025 album title cut “Avenoir.” It was a treat for him to hear them in the flesh with all the flash.

There was no flash to John though, only flesh and blood and soul. Great voice, great songwriter—very transparent. The three of us worked well together. That thing I’ve done a thousand and more times clicked, and the afternoon bore good fruit, a song titled “Nothing Is Worth Missing You.”

I want to write a follow-up: “Everything Is Worth Writing Songs!” And it is. What a privilege. Geez—to rise and shine and make something: first there was nothing, then there was something. Come on, who doesn’t want to live right in the middle of that goodness, that gift?

But goodness, and the gifts that activate it, are of premium value and therefore seldom free. And I’m not talking about money. Even when good is freely given, there can still be a cost.

The Cost

Maybe you know exactly what I’m teasing at—the paradoxical feeling of doing something good, something you love and having it cost you or others? The cost might be time, or an aching back that won’t let you stand one second longer. It could be making food for a house full of people, knowing someone’s gonna get hungry sometime. Or, maybe you’re part of a group of like-minded folks doing the right thing, staying steady while the whole world swerves. It costs something doesn’t it? Both the readiness and the actual doing. To speak now and make good on being human.

Pause for the Cause: Consider supporting this newsletter with the purchase of a book. Thx.

When I’m in the studio with gifted collaborators—engaged, focused, relational, imaginative, and creative, my nervous system is busy! I have to sustain attention, track each person and their contributions, and respond with my own—while doing my best to communicate clearly. And, I’m sitting at a piano, regulating my body posture, improvising, and hoping my presence has energy and positivity.

Much of the work of communal creativity is managing physical and emotional signaling. You feel me?

A well-regulated nervous system is one with a balanced mix of parasympathetic support (calm engagement) and sympathetic activation (alertness). I hope this describes you. Calm and alert is the combo.

But if your nervous system is similar to mine, with a central sensitization + dysautonomia disorder, balance can get real unstable very quick. For me to stay “on,” I’ve got to pull from my hypervigilant/survival bag o’ tricks. If that’s you—I feel you. You’ve been seen.

My body feels me too, and it wants to help, so it pumps up the adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol. Which as it turns out, is not helpful—not in the long run of the whole of life (unless your work is fighting off apex predators).

I lived this way (unregulated) for so long that I’ve lost the ability to sustain nervous-system-efficient, low-cost social engagement for long durations.

I might be smiling and thinking, “This is so rewarding and fun.” All the while, my physiology is saying: “I am sustaining a controlled activation state. Must remain cognitively and socially functional.” (Best read in a robot voice while moving arms up and down.)

Subscribe now

Unfortunately when the work is done, the work is not done.

For me, the aftermath of writing a life-giving song with Sam Ashworth and John Adams is what’s called neurochemical depletion and rebound. More commonly known as, that weird feeling and stuff.

Anybody out there but my grandson still drive a car with a four-speed shift on the column? If so, you’ll get this.

When I sustain that level of output, my central nervous system (CNS) is going 70 mph in 3rd gear. Which means my engine is working harder than it needs to (at 70mph that’s a lot of revolutions per minute). Then instead of a smooth downshift, I drop into 2nd and the whole CNS lurches. Does the transmission give up and grind to a halt? Nope. What I get (in various combinations) is fatigue, a little bit of unease (“did I say something I shouldn’t have?”), brain fog, or just feeling drained and wrung out. Then comes the recoil or aftershock—all part of the autonomic mess.

When recoil is bad, the headache bumps up a notch, I get internal vibrations, and nerves begin firing off like the 4th of July. My legs and arms are highways of electricity going everywhere and nowhere.

Is It Worth It?

Yes. Is it really still pleasurable and meaningful? Yes. I don’t get tired from the meaning and the pleasure of making or doing good. I get wiped out from the cost of staying regulated enough to actually enjoy the good meaning, pleasure, and outcome.

Sure, for a minute I’ve been talking about a central nervous system disorder. Or, maybe not—or maybe just more than that. Maybe I’m talking about the cosmos, or talking directly to you—a perfectly, lovely, healthy human being.

For the Good of People and Planet

Let’s say you’re out there in the world giving yourself away for the good of people and planet. Doing the work day in and day out. The quiet work, the loud work. Whatever. You know you’re adding to the beauty, incrementally, imperfectly. You’re not a taker. You’re a maker. Doesn’t matter what you make as long as it’s good. You can make a mood that’ll light up a room—change the world. Go ahead, make a mood, make a symphony too. While you’re at it make me some vanilla pudding. I’m already smiling.

If not today, maybe someday it’ll cost you something to be up to so much good. When that day comes, and it will, call to mind these three helps:

1. Might be helpful to shorten the duration of your good-making before you’re depleted. Leave some on the table for tomorrow. You’re human. Surround yourself with people who see your value as is and demand no performative proof. (I once called this: “to be received without receipts”).

2. Build intentional, incremental, smooth downshifts into the tail-end of your good-making. No teenager downshifting, tossing your body and brain to and fro—you’re past that—let it go. Warm up, cool down. Be like a gazelle and live to tell.

3. If it helps, treat your good-making sessions as a kind of athletic output and not casual activity. If you’re all-in on doing good, you’re all-in. And all-in means your whole person is fully engaged, physically, imaginatively, and intellectually—your emotions have emotions. Don’t pretend this isn’t true. Like I said, you’re human, and human can be, on any given day, pretty amazing—and exhausting.

So take care of yourself. We’re all very different with different strengths and weaknesses. Be patient with one another. “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up” (Gal. 6:9). Here’s to the harvest!

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

https://samashworth.com/

https://www.johnadamsmusic.co.uk/

Still, I can make clear what kind of day this is. It is 4:37PM in Nashville. I have next to me a bowl of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream with Trader Joe’s Organic Hot Chocolate sprinkled on it. Does the organic even matter?

I had an ultrasound vascular study done this morning and have already received a kind letter from Doctor Callahan stating I will not “shuffle off this mortal coil" via this particular health issue.

Which brings me to global health. Kind of big day for it in the most general, cosmic sense, unless you are Iranian, then it’s likely specific—top of mind.

Here’s some Iranian folks standing around a power plant. They didn’t get the memo. According to the President: “The Iranian people, when they don't hear bombs go off, they're upset. They want to hear bombs, because they want to be free. And the only reason they're not out protesting . . . is because they were informed that, if they protest . . . they will be shot immediately.”

Subscribe now

Before I go there any further though, yes, I have been thinking global health, especially as it relates to women and children and the turning back of the clock and meds for stuff we already figured was easily cured. So, anyway, a table full of us here in Nashville met up at the Thistle Farms Cafe with my friend Jenny Dyer of 2030 Collaborative and a well-spoken rep from the Gates Foundation. Lots of big-hearted, smart people there including my wife, Andi Ashworth, Becca Stevens (founder of Thistle Farms), Jeremy Cowart, Steve Taylor, Kimberly Williams Paisley and many more good folks including Jennifer Cooke and Amy Grant. However we can, we’d like to stir up our city (and beyond) afresh to take matters of global health more seriously—especially for women and children. BUT TODAY . . .

Global health is about the global consequences of a small group of Americans led by the President who waged war against Iran without the support of Congress or a majority of citizens. It’s about a Presidential post on Easter so unmasked and vile it even managed to wake the sleeping dogs at mainstream media. Destruction of civilizations will have that effect.

In fact, if the President had not completely ruined the F word with his use of it in the now infamous and godless Easter post, I wouldn’t mind type-shouting WTF right about now in this one. I would want it to sound more like an angry Irishman though, than the decades-old thought bubble voice of Trump now loud and fully unrestrained.

So, my Andi of 50+ years of girlfriending/spousaling fame has been off the news for a few days. Unfortunately I had to alert her to the possibility of earth and people devastation scheduled between 8PM and Midnight (EST) unless the Strait of Hormuz is open for business at 8PM (which is 3:30AM the next day there).

In the meantime, my youngest granddaughter turned 15 today and my youngest grandson, 18 over the weekend. 2026, the year of friends and family, America. Draw near.

Here’s Robert breaking his school’s record for clean lift, 320 lbs. I can’t remember the last time I did that. Aging, it’s rough.

See how fun a life of family and friends just doing stuff and junk can be? Lifting weights, fighting TB, eating lunch together, birthdays, writing songs—all that and so much more that isn’t even in the room with hate and violence.

Which is why, we let friends damn Amy Grant and ethicist/author Russell Moore use our home yesterday to film a video and record a podcast. I say damn Amy Grant because my friend guitarist Jerry McPherson, who spent many years playing and recording with Amy, derived pleasure from referring to her as damn Amy Grant. The irony being that she is the last human on the planet who would be referred to as damn (insert name). If you haven’t listened yet, I hope you’ll give a look and listen to my daughter-in-law’s cowrite and duet with Amy on “How Do We Get There From Here.” The compass of their hearts is pointed in the direction of community and love. Fill the room with this. Fill the world with it.

I mentioned the photographer/visionary artist Jeremy Cowart earlier. He made something that is generative and perfect for this moment. Take twenty minutes and walk through it. What is it? You can use a good surprise can’t you? It’s 100% private, so hold nothing back! HUMATHY

Until I started eating that bowl of ice cream as some sort of emotional fix for the epistemic collapse of society, I was wrapping up my book proposal for Pape Commons to pitch my novel, Once Concealed, Now Revealed.

It’s this sort of stuff:

Except, when done, it amounts to about forty pages of material that covers everything. When I say everything what I really mean is everything a writer doesn’t want to write after having spent months, years, writing the novel!

Wait, oh man, Don Pape, my agent just emailed. Who knows what a BISAC code is? Lot of writers on Substack. I know some of you know my pain. Since there is a love story thread in the novel, the industry refers to it as Romance. Don wants me to pick what kind of romance it is. He’s supposed to be my friend!

It’s not this: FIC027670 FICTION / Romance / Asian American & Pacific Islander. Or this: FIC027610 FICTION / Romance / Love Triangle, or this: FIC027090 FICTION / Romance / Time Travel. It’s not Romance / Fake Dating either or Romance / Firefighters. This is going to take longer than I thought. I’ll get back to you on it.

Until then, the ice cream is long gone, the headache is still here, and soon enough it will be 8PM EST.

It is a good norm to pray for our country’s brave men and women in harm’s way on our behalf. If praying for you looks like talking to the Author of all Generative Creativity, then pray now and especially the hours between 8PM CST and Midnight, that no unlawful, unjust harm is done in the name of United States of America against the innocent.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

In 1985, a forty-foot, eighty-thousand-pound whale named Humphrey swam under the Golden Gate Bridge into the bay, up the Sacramento River past the Rio Vista Bridge, to Shag Slough, west of Sutter Island. Nearly beached in the shallow slough, sixty-nine miles from the Pacific Ocean, Humphrey the Whale became the most famous humpback in the history of the species. “It’s a federal whale,” said a government official overseeing the historical rescue.

The Feds spent some money and hired a musician as part of their rescue plan. In order to entice him back to open waters, Bernie Krause, a bio-acoustician, played recordings of the feeding sounds of Humphrey’s kin. Krause, former member of the folk group The Weavers, got Humphrey turned around. Prior to working with the whale, Krause’s credits included Country Joe and the Fish, George Harrison of The Beatles, The Monkees, and Jane Goodall, naturally.

People lined the banks of the Sacramento River for miles to cheer on the homeward-bound Humphrey. Inspired by the familiar sounds of family and the prospect of dinner, he had turned around and was returning to open water.

How do you explain such a skip in the universal flow of things? Whaleologists suggested a sickness, perhaps parasites on the brain, or an inner ear infection. The fact is, whale or human can find themselves on the wrong side of the river, stuck in the shallows. Yet somehow, lost mammals large and small are shown cosmic favor to turn and return. As the eminent theologian J. I. Packer once explained rhetorically to Andi and me, “It’s all of Grace then, isn’t it?” Grace is a river, too.

Subscribe now

The Sacramento River in Northern California is a long 447 miles, flowing south from upstate near Mount Shasta in the Cascades. The river acts like a person who has lived long enough to know when to reserve speech. No great, world-changing utterances, just a steady flow of who and what she is. The Sacramento can be brooding but never menacing. That is, unless you dive to the bottom and sup with the giants: white sturgeon capable of living well over a hundred years, growing to eight to twelve feet and a thousand pounds or more.

I’ve spent many a fishing hour out on the Sacramento with my dad and one of two uncles—either Uncle Ron the Barber or Uncle Walt the Engineer. We were normally on the hunt for stripers or salmon. If you’re using sardines for bait, you can hook a sturgeon now and again.

If you really want a sturgeon, though, you should go sturgeon fishing, which means you should be prepared to actually catch one. Most fishermen are not. We certainly never were.

You know you’ve hooked a big sturgeon when it peels the line off your reel. If your line doesn’t break (it usually does), then you let the prehistoric monster pull you up and down the river for about an hour. I say an hour because most people can hold a dream in their hearts for at least an hour. Usually, after an hour, with no sign of the fish ever rising from the bottom, you lose your dream to a consigned realism. The hopeful thought of landing the largest freshwater fish in North America degenerates into “I don’t know, man, why don’t we just cut the line?” Every bone and muscle aches and you’re sweating like a stuck pig, but it’s not all loss. You’ve got yourself a good story, and stories are good medicine.

One day, my dad, Uncle Walt the Engineer, and I were fishing for stripers out on the Sacramento when we heard an awful wailing. At a distance, echoing down the river, it sounded like a woman or child in horrible pain. We pulled up anchor and headed toward the sound. Soon we could see the cry for help wasn’t human at all. In a flash, I understood the colloquialism “sweatin’ like a stuck pig.” Hopelessly tangled in the Himalayan blackberry vines covering the riverbank was, in fact, a stuck pig and, given the ninety-degree heat, likely one sweating. The bank was so steep and the vines so thick there was no way of rescuing the poor creature.

With the full faculties of my twelve-year-old mind, I pondered that pig a while. My grandparents or great-grandparents never bothered with pigs that I knew of. There were chickens, turkeys, and goats for me to know and to develop opinions and reflections on, but no pigs. Still, you pick up things along the way, bumping into pig knowledge, especially pig physiology. For example, a pig’s penis is shaped like a corkscrew, the spiral taking the form of a left-hand thread. Also, you will never meet a star-gazing pig. While standing, it’s physically impossible for a pig to look up into the sky.

My wife and I had a beloved history professor at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis who collected pig likenesses to aid in remembering the church’s most egregious heresies. Dr. Calhoun used drawings of a Gnostic pig and a Donatist pig—that sort of thing—the latter pig guilty of requiring that only the purest of priests administer the sacraments.

If you know anything about Christianity, you know that pure moral character, as in completely undiluted, is a fantasy.

And so I repeat: “Yet somehow, lost mammals large and small are shown cosmic favor to turn and return.” Or, we, as Humphrey did again in 1990, turn and return to somewhere we were never meant to be.

Excerpted from the memoir, Roots & Rhythm: A Life in Music (Eerdmans 2205).

Leave a comment

They reeled and staggered like drunkards; they were at their wits’ end. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out of their distress. He stilled the storm to a whisper; the waves of the sea were hushed. They were glad when it grew calm, and he guided them to their desired haven. — Psalm 107:27-30

Thank you for your kind words below.

The hardcover version of Roots & Rhythm: A Life in Music is on sale now, 75% off! Kindle + Audible versions available too.

This is an excerpt from a novel in progress. The scene is the main character, Augie, sitting at an early morning campfire with Tap, a farmer, author, and academic. Augie has been sent to Tennessee from California by his mentor and business partner to ask the eccentric Tap’s counsel on the question of whether any person or thing is beyond redemption (specifically, the controversial multi-billion dollar company they’ve been asked to represent).

Once Concealed, Now Revealed

Augie was lost in the scent of Marie and the last 36-hour whirlwind. He asked Tap, “I don’t want to use the language of conversion per se, but do you think God sort of, comes for people? Changes them in a split second from unbelief to belief, without all the hoops religious people have required folks to jump through?”

“If the Creator God we’ve been talking about exists,” said Tap. “Then there are no limits to creativity. Takes us back to the Rabbi, the Teacher stories. The tiny mustard seed of faith can be instantaneous—but swallowed up in a gulp of a variety of things. Just like those geese out there foraging, getting twigs, rocks, and bugs together with seeds in one bite. Hungry geese are trustworthy. It’s equally trustworthy to hold to the idea that belief is constructed over a lifetime, through a multiplicity of word-and-work witness and experience. I’m learning to believe, to have faith, hope, and love, right now, fireside with you. Under the gaze of rising sun and merciful God—knowable through the Way, Jesus, Creator With Us.”

“I’m hearing you, keep it coming,” said Augie. As was dawn on the farm, he was fully awake, alive to the day.

Tap’s belly growled. “Okay. But then we gotta eat soon. Consider this story. On the Mount of Transfiguration, you got the trio—Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. The Cloud Voice told the disciples he was well pleased with Jesus and to listen to him. First thing Jesus did was touch them. Didn’t speak. He wanted the disciples to feel him—that he was there and present in the flesh. Then he went ahead and spoke, saying, Rise and have no fear.”

Augie stirred circles in the dirt with the fire stick, nodded his head, looked at Tap, and told him, “Thank you for that.”

“August, I don’t know why you’re here, son. That’s for you to figure out. What I do know is that I’m gettin’ peacefully dumber by the day. The older I get, the less I know—so you might’ve come at a diminished time in my trajectory. But I do believe you found your way here for the Maker to make contact and say hello. And if you have ears to hear, then hear Creator With Us say, Rise and have no fear.”

Tap inhaled what was left of the early morning and rubbed his hands together.

Augie sat completely still, his eyes closed, listening—just as they’d done yesterday, standing in the river. He felt Tap gently take the stick from his hand and heard him stir the coals.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Possible goodness for the week:

1. Find something good and beautiful to hang your emotions and thoughts on this week. Here’s mine: My grandson Robert and his girlfriend Taylor (along with their families) had an extraordinary experience preparing for and participating in Taylor’s Debutante Ball on Friday night. The photos and videos are pure delight. So proud of both Robert and Taylor + my grown kids. This is something our family likely wouldn’t have participated in without Taylor. But because the students and sponsors (including The Greater Huntsville Chapter of Jack and Jill, Inc.) infused the work and enjoyment with such humanity, truth and beauty, I consider myself converted to it all. Plus, the next fancy wedding reception we attend, Robert can remind me which of the four forks I should be using.

2. will most certainly publish something good and life-affirming this week—check on Ash Wednesday for sure. Please avail yourself of her wonderful combination of exacting justice-centered honesty, pastoral care, and deep and poetic writing rooted in Jesus’ new way to be human.

3. A Christ-Centric Blessing and Good Word for Each Morning and Night

   All our problems:
   We send to the cross of Christ.

   All our difficulties:
   We send to the cross of Christ.

   All the devil’s works:
   We send to the cross of Christ.

   All our hopes:
   We set on the risen Christ.

   ---

   Finally, I heard last week from Jay Buchanan of the band Rival Sons. A few years back I wrote a couple songs with Jay for a debut solo project he hoped to record. Well, his dream finally came true. It’s out—Weapons of Beauty produced by Dave Cobb—available everywhere. Here’s our cowrite, “Shower of Roses.” Having recorded Chris Cornell, I bear witness that this dude has a once-in-a-generation voice. Get yourself some.

   The lush “Shower of Roses” reflects on beauty as both a gift and a painful reminder of life’s transience, capturing the tension between joy and sorrow. Its lyrics hint at Buchanan’s relationship with life in the spotlight and his longing for authenticity: “When the crowds have all gone / Lights go out on the stage / When the curtain comes down / You just want them to say / That you never took more than you gave.” — Anne-Marie Forker at NorwayRock.net

   Leave a comment

I’m honored to alert Substack friends and music lovers to Brent’s new autobiography/memoir, The Real Things: The Intimate Journey of a Working Musician from Bill Graham to Billy Graham to Instagram. Available in book, Kindle, and Audible forms.

Subscribe now

What I most want a reader to understand is this: Brent is an honest-broker storyteller—not merely for the amazing inside pop music anecdotes (which there are many). For example, witness the self-sabotage of a lifetime: his band’s excited chatter accidentally scares off Paul and Linda McCartney, who tried to sneak into a dive bar show but fled when the crowd swelled to a near-riot. These are stories that musicians and music book readers love, yes, but they also work as allegory and a whole-body dose of hard-earned wisdom and humility. This book is not a celebrity memoir. It is, as the subtitle says, a working musician’s story, written by a true artist who has actually done the work. I cannot recommend it more highly. If you’re a fan of listening to Audible Books, Brent’s is the best pop music book I’ve ever listened to. No contest.

One of my favorite embarrassing memories with Brent is November 27, 1985 (included in Roots & Rhythm). We were sitting on the steps of the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, talking about ourselves after exiting the building. Inside, promoter/legend Bill Graham’s Fillmore 20th Anniversary Concert (1965–1985) was under way. We were two of his young artist management clients, and Brent was cofounder of the band Bourgeois Tagg (Top 40 Hit, “I Don’t Mind at All”). Our sizable egos needed a little “me time” break from the hippie lovefest going down inside the auditorium.

Interestingly, the Bill Graham invite we received had a born-again theme, though not of the Jesus-type: Obviously, this is a reunion for many of us who’ve been fortunate enough through these years to have been a part of very special time in space. For whatever the reason, the soil of the Bay Area seemed to be chosen; and, out of a seed that was planted here, all of us seem to have been reborn.

Inside the Fillmore, Country Joe McDonald was singing “Feel like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” from Woodstock fame. The Sons of Champlin, Jefferson Airplane alumni (Kantner, Balin & Casady), John Lee Hooker, Bob Weir from the Dead, It’s a Beautiful Day, and Buddy Miles were all there, jammin’, bringing back the ’60s, complete with the original acid light-show pioneers. Legendary rock ’n’ roll history. What a drag it was for us, forced to hang out with all these old people and their irrelevant music.

We’ve matured a bit since then. We’re the older people and finally understand the privileged context we’d been invited into.1

Brent’s understanding of the “privileged context we’d been invited into” is clear as glass now. And it’s this hard road wisdom, humility, and self-aware humor that make all the stories in his book such a delight to read and listen to. Enjoy!

Leave a comment

I’ve had projects I was deeply proud of tank commercially, and others I felt “could’ve been better” find massive traction. And thankfully, many were genuinely received for what they were: the artist’s best work to date.

With this in mind, here are four projects that didn’t make it to the top of the Billboard Pop charts, or maybe chart at all. Artistically and quality-wise, though, I’m proud of the work and the artists. Enjoy!

Let’s begin with a major label release, Angélica Garcia’s Medicine for Birds from 2016 (Warner Bros. Records 2-557037). Even though overseen by two A&R giants, legendary Lenny Waronker and Michael Howe, WBR’s marketing department seemed to have no clue what to do with this recording. There was a glowing write-up in the New York Times on this winsome, imaginative Mexican-American artist and then the record disappeared.

NOTE: Click cover image for full credits to each of these (except the last).

Subscribe now

APPLE MUSIC

SPOTIFY

AMAZON

Next up, the wonderful Welsh artist Al Lewis and Battles (self-released in 2013). Originally meant to have American distribution, a legal disagreement (a battle?) limited the album’s reach. Positively speaking: I heard Al’s song “Make A Little Room” on You Tube and fell in love with the smart, sincere, gentle familiarity in his music—like you’ve heard it your whole life. He came to the States and we made this record in Nashville. Sarah Howells from the Welsh indie-folk band Paper Aeroplanes came too and sang on many of the tracks. Lovely person and voice. Locals Sam Ashworth, Matthew Perryman Jones, and Brooke Waggoner helped with some cowrites. Plus, I took the cover shot. Nashvillians: Photo taken at night in the light of the Loveless Cafe neon sign on Highway 100.

APPLE MUSIC

SPOTIFY

AMAZON

In 2014 I began producing a solo record on American artist Joy Williams—about a year after the post-breakup, eponymous full-length release from her former duo, The Civil Wars. After cutting live acoustic guitar and vocal performances, beginning drum overdubs with Aaron Sterling, and having Manny Marroquin do one mix, Joy and her management lost confidence in the direction. I thought all the A+ essence of Joy and the songs sounded great as acoustic performances. I wanted to take each one and let it tell us what to do next—something Joy was great at intuiting.

Nevertheless, as requested, I finished my bit and passed the tracks to two other producers working in Los Angeles. They would go on to reinvent the material as a contemporary pop record. Titled VENUS, it was released by Columbia Records in 2015 (produced by Matt Morris, Daniel James, and me). As NPR said, “VENUS is the chronicle and result of Williams breaking free of her past projects.”

As a musician known for breaking free with reinventions, I understand that the more popular an artist is (as Joy was at the time), the riskier reinvention is. I did not interpret Joy’s beautiful, personal songs as musically risky, but in the end, the pop production certainly was (in terms of a huge leap between The Civil Wars sonic realm and the sound of VENUS).

After a disappointing album launch and reception, what had been a brave artistic journey for Joy, became an undesired end for the label and many of the fans gained via The Civil Wars trip to the top of folk-pops.

In 2016, the original recording I produced,1 now titled VENUS (Acoustic),2 was released on the indie, Sensibility Records, without Columbia’s promo muscle. Very quietly, and without ubiquitous marketing fanfare, her audience found the music and responded positively. The original acoustic version eclipsed the pop version of VENUS by double and more. This is Joy at her best. She went on to build upon this momentum with her much-celebrated Front Porch in 2019. The album was Grammy-nominated for Best Folk Album—an award The Civil Wars won in 2012 for Barton Hollow.

Leave a comment

APPLE MUSIC

SPOTIFY

AMAZON

Even though my name is front and center on this last one, I include Bolingo Ya Lelo because it’s an international collaboration—a Nashville meets UK meets West African collab that slipped through the cracks in 2022. It was released via Meta, which gave it worldwide distribution—though the algorithm didn’t seem to take to it. Featuring UK bassist/educator, Edd Bateman, of World Music Method; King Fire (aka Kingfire D. Isakongo) a Lingala (Congo) singer and guitarist; Senegal vocalist Tony Essamay; drummer/vocalist Felix Ngindu (Congo)—and Jeff Coffin on saxophones/flutes and arrangements, Eric Harland on additional drum kit, with Matt White on trumpet. I’m producing and playing Rhodes electric & acoustic pianos. This was a very meaningful project for me as it was my first legit attempt at merging my jazz roots with deep ancestral roots on my father’s side of the family (Angola, Congo, and Nigeria). Grateful to Edd for his initial production, writing, and pulling it all together. See Edd’s org.

No Discogs info avail on Bolingo Ya Lelo.

APPLE MUSIC

SPOTIFY

AMAZON

2

Unfortunately, the streaming version of VENUS (Acoustic) only includes seven songs, whereas the vinyl version includes ten. Click image to see all credits. Vinyl avail somewhere.

---

For more stories on how the musical sausage gets made, please enjoy the book, Kindle, or Audible version of my memoir Roots & Rhythm: A Life in Music available everywhere. Including on sale now at that behemoth of digital retail we all love to hate (sorry, dislike). Click image below.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment