2011 was a massive year for the world and a massive year for me personally. I believe we recorded this in May which means by that point the Arab Spring, Osama Bin Laden's death and the terrible earthquake and tsunami near Fukushima would have occurred to name just a few of that years notable events. Best I can tell is this album was recorded May 16th 2011, the same day Europe came through with a 78 billion Euro deal for Portugal amid a world plagued by the sub prime debt crisis.
We (Dave, Nick and I) talked about all these things and we talked about our personal lives and we tried to understand the human condition together. We played multiple nights a week for a long time and decided to record this album for me to release as "Brian Myers Trio" which I did on burnt CD's distributed at work or at friends houses. I drew on each disc with permanent marker and personalized it for those I gave a copy.
Dave was about 65 at the time of this recording and I was 27 with Nick a year or two younger than me. It was an amazing experience to develop our routine and our friendships and to learn from one another and to use music as a functional tool for "interacting about life" together. Dave has always been a deep thinker and would often stop us mid tune, abandoning what we were working on to capture a move we'd made so that it could be "in the bag" so to speak. By this recording we had a bunch of "moves" that we all knew and could cue one another intentionally or instinctively to get them going.
The important thing to get across about this album is the personal nature of the music. It is a mentor and his two young students returned after growing up a bit. They're trying to follow the lessons of the great jazz masters of the past and work with enough diligence and frequency to make something special happen. It wasn't really a product as much as a way of being or a way of thinking about things together. It sounds woo woo but for instance I recall the Deep Water Horizon Oil spill and that we had a session and we of course spoke of it and Dave commissioned me to "play the sound of the oil and water mixing down below" and I tried to do so on the drums and then we discussed the symbolism. These same approaches were used for anything from current events to personal problems to things as simple as a back ache.
Hearing the screams and wails and the movements of animals and the characterization of forces like death itself in concert music we tried to play in ways that evoked whatever we were talking about. We were at the time and remain grateful for one another and those who have supported us to allow us the joy of making music together. Especially music like this that ranges from serious to silly and everything in between.