Whether 'Tis Nobler in the Mind to Suffer...for One's Art?

I call this photo: "City Street, 2:01am." That's fairly descriptive, right? It doesn't really pertain to anything other than the fact that as a musician I'm usually up at 2:01am after just having gotten home from work. So I see this view of the city a lot.

So what is it, exactly, that we do as musicians? The darker view is that we entertain drunks and tourists in bars, pass the tip bucket, then go home with a stack of $1 bills feeling like strippers just off our shift at Billy's Topless. When we get hired to do a private function in a mansion or country club, I've often said that we're curios in the parlours of the rich and famous. There's no feeling quite like dressing in your finest James Bond shawl collar tuxedo, cuff links, studs and bow tie, only to be made to take the service elevator out by the dumpster scum in the alley because you're an (ugh!) musician. That's the seamy underbelly of what we do and how we're regarded by polite "society."

A brighter view of what we do was once put to me by a painter who said that even in bars full of drunks, we create a unity of spirit and energy, bringing people together in a common expression of joy with our meter and musical ruminations. I find this an incredibly bright spin put on an otherwise questionable profession in (formerly) smoky nightclubs where vice and alcoholism are practiced simultaneously with our unifying artistic expressions. But the painter had a point, especially as it pertains to concert stage performances, festivals, original music, etc. Occasionally we are part of some very powerful vortex of human energy, moving a massive crowd in perfect unison towards some realization of joy or pathos or catharsis or protest. These are the moments we cherish.

These are the moments we think about at 2am when getting home from another bar in the city. Even if two people in the bar have been entertained, transfixed, transported, soothed, or encouraged by what we do, there's some nobility left in what we're accomplishing. It's easy to lose sight of sometimes. It's also difficult to explain to the laity that playing a bar gig isn't a lowering of professional standards. Quite the opposite, it allows us to practice our craft, keep fluid on our instrument, and generally stay in touch with people, tastes and trends.

The challenge here is trying to find avenues to introduce new original material. This proves much more difficult. Drunks in bars want to be entertained by cover material, songs they know. This is understandable. After the economy has tanked, the pension fund is gone, the pink slip has been delivered, the last thing a late night reveler wants to hear is an experimental piece of music advancing the boundaries of jazz harmony and stretching concepts of previously accepted listenability. This is as it should be. People need and deserve to be entertained in a setting like that.

But if a musician is aspiring to be an artist rather that just an artisan, there needs to be some venue available to stretch the boundaries, to create anew. Fortnately for me I've found a couple of like-minded compatriots this year who have also decided that it's time to do something original. We've been meeting at the drummer's house every week or so to play and record each other's original material. The results have been enormously satisfying.

To whit, I'm about to release a CD of my original writings recorded with my friends Jim Dower on keys and Joe Goretti on drums. All of it is us playing live in the "studio" (ok, Joey's spare bedroom), all fun stuff. The music is something like Ramsey Lewis and Lou Donaldson having a jam session with The Meters. It's soul jazz. It's music you can simultaneously wrap your mind and your booty around. It's our expression of who we are, what we do, and why we play music at all. I'll keep you posted about the release date. I'm aiming for May 1. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile I'm off to play another long bar gig tonight, entertaining drunks and tourists in Times Square. It's not Madison Square Garden or Carnegie Hall. But I can't think of a nobler pursuit....

Ivan Bodley
Brooklyn, NY

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