What's New?
I know I'm not the only person walking the planet with random, uninvited music suddenly/intermittently appearing in my brain. In an email exchange recently, a friend referred to this as "head radio". Sometimes it's other people's music and sometimes it's my own. I've learned to pay attention to these broadcasts, because they're often wellsprings of creativity. Wherever head radio comes from, during the 3+ (!) years that the Bruce Kaphan Quartet album was in production, Bob Haggart's 1939 classic What's New kept popping into my consciousness. Having learned to pay attention to such things, I came to the conclusion that this meant something (at least to me!) and decided to pursue recording the song. |
 | | Bruce Kaphan Quartet at Fantasy Studios' Studio A, June 13, 2011 (photo by James Saxon) |
This track was one of three produced and engineered by Mark Needham at Fantasy Studios, Studio A, on June 13, 2011. My old friend David Cilberti brought together a video crew and shot the session. Videos of the making of What's New, and the other two tracks we recorded that day, the Allman Bros. Band classic Jessica and Weather Report's Birdland are available at youtube.
I come from a relatively small family. My father was an only child and my mother had but one brother, so I only ever had one true uncle, Uncle Fred. Our families were close when I was young, but have kind of drifted apart as we've aged, however, we still do see each other from time to time, and when we do, Uncle Fred almost always begins our conversation with the question, you guessed it, "what's new?". I couldn't resist dedicating this recording of What's New to him!
The video of the making of this track features Jason Lewis on drums, John R. Burr on piano and Jeffrey Wash on electric fretless bass. The audio-only version of the tune features Jason Lewis on drums, John R. Burr on piano and John Wiitala on upright bass. |
