Thoughts

Here's your extra bonus insight. Thanks for following along on this journey.  I moved to San Diego in 1992 to attend the University of California, San Diego for graduate school. My bass teacher, Bertram Turetzky, hooked me up early on with the talented Keeling...

Pamela York is probably my closest friend from those San Diego days. We met shortly after she moved to town and we hit it off immediately. We would meet once a week to work out new material, challenge each other to expand our repertoire, and eat lunch and...

In my Los Angeles days, Todd Johnson and I played a bunch of duo concerts and even made a tour together in the Pacific Northwest. This wasn’t your typical duo because Todd plays 6-string electric bass. He could do all the melodies, chords, and bass lines without...

This song comes from Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”. It gets counted as a holiday song because of the show, but I think the theme is good all year round. I also want to give some kudos to Magnus Hjorth. He plays ever so elegantly on this track. He has two little...

I'm back to Lou Rawls again. He was such a badazz. This song is really a theme from the 1960's where issues of social justice were at the forefront of people's minds. I think the message is just as relevant today as it was back then. We need to take good care of...

Lou Rawles sang this song in 1967 on his album Merry Christmas. Ho! Ho! Ho! This was right in the middle of the civil rights movement in the United States. There was a lot of social unrest and people weren't very kind to each other. Thinking about the turmoil...

As a kid, I had a record player and a special box that held my treasured records. One of the few albums I remember from that time period is “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” by the Peppermint Kandy Kids. Looking online to see what was on that album, I’m sure I had at...