Angela Carole Brown l Articles & Interviews

The greatest compliment that one can receive concerning their music, is usually derived from their peers, and so in preparing for my conversation with jazz singer, Angela Carole Brown, I contacted my friend drummer Craig Pilo, who among his many musical ventures, performs and records as part of Brown’s The Slow Club Quartet and I also contacted guitar virtuoso Ken Rosser who plays alongside Brown in The Global Folk.

“The thing that I find both strikingly unique and inspiring about Angela is her generosity. Rather than view the band as something she sings on top of, she sings inside the band, finding a way to mesh with the other instruments as an equal. She yields space, focus and direction to other members of the band, to make the whole thing sound as good as it can. She is the ultimate team player, and as a result, the respect that she commands among musicians at every artistic and professional level is no accident. Angela is the kind of musician whose vision shapes the whole music, not just her own performance. Being able to play or sing is one thing, but ultimately it is about what you have to say. Angela always has something to say,” says Ken Rosser.

Whether one is listening to Mick Jagger’s, “Gimme Shelter,” which comprised the opening track of Angela Carole Brown’s jazz CD, Expressionism or a song from Resting On The Rock, an album to which she refers as Post-Modernist Folk, there is always a cohesive sound to the music, and Brown is so effective in the way that she uses her voice, that it truly becomes another instrument in the bands, rather that the instrumentalists serving merely as her accompaniment.

To that end, Craig Pilo, who has known Brown since the mid nineties, comments, “I’ve never heard singing, soul, diction, tone, and commitment like hers, from any other singer. Great singers are a dime a dozen, especially here in Los Angeles, but Angela has something to say. She has a voice and an identity and it needs to be heard.”

Despite the fact that Brown is an accomplished songwriter, something that Pilo also noted when he was contacted, only one of her compositions, “Sleepwalk,” appears on Expressionism. The other songs include Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes, ”Tom Waits’, “A Soldier’s Things,” ”Joni Mitchell’s,“ Both Sides Now, and Lennon and McCartney’s, “In My Life.”

Brown explains how rocker Mick Jagger’s tune, “Gimme Shelter,” came to be included on her jazz album. “All four of us in the quartet threw songs onto the table and said, ‘What do you think of this?’ That has been encouraged. In this particular case, “Gimme Shelter,” was brought forth by the bass player Don Kasper. He is the newest member of the band, and he has caught on to what we want to do, which is cover (tunes), because I am not writing anymore in the jazz vein. We didn’t want to do a standards CD, but instead cull from other genres and put these songs into jazz environment

“Because I am a vocalist, and not an instrumentalist, the most important part for me is the lyrics. Are they saying something that resonates with a personal experience of my own? I have to admit, that secondarily, (I ask) what is it like musically and harmonically? Those things, of course, are important to me, and the more interesting that they are the better. Although I was not the one to bring, “Gimme Shelter,” to the table, I always felt that it was radical in its soul, in terms of what it is saying about anti-war and so forth. It has a little bit of the activist in its soul, and I resonate with that.”

It was Brown who selected Joni Mitchell’s, “Both Sides Now,” as one of the tracks for Expressionism, and both the song and Mitchell are close to her own heart. “This is one of my favorite all time songs, and she was one of the greatest inspirations (in my life) for me to start singing in the first place. Joni Mitchell and Ella Fitzgerald are the two people that when I was growing up and listening to them, they made me want to sing. This particular song is one of my favorites in lyrical terms. I think that the song has even greater resonance, with Mitchell singing it as an older woman, because really it is a song about looking back over your life, and assessing it. She recorded it again, maybe four years ago, with an orchestral arrangement.”

Brown believes that what has enabled her bands to cover well-known songs and still have them well received is the approach that she and her band members take in making these tunes their own. “We have made them very different than the originals. I think that it begs comparisons when you are just making what has already been done. When you do something that is really different, there is less of a tendency for people to compare them to the originals. I am very proud of the fact that we have managed to do that. We haven’t done the songs in the way that we know them,” she says.

Brown’s phrasing is impeccable as she sings the reflective John Lennon and Paul McCartney classic, “In My Life,” and pianist Ed Czach wrote a beautiful new arrangement, so that the music would fit into a jazz setting. The patrons of Jax Bar & Grill, a cozy jazz club in Glendale California where The Slow Club Quartet regularly performs, were the first to hear the band’s interpretation of, “In My Life.”

“We just showed up at the gig, and Ed said, ‘Here’s my arrangement.’ We all heard it for the first time, while we were playing it. It jus blew me away, because he has a harmonic sensibility like nobody else. He created a harmonic environment that was so unlike the original recording, but it still captured the soul of the tune. It blew me away. I heard it for the first time, while I was singing it,” recalls Brown.

Angela Carole Brown’s alter ego emerges when she becomes the singer for The Global Folk, a band which released Resting On The Rock, in 2004, and surfaced again in 2008, when she recorded a more stripped down, organic CD Music For The Weeping Woman, with The Global Folk’s guitarist, Ken Rosser.

“I decided that I wanted to do something that was a little more intimate. Ken Rosser is an amazing guitar player. I think that we are musical soulmates, because we think alike in terms of how we approach music. I was trying to experiment, and not do what has already been done. I don’t know if I always accomplish that, but that is what I am always trying for. Ken is amazing, as he plays stringed instruments from all different cultures,” she says while rhyming off numerous instruments and their countries of origin.

Brown helps me to understand why it is that she refers to this side of her musical ledger as Post-Modern Folk Experimentation. “When most people think of folk music, they automatically assume that it is acoustic. I know that was a very significant aspect of folk music in a certain era, but we do very little acoustic music with this project. We play around with the limitations of the guitar and what we can do with it, as well as, what we can make it do. We (determine) how we can exploit that in terms of writing music. I call it Post-Modern, because we are definitely taking the notion of folk music, and stylistically it still harkens to (that genre). The music still (possesses) socially conscious ideas that harkens back to folk music. From a purely sonic and instrumental perspective, we are doing a lot of electronic and experimental things with the groove, which is why I call it Post-Modern Folk Experimentation.”

In addition to being an accomplished singer and songwriter in two diverse genres, Angela Carole Brown is also a gifted painter, graphics design artist and novelist. Her fiction novel Trading Fours, which was published in 2005 and has been well received.

Brown talks about Trading Fours, a book which chronicles the lives of four musicians, “I have actually written a few novels and this one is not even the first. I decided to publish Trading Fours first, because I felt I had a built in audience, as most of the people that I know are musicians. Musicians would be interested in a musician’s story. It is fiction, but it definitely culls from a lot of experiences that I have had as a musician. My reason for writing it, is your average person knows rock stars or celebrities, like Sting or Madonna, or they know the bad lounge act that is parodied on Saturday Night Live, but there is a whole world of musicians in between, about which they know nothing, and I wanted to write that story.”

In the interim, Angela Carole Brown is weaving quite a story of her own and rather than waiting for someone to write a book about it and read it in the past tense, you just might want to get your ticket punched by purchasing a copy of Expressionism or Music For The Weeping Woman, and enjoying her music in the here and now.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of recording one of my all-time favorite singers. I’m finishing up the SolidTube tracks and we will begin mixing the album in a few days. While in Vienna, I had Mandana sketch out the background vocals but another voice will really add some meat to the tracks. And I know of no meatier voice than the one that lives inside Angela Carole Brown.

I met Angie many years ago at a cabaret in Los Angeles. Steve Haberman, Jim DiJulio Jr. and I were the house trio and one night Angie turned up with a pile of charts. We played a set behind her that night and from the first note, I knew that I was hearing something special. Angela’s rich voice oozes effortlessly and makes its way to the listener’s ear on waves of pure and honest emotion. I know, I know…the last sentence sounds a bit over the top, but if you go to her website or check out the video of “The Slow Club” you will understand my lack of adequately descriptive vocabulary. So rather than try to put her abilities into words, give her a listen and see if you can come up with something better.

The first time I heard Mandana sing, I thought of Angela’s voice. They both have a rich and sonorous low range…this is a gift and cannot be taught any more than you can teach a young athlete to be taller. Stronger? Yes, but size is a natural attribute and both Angela and Mandana have big natural voices.

E Jazz News Magazine
From the Expressionistic Promptings of the Jazz Soul
by John Stevenson
June 2009

(Excerpt)

Perhaps one of the most under-explored aspects of jazz literature is fiction. There is an abundance of jazz product in the form of audio and DVD formatted recordings tumbling out on to the record store shelves and on the internet. There has also been a growing body of novels and short story work that makes jazz musicians a central theme. Los Angeles-based jazz chanteuse, writer and visual artist Angela Carole Brown belongs securely to this tradition. Her recent novel Trading Fours (Infinity Publishing) is set in a day in the lives of four LA musicians who make their living hacking away at an artistic seam called the "casual". Whether it is corporate social events, Bar Mitzvahs, weddings and miscellaneous events calling for musicians-for-hire, Nick, Seth, Chloe, and Tristan take them all in their rhythmic stride – and still have to deal with the workaday issues of paying the bills and the rent and negotiating the minefields of personal relationships. Trading Fours deals with brilliant musicians who, oftentimes because of their lack of being well-connected, do not get the breaks they deserve.

Trading Fours is in few respects, a triumphant meeting ground of art and sociology - a meeting ground as familiar in 2007 as it was in 1927, and one which it is hoped will receive even more insight and attention in 2008 and beyond.

E Jazz News Magazine
Jazz Encounters of the Literary Kind
(inclusion of Trading Fours)
by John Stevenson
January 2008

Following on her acclaimed 2005 jazz outing “The Slow Club”, all-round artist Angela Carole Brown, has delivered an impactful follow-up with “Expressionism”.

On it, she has prepared a smorgasbord of musical delights – from straight-ahead jazz, to 1970s and ‘80s pop, through to the Persian strains of “Bavar Kon” on which she offers a tasteful Farsi vocal. The quaint arrangements and vocalisations on Jimi Hendrix’s “If Six Was Nine”, and Tom Waits’s “A Soldier’s Things” will surely prick up the ears of non-jazz listeners.
I caught up with ACB in Los Angeles for a fascinating peek into her oeuvre.

John Stevenson: “Expressionism”, your most recent Slow Club Quartet CD, exquisitely explores the jazz tradition, taking up in gamely fashion, where 2005’s ‘The Slow Club’ left off. The concept of a “new standard”, or a jazz take on some of the more recent pop and rock material, looms large. What are your thoughts on the inclusion of this kind of material? Does it draw new audiences into the so-called jazz tradition?

Angela Carole Brown: Honestly, I hadn’t really thought about whether it would draw a certain audience. I did, however, feel very stale about the notion of one more standards album; with all reverence paid to the great standards songbook, but it just seemed to have been done to death. So the idea of culling for material from other genres and finding ways to place them into the jazz environment was exciting for all of us, especially since the first CD was all original. And these rock and pop songs are all, by and large, standards in their own world - Joni Mitchell, Hendrix, Tom Waits, the Stones...

JS: As if your life journey so far as a singer/songwriter, published novelist and artist/designer has not been already been self-sacrificing, you’ve gone the extra mile as a kidney donor – a courageous deed not without its own potential life-endangering hazards. Would you care to share some your religious or spiritual sources of inspiration?

ACB: The most I can really offer about any religious leanings is just my desire to be a creature of compassion and to be of service in this life. You speak of the artistic pursuit as being self-sacrificing, and honestly I can’t help but see it as a very self-absorbing pursuit, so I think my desire to be of service was, perhaps, a way of bringing some balance to my life. And Hans, my kidney mate, is an incredible (and creative in his own right) human being, so it was an honour to take part in extending his life and health.

JS: How long have you been singing jazz and what drew you to it in the first place?

ACB: It was the first music I really pursued and leaned toward when I began singing, which was in my early twenties. But even earlier than that, my stepdad was very instrumental in giving me that influence with the older more classic jazz repertoire, the standards, the crooners, and big band. And my older sister had thrown some very strange (to my teenage ears) progressive jazz at me; Pharaoh Sanders, Lonnie Liston Smith, Miles, etc. So I had good solid early exposure to jazz.

JS: Did you undergo any apprenticeships with other singers or instrumentalists?

ACB: Nothing official or formal, but every musician who came through my life in those early days was certainly a teacher of many music and life lessons.

JS: Do you think the Barack Obama presidency has the potential, at least, to usher in a new dawn for American music and more specifically for your own creative efforts.

ACB: I think this presidency has the great potential to usher in all sorts of new and wonderful changes, and I think art and artists finally stand a chance to be considered important and crucial again. It’s my hope, at least. It is certainly a new day, and I, for one, could not be prouder of our nation for putting this man in the White House.

JS: Your interesting original, “Sleepwalk”, carries some fine orchestration. I like the spoken-word concept as well. You are a born storyteller, willing to take on topics that Americans would prefer to ignore. What are your thoughts on California's sexual identity politics?

ACB: Well, that song was written almost 2 decades ago, and really was meant to be light-hearted and fun. But I do find it interesting, and serendipitous, that it finally got recorded and placed on an album, after years on the shelf, right at a time when these specific politics are in the forefront right now. I was quite disappointed that California overturned legislation that supported equal rights for gay couples. I personally think that the "we support civil unions, but not gay marriage" spin line is really no different a dynamic than the old "separate but equal" clauses of the Civil Rights Movement in the 50's and 60's, and it pains me that we haven't progressed a whole lot from there.

JS: I can’t help but comment on your poignant and moving take on the (much under-recorded) bluesy Eugene McDaniels piece, “Sunday and Sister Jones”. As if that wasn’t eye-moistening enough, you proceed to floor listeners with Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”. What inspired the inclusion of these two selections in particular?

ACB: Well, first of all, thank you for the compliment! These are two of my all-time favourite songs. And this album really was an opportunity to honour songs that have been moving me for years; as well as for the rest of the guys in the quartet, who all brought songs to the table. But, yes, I brought these two. Sunday and Sister Jones is just so haunting, and carries with it an undertone of old Black-culture, front-porch, religious-conjuring flavours that liberally saturate the traditions of old Negro Spirituals and Blues, yet it’s a song that’s very stylistically modern. Roberta Flack first exposed me to that song with the recording in the early 70’s. And Both Sides Now has always resonated with me as a piece about looking back over one's life. I don't think I could've sung it with any real gut connection in my twenties or even thirties. It’s an old-soul song.

JS: The Hollywood Master Chorale for the LA Composers Concert performed your composition, ‘Pavements’. This must have been a tremendous form of validation for your years of artistic endeavour. Do you like the complex enormity of the orchestral setting as much as you do the intimate quartet date?

ACB: Yes! And it’s a real challenge for me, because it isn't my experience or my background. I've always been in amazement and awe of composers and orchestrators of huge pieces, because it really takes such great craft and skill and nuance and the understanding of musical relationships to write something for that many voices or instruments and not have it be just a cacophony of noise. It's like juggling 80 balls in the air. And in the orchestral sense of the word, Pavements is still very small and intimate; but it was such a high to hear 45 voices singing it. And it's also just an odd piece; so it had every potential to stick out like a sore thumb on this bill with all these beautiful, romantic pieces, because it isn't a ‘pretty’ piece. I describe it as ambient-industrialist pop, in that it's meant to mimic the mechanized sounds of industry and factories and trains, which, for me, is the image evoked when I think of L.A.’s homeless, which is what Pavements is about. But it got a really lovely response, so yes I felt quite validated.

JS: What are some of the challenges of working with a great group of musicians like Ed Czach, Don Kasper and Craig Pilo? Do egos sometimes get in the way?

ACB: Well, they’re the best musicians I know, hands down. So, the challenge for me is rising to the occasion when I perform with them. They make me better than I am. These three guys are very different and distinct personalities, personally and musically. So there is every potential for artistic clashes, and yet it's never happened. They all bring their own aspect of musicianship and approach to the table, and it just works. The only ego clashing we’ve had yet is arguments over who's buying the round of beer on the next set break. It’s been a wonderful journey playing with these gentlemen.

JS: Tell us about some of the creative projects you will be engaged in soon?

ACB: I’m trying to write more music toward another singer/songwriter folk album. Folk music is my musical alter ego, as you know. I’m trying to get the next novel published. And I’m just trying to live well, honour this new one-kidneyed body, and continue to be of service through these artistic pursuits. And thank you for such a wonderful opportunity to talk about it all.

Offeat L.A.
(transcribed from the KCLA-FM radio broadcast interview)
by Chuck Erickson
March 2009

Q. How and when did you discover your musical talent?

A. At about 10, I realized I had a voice, and I constantly sang along to my favorite records. And I also was made to take piano lessons (all my siblings were), and was the only one who continued to play even just recreationally. So those were early indicators. But I seemed to resist pursuing music as I got older, and didn't choose it to study in college. Instead I got my degree in theatre (not even musical theatre!), and really hustled an acting career, refusing all auditions that were musical. I absolutely have no answers as to why I was so resistant. I think I had this view of the music industry as not one of great integrity, one that would not allow me to make music my own way….like the acting industry was any better! In hindsight, I was right AND wrong, because the independent music scene now has such power, and that is obviously a global reaction to a frustrating industry. I think the point at which I lost my resistance was when I discovered I really couldn’t deny this pulse in me, and that happened somewhere in my mid-twenties. In this day and age, in terms of the mainstream record industry, you’re already over-the-hill by your mid-twenties. So, this is a very interesting business to be in, to say the least.

Q. When did you start performing to an audience?

A. My first performance in front of others was getting the lead on a song when I was in the church choir. I was a teenager. The Sunday morning arrived, and I was so nervous that my voice was trembling, and I remember wanting to scream “this isn’t how I really sound!” which makes me smile every time I think of it. I started singing in clubs in my mid-twenties, first with a cover band, then with a cabaret act. The eighties were big on cabaret.

Q. I understand you do both Jazz and Folk music, an unusual combination, how did that come to be?

A. Just the two sides of me, I guess. I began with jazz. By my late twenties I had discovered that jazz was the direction I wanted to go in. Again, it’s that question of what has integrity. And I found it in jazz. I didn’t find it too many other areas. Pop music bored me. Jazz challenged me. I started writing in that vein, and discovering and uncovering this really complex and rich harmonic environment that was so interesting to me. For years, it was all I pursued. It wasn’t until about 8-10 years ago, after putting all original music to bed for a period of hibernation, that when I resurfaced again as a songwriter, I surprisingly found this simple folk music coming out of me. And it wasn’t AT ALL about complex harmonic environments and bebop melodies. It was all about heart. And frankly, the simpler I wrote the more naked the emotional expression was. The lyric was important. And it was a music about exposing the opened heart. But it’s not like it suddenly replaced jazz for me. I found these two sides of me sprouting and growing side by side. And they were each speaking to me in very different ways. Musical challenge and expressing my heart.

Q. You have 2 CDs out right now, one Folk, the other Jazz. Tell us a bit more about them.

A. Two just released simultaneously, one for each project. Expressionism is my jazz CD with my group The Slow Club Quartet (named after our first cd The Slow Club, which is named after a legendary jazz club in Paris). Expressionism was named after the art movement, because our whole approach to this cd was very much about bashing the status quo, so we did all covers (except one track), whereas, with the first cd it was all originals. And yet we didn’t choose to do a “standards” cd, which is pretty much what you tend to get with a cover song jazz recording. Instead (and here was our inspiration from the art movement) we culled material from every genre outside of jazz, and then placed them in a jazz environment. We all brought songs to the table, and so it was a very collaborative effort. We’re doing Tom Waits, and Hendrix, and Elliott Smith. But we’re jazz. Music for the Weeping Woman, my folk cd with guitarist Ken Rosser, is all original, and was inspired by Picasso’s series of portraits The Weeping Women. They’re portraits of women in various depictions of despair, but I extended that concept to include depictions of yearning, joy, sadness, self-discovery. It’s about the phenomenon of weeping being very healing. It’s a sweet, fragile music, and even with calling it folk, it isn’t exclusively acoustic guitar. Ken Rosser is very much an experimentalist, and he plays around with mood and ambience.

Q. What are your influences?

A. Mystics, philosophers, artists and innovators, pushers of envelopes, those unconcerned with zeitgeist, those unafraid to celebrate their inner fool. When I think of influences, I don’t think of people I’ve tried to emulate, so much as people who have inspired me to approach music, and art in general, in a certain way. So let’s see….Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Emmylou Harris, Cassandra Wilson, Ella Fitzgerald (the first person who made me want to sing), Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Dostoevsky (the first writer that made me want to write novels), Picasso, all of the abstract artists, Kandinsky, Jackson Pollock, Chagall, the Impressionists, German Expressionism. There's too many!

Q. Interesting that you have painters as influences. Do you paint also?

A. Actually, a little bit, yes I do. But I'm not even necessarily referring to these influences as having bearing on my own painting. I believe they've even influenced my music. Because it's all about approach to expression. And that approach absolutely moves across the board of mediums. I think it's no accident that I have an entire album of folk music that was inspired by a series of Picasso portraits, or that my newest jazz CD is named after an art movement. Painters can influence how I write books, and novelists can influence how I make music, and musicians can influence how I paint. It's all just about approach to expression.

Q. And that brings me to the question of you doing a lot more than just music. Can you speak a little bit more about your other talents?

A. I’m also a novelist of literary fiction. I have one book published so far, but three others completed. The one that’s already out there in the world is called Trading Fours, about L.A. musicians (something I know a little bit about). Interestingly enough, the others aren’t about music or musicians at all. Only this one. I write books that are character studies. Again, that turning-inward thing that I’m kind of crazy about. I love self-examination. I believe within self-examination, and especially the examination of pain, is where we discover the truth in humanity. And I love books, music, movies, etc. that do that. So it’s what I try to do myself. And I also put out a yoga CD last year, which is an auditory class with a beautiful score of music accompanying it, improvised by The Global Folk.

Q. What is the ultimate goal for your music?

A. I’d like to be GOTTEN, first and foremost. Other than that, and continuing to create in that way, I want to get songs in film and television. Which isn’t a particularly original thought. I think that’s what every songwriter wants these days. It seems to be where music can get the most presence and touch the most ears. And when music is used in a dramatic environment, it has the potential to be so powerful.

Q. What contribution do you hope to make to the world?

A. To create art that is lasting, that transforms and transcends. Art is as important to culture and to the evolution of the human race as science is, and I’d like to one of the ones that got to have a voice there.

Q. Think of anything else you might want to share with the audience.

A. It's kind of my little mantra. Create, even if you’re not an artist, support other artists, especially the independents, live your life well (doesn’t take money to do it), and be whole.

DoctorBlog
Meet the Author!
by David Roy
October 2006

While fully engaged in the pursuit of her career as a novelist, Angela Carole Brown has actually spent the past two decades making her living as a musician in L.A. So it seems only fitting that her first literary release would be a tale of music.

TRADING FOURS is the story of four musicians, whose lives collide in a single day. And it may seem like a natural fit, a musician writing about musicians, but the idea didn't actually come to Brown until four novels later.

"For years in this endeavor I've persevered through trying to write books that examined themes of people in search of their souls. Finally I thought to myself, hmmm, what about that thing you do for a living? It was just so right under my nose."

TRADING FOURS does indeed continue Brown's internal compulsion, spinning a day in the life of four people who must each face a crossroads in their lives. And yet it's also probably her most lighthearted effort to date.

"There's just a buoyancy to musicians," she offers fondly. "You simply can't keep them weighted down in pathos for too long." Which means that while it may indeed show its propensity for combing the depths, TRADING FOURS is, according to Brown, still designed to be a fun read.

"When I first announced to friends that I was writing this book I asked for anecdotes. Crazy things that might've happened to them on gigs, or just within the course of living this life. And stories came out of the woodwork. Some I was able to use, others not. But it told me, most profoundly, that musicians are hungry to have their story told. In the layman's mind, you're either Sting or you're the bad lounge act often parodied in sketch comedies. The vast vista of reality that lives in between those two extremes is largely unknown to most people."

She certainly has the vantage point of experience, having been a fixture on the L.A. music scene for two decades, recording jingles, voice-overs, and CDs for herself and others, authoring and starring Off-Broadway in her own one-woman show, working clubs and concert halls in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. And, more to the undeniable point, being a veteran of the wedding and bar mitzvah circuit.

"And there's the punch line, folks. No matter how fabulous you start to feel, singing for David Foster or touring the Far East, you're always guaranteed to be humbled by having to announce, 'and now ladies and gentlemen, the bouquet toss!' That's what TRADING FOURS is about. It can be a very schizophrenic life."

Bouquet tosses aside, and only reinforcing that musicians are indeed a persevering breed, today, thanks to TRADING FOURS, Angela Carole Brown now also speaks to us as a new voice in American letters.

A. One of the characters is a "chick singer" that people will automatically assume is me. But I'm really lurking in all the characters, perhaps in ways not so obvious to people who know me. Likewise, the singer character is many women I know. The dynamic she has with her partner, for example, was very directly inspired by a girlfriend of mine. But people will assume. Every one of these characters is a composite of many.

A. I asked friends for anecdotes when I was writing this, because there are hilarious antics that exist in a kind of musician Hall of Fame, and I wanted stories that I could weave into my premise. So, this one friend of mine kept giving me great stuff, but he’d repeatedly say, “you’re gonna change my name, right?” It took everything in me to try to explain to him that I wasn’t writing an exposé, that this was FICTION. I still don’t think he quite got it, bless his heart.

A. I like character studies, and I like feeling things very deeply. So my books all have sort of the same running theme, which is the search for one's soul. Except that soul has always been such a troublesome word for me. It's murky. Some attach it to religion, others simply to sentimentality. The best I can figure is that it's this unquantifiable something that has to do with our fundamental identity, our sense of right, our clarity. And because these things are of concern to every man and woman, it is the one word embraced by religious zealots and atheists alike. Frankly, I'm just on a mission to self-discover.

A. I started my first novel at 20. It took eight years to complete a first draft. And for the past twenty-something years I've been at it, till I've got four novels in my pocket, to date.

A. You're absolutely right. In the commercial world, it isn't a lot. An agent wants to hear that you're able to churn out one every ten months. Every ten months! That's the figure I actually heard at the seminar of this high-powered agent once. And if you're writing a genre book, something with a very specific formula and template, then every ten months is certainly doable. It's like connecting dots, you just assemble the pieces. But for better or for worse, I just don't want to write those kinds of books. I'm trying my damnedest to reinvent genre with every effort. I think that's what makes a great novel. And that's what I'm always trying to do. And that takes time.

Q. If there are other novels before this one, why is this one your first published?

A. Well, first of all, it’s not my first published work, just my first published novel. But why this novel before the others is because I'm publishing this book independently. I've had agents. None has been successful at getting me a book deal, though each has been in my corner in extraordinary ways. Finally I decided not to wait around any longer for someone else to tell me that I matter. And at the time of that decision, this was the freshest one out of the typewriter. Plus, because the subject matter is actually what I do for a living, I figured I'd have an easy built-in audience just among my comrades.

Q. If you had such a hard time getting a deal, did you ever think that maybe your writing just wasn’t good enough?

A. Well, at some point, maybe even MANY points in my life, my writing was NOT good enough. I've been through a lot of workshops, received a lot of feedback from some every sage minds, have been turned down by publishers who absolutely should have turned me down, and have learned a great deal about this extraordinary art form. Today I believe I am good enough. And at a certain point, you also realize that there will always be more you can learn, therefore don't let that unquantifiable everything, that you will, frankly, never reach, become a self-sabotaging crutch. You can fine-tune a thing to death, all just out of the fear of putting it out there for public scrutiny.

Q. Also, don't you think that the way the publishing industry has shifted has to have something to do with the difficulty that perfectly gifted writers are facing?

A. God, yes! A great novel used to matter to a publisher, and that’s just not so true today. Yet there’s still this stigma attached to “self-published,” as if to infer that the writing must not be good enough if no one will take it on. Well, that stigma may have once had legitimacy, back in the days when publishers actually cared about great books, and took pride in discovering and nurturing the next Virginia Woolf or Kurt Vonnegut. If you look at many of the books on store shelves today, you know without a doubt that standards have been lowered, and criteria shifted. It's all about revenue. It's no longer about, "let's give this book a chance because it's worthy, and we'll give the public no choice but to deal with quality." No one seems to be brave anymore. So the traditional book route has, in my mind, lost much of its credibility. And yet the stigma remains, and unfortunately that'll be the anvil on my back. All I can do is let the book speak for itself.

Q. The play Sideman, which was running last year, is also about musicians. How would your book compare with it?

A. I first heard about that play when I was writing mine, and all I could think was, "damn it!" But, in fact, that story comes from a very different angle than mine. And it's a play. A living, moving organism, which means that music, itself, is a part of the experience. I had a very different set of challenges ahead of me, because in many ways it's odd writing a book about music. The actual listening-to-music is not a part of the experience. Or so one might think. In truth, words are a stunningly powerful medium, and can absolutely bring alive a music in one's ears, or a vibrantly hued painting to one's eyes, or a savory taste to one's palate. That was my challenge.

Q. Talk about a character study. Would you consider that one of your early influences?

A. It is, single handedly, what made me decide to write. The whole idea of being able to get inside this character, who is a pretty despicable guy, and really getting him, understanding what makes him tick, even empathizing with him. Some people are quite afraid, or abhorred to the idea, of empathizing with a bad guy, because they put all their beliefs in the comfortable, if simpleminded, archetypes of good-and-evil. The whole grey area is quite uncomfortable for them. But it is what makes me excited about a story. Also, a handful of contemporary novels lately have really influenced me and made me come back to them more than once. See, that's what I've never understood from people who say that they don't amass a library of books, because they don't keep their books once they've read them. To me, it's no different from a movie. Wouldn't you want to revisit that experience again, if it was a remarkable one?

Q. Well, some people can't watch a movie more than once either. They consider the experience redundant, and are about living in the present. What do you say to that?

A. I can completely embrace the idea of living in the present. It's actually everything that my own spiritual practice is about. But are you telling me that those same people never buy a record or a CD? Because, according to that idea, once you've heard Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, why ever listen to it again? I always go back to books that have given me an incredible journey. And I'll almost always, if it's great writing, discover something new with each return.

A. Michael Cunningham's The Hours. His compositional structure was something I learned a lot from. It was his book that made me decide to play around with the idea of placing Trading Fours in third-person-present, as compared with the most common form, third-(or first)-person past. It won't work with every kind of tale, but can, if it does work, give a more intimate immediacy to the story. It can make the reader feel like they're there, going through this life with these characters. Also his way of creating symbiosis between seemingly unrelated scenarios.

Q. You said that Trading Fours wasn't the first work you ever published. What was?

A. Oh goodness! Well, I've actually had some poems published in compilations. But the very first published piece was this angry letter to Rona Barrett's Hollywood Magazine. I was, like, eleven. And I was pissed off at this great review she gave The Bad News Bears, and this terrible review she gave to Bingo Long's Traveling All-stars. I guess it was her baseball movie issue. Anyway, I think I called her a racist. I was eleven, and already this feisty little militant.

A. Me? God, no! I'm status-quo to points of banal. And I was just so ecstatic that they published it that I was theirs forever. Apparently, I'll sell my soul for a byline.

Q. They say that the first book we read and the first music we hear defines the person we become. What was the first record and book you remember buying or reading as a kid?

A. First record was Danny Kaye narrating these folktales from Czechoslovakia. Utterly enchanting. First book, outside of the "see Spot run" books I was obligated to read in school, was this thick little dime store pulp novel, Iceberg Slim's Pimp. I was way too young to be reading it. And I'm not sure I want to know what that says about me.

A. Eastmountainsouth's self-titled CD. Their music is the perfect marriage of rural and European folk. And Toni Morrison's Love.

A. What I want to say is to non-readers: please pick up a book, any book, and watch it change your life.

In studio with Clayton Riley WLIB 1190 AM New York 28:08		In studio with TR Black KUCI 88.9 FM Irvine 31:23		In studio with Barry Gaston KMUW 89.1 FM Wichita 31:08