My musical history may help you create your own

My experience of over 60 years as a musician has been an enlightening path. I played music, wrote music and songs, and taught music at all skill levels during my evolution. I had wonderful teachers for my formal education, but most of my practical education came from writing and playing music with others. All of my collaborations fulfilled me in some way or another, whether they were with Grammy- and Academy-Award-winning writers or with any other artists nurturing powerful dreams and ambitions. I learned something from all of them, and our collaborations made me better at my own craft.

Good singers are a lean breed, great ones even more rare. The best singer I have ever worked with is Shandi Sinnamon with Carlene Carter coming in at a close second – both of these singers are naturally gifted; totally genuine. Coco Dolenz and the soulful Tina (Mason) Volk have the gift as well.  Learning the sensitivity of your role in accompanying singers is a necessity. They rely on you and you rely on them to tell the story of song. It’s all about dynamics and knowing when to push on the gas or step on the brakes. I’ve always said that songwriters make the best accompanists as they listen to and care about the story – that’s what’s most important.

One of the most vital things to learn in the creative process is simply to be patient and understanding. Creative marriages can be volatile and vulnerable, whether they span just one session or several years. They are intimate and often you stand naked and bare your soul. As each artist’s creative juices pour into the pot, emotions and other inner realities come out and take form. As often as you may be a genius, sometimes you are just as big a fool. The line between the two is thin, and you will land on both sides of it any number of times. 

So you apply patience and understanding to your own flaws, as well as to those you see in the people with whom you work. From that base you can really grow as an artist. 

Songwriting, and especially co-songwriting, is a great teacher, and certainly many songwriting partnerships resonate beautifully with little or no “rub” whatsoever. My ratio has been about fifty-fifty. I’ve loved all of my collaborators, but the two that changed my life the most were Toni Stern and Shandi Sinnamon. These women, both very independent, were – and in my mind are still – titans of creativity. Though different in many ways, they always were able to keep their eye on the ball, and to reach the end result – a good, heartfelt, and honest song. Toni’s lyrics were beyond my emotional understanding of life-experience at times (I was so young), and I had to grow up to them to consummate their marriage with my melodies. I never got there on some. As I said, Shandi is by far the best singer I have ever worked with, and in minutes she would create fabulous lyrics to my melodies and chord changes. I wrote songs with both these women for several years in consecutive segments with no overlapping; the first eight years with Toni and then another ten with Shandi, including live performance after live performance – she was a perform-a-holic, and so my playing chops really grew during that time. Subsequent to these collaborations, I combined forces with several other writers, nearly all of them women, with exceptions like my twenty-year-run with CBS on the series, JAG and NCIS, which was achieved with Roger Larocque and on occasion with two-time Academy Award winner, Joel Hirschhorn.

Lindsay Nesmith, Stephanie Karis, Barbara Babchick, Cathy Pinto, Melora Hardin, and especially Heather Stewart were all very talented collaborators. TV credits and royalties manifested from my works with three of them. Junior high bandmate and now a well-known San Francisco Bay Area writer and performer, Steve Meckfessel, and his frequent co-writer, Bob Hahn are among my more recent collaborators. I mentioned my formal education, which included teachers Tiny Moore, Earl Jacobson, Barney Kessel, Jimmy Wyble for guitar, Harry Fields and Terry Trotter for piano. I studied music theory briefly at UCSB and more extensively in LA with a private teacher, V. James Crisafulli. Even though they all stand out, I’m most fond of Tiny Moore, who taught me from the early age of nine until I was sixteen; a very impressionable time indeed. Next would be Barney Kessel, who played stuff during my lessons that made me think I was listening to a big-band horn section. I immersed myself in classical piano for several years in my twenties and early thirties with Terry Trotter, and that was a priceless experience for using the piano as a writing instrument. He’s the best pianist I personally know and as with Charles Bernstein, who is mentioned in the paragraph below, we became good friends. It’s unusual for teacher/student relationships to develop beyond the professional level, but other subliminal, simpatico forces evolved between these two masters and me. I write in my head or mostly on the guitar now, but I see it from the structure of the keyboard as regards to harmonic composition.

Last but not least is the film composer Charles Bernstein, to whom Toni Stern introduced me. He gave me my first movie date as a session musician with more to follow, working with all the great studio cats, “Wrecking Crew” veterans like Dennis Budimir, Tommy Tedesco, Mitch Holder, Ralph Grierson, Lincoln Mayorga, Claire Fischer, Mark Stevens, Joe Porcaro, Tommy Morgan and on and on. Dennis Budimir was very kind to me when I was a green twenty-one year-old. Others included, Mickey Raphael, Richard Green, Red Rhodes, Lee Ritenour and David Lindley.

Charles hired me for several of his films. A lot of my playing was in featured solos. My first film was Mr. Majestyk, starring Charles Bronson, and I played a nice featured bouzouki solo in that film. Needless to say, I was nervous as hell. Charles and I became fast friends and to this day still are. He always gave me the best life-advice. In spite of this opened door, instead of pursuing a future as a studio musician I chose to follow the ways of Toni Stern and the romantic dream of achieving a future in songwriting. For the most part, I achieved this goal, though at nowhere near the pinnacle that she reached with Carole King. But Toni had faith in me and we gave it our best shot. I still love playing our songs, just as I do the ones that Shandi and I wrote, just without her phenomenal pipes and chops. From all of this, I have developed deep insight about how to tap into the creative hearts of musicians and songwriters, whether I’m performing with them and melding a sound or acting as a musical guide to writers and players at all levels, helping them bring to the surface any missing creative pieces and/or helping them fulfill their desire for artistic growth.

My path offers outlines that can be used in tracing your own artistic future. Please get in touch if you’d like to ignite that process.