Interviews

“…he invites people to come in and be a guest teacher or guest instructor. So I got a call from him one day, somebody had mentioned my name to him and he asked me if […]

“I’ve always had a very specific practice routine. I’m naturally a very regimented person and like to figure out what my goals are and how I can achieve them. My practice has always been divided […]

“So I played with Jack McDuff. He sat in with us and played… and he actually took my phone number. And a couple of months later, Jack McDuff called me. He was… I don’t know […]

“Grant Green, Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, Jimi Hendrix, George Benson, Pat Martino, Albert King, B.B. King, and Charlie Christian are integral to the way I approach this music. There are countless recordings by them that […]

“My perception of the guitar has not changed. It’s still the same as it always has been, which is: it can function as a horn, it can function as part of the ensemble. I think […]

“I had been teaching privately since I was a student at Berklee College Of Music. I specialized in walking basslines at the time. None of the guitar instructors at Berklee were teaching my comprehensive walking bassline […]

“Learning jazz in those days was different than it is now. Basically, you listened to a lot of records and tried to figure out what was going on, first by learning the tunes and chords, […]

“I really want to get to a level where I can say I have a decent jazz vocabulary. I want to spend my time trying to get a hang of both the be-bop and the […]

“So we get to his house and he says to me, ‘I want to hear you play something, take out your box and play something for me.’ So at that time I was a speed […]

“Football was my main activity and I was totally focused on that since I was 7 so it was very hard accepting (very early on) that I wouldn’t be a professional player anymore. But it […]