Just a Hair of Big Ears: Blake, Pino, Sam and Chris (once again)

A second hang with some of the Greatest, plus special SIGNED Blake+Pino prints

Things have been very busy and in a state of major transition in the past couple of months. I’ve been organizing the estate of a man who accumulated many, many things in his 96 years on Earth, 72 of which were spent in the same eight-room apartment in Brooklyn Heights where the rent was $147 a month in 1953. His executors—both close friends of his—entrusted me with understanding the value of the universe he left behind as a gay man born in South Carolina who moved to New York in the 1950s as a hopeful classical pianist to pursue a life of the arts. He was serially fixated on stars of the opera and theater, old Hollywood, classical music, plus poets, writers and painters. I’ve sorted and packed away many thousands of items that span literally a millennium that reflected his passions and obsessions that have now filled my studio and two storage units.

But seeking respite during a brief lull in activity, at 4:40AM I joined the half-mile long TSA line at La Guardia to try and catch my flight to Knoxville for a day, possibly two, for the Big Ears festival. Despite not having the time to set up the kind of ambitious activity I had last year I had the the opportunity to gain entry to the inside experience once again with a remarkable ensemble of four musicians who are among the most skilled on the planet and who have each been pushing the limits of their instruments over, under and through boundaries of genre. So how could I turn that down?

I’m talking about Pino Palladino, the veteran bassist with hands that make a Precision Bass look like a ukulele, and who has earned first name-only status when invoked in any knowing musical conversation for his sophisticated but tasteful work with everyone from Paul Young, The Who, Eric Clapton, John Mayer to D’Angelo.

Then there is his collaborative partnership with the dynamic Blake Mills, also typically discussed with reverence for his singular and ever-permutating abilities on guitar, as well as his talents as a producer of formidable artists such as Bob Dylan, Alabama Shakes and Perfume Genius—as well as this very ensemble for which he recently won the Grammy for Best Producer with their second album That Wasn’t a Dream.

And then you have Sam Gendel, a remarkable saxophonist and manipulator of sounds via an electronic wind instrument controller ( observed twisting pedals with his socked feet) who can summon any timbre (including a panther) and multi-phonic keyboard comping that sound like Chick Corea on a pot of strong coffee.

Rounding out the crew is drummer Chris ‘Daddy’ Dave who interweaves Gospel, Hip-Hop, R&B and Jazz roots, and has contrinuted to recordings by some of innovatively funkiest among us including Meshell Ndegeocello, D’Angelo and Robert Glasper. During line check he twisted the rented house kit around, adding ribboned cymbals and animal hides to muffle the toms until the kit resembeld a Rube Goldberg-meets-Junkyard Dog assemblage. but never played anything that sounded the least bit outside of a deep groove.

They were perfectly at home at Big Ears, where all the musicians we normally speak about in hushed terms within small, knowing circles seem to be in one place for four days, floating between gigs up and down S Gay St. as their own friends, bandmates and heroes mingle (Julian Lage watched from the wings), and the normally-dispersed listeners and fans, many in obscure, age-inappropriate band t-shirts, take over the town.

For me, it’s simply nice to be in the music’s presence, from the mundane pre-show downtime and chatter, to the inspirational and revealing moments in the performance.

I brought a small box of prints featuring the hands of Blake and Pino presented as a diptych that I made at their show last winter that these master musicians were enthusiastic and generous enough to SIGN. (Available HERE) So here’s a special, one-time offering of an edition of 8, plus 2 artist-proofs. They are printed on 11x17” museum-quality fiber paper, and are signed and numbered by the photographer. These are incredibly cool, and I’m very grateful that they might help this work keep going.

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