Hi friends,

I’m writing with something a little different today—a miniature tribute to Jack DeJohnette, one of my greatest musical inspirations, who passed last week at the age of 83.

As a musician it’s important to have people to model yourself after. This doesn’t mean we should imitate or copy our heroes, but moreso dig into their artistic essence and try to bring that energy in our own way into our own physical / temporal / cultural context. Drummer / composer / pianist Jack DeJohnette has been that guiding inspiration for me.

Since even before I really considered myself a jazz musician, I’ve found myself returning to Jack’s extensive discography as a leader and sideman to wake up my brain in times of creative exhaustion. His drumming always fascinated me because it’s rarely obvious what he’s playing, yet it still feels grooving. He also was never afraid to take rhythmic risks, allowing the drums to be heard as a key part of the harmonic material of the music. The beat is never boxed in. Jack’s drumming approach taught me that if you have a good feel for what’s going on, you shouldn’t be afraid of breaking up the beat, because you can always come back to it, and any fracture / diversion you create is likely to inspire interesting musical choices from your collaborators.

As a drummer who composes music, Jack’s legacy has also been crucial to my artistic development. Jack DeJohnette albums are fully formed sound worlds, often unlike anything else you’ve heard before. While that didn’t always help his case with the critics, it has certainly lit many creative fires for sound seekers like myself who are trying to synthesize many influences into a personal statement. In my opinion, Jack’s compositions and recordings always suggest that more can be done. They take the jazz and pop sounds of the time and present them at strange angles and orientations, reminding you that the difference between being in and out of fashion or in or out of musical time is to some degree quite arbitrary.

As a sound designer and collaborator, Jack DeJohnette has left a legacy people will still be trying to catch up with for decades to come. I plan to be one of those people following in his footsteps—finding interesting ways to combine new musical styles and flip old influences on their heads, and treating my drum set like an orchestra, adjusting each skin and cymbal to help bring out the best of every sonic moment.

I’ll leave you with this little tribute I made to Jack on my 2021 album Original Medicine. Unlike the rest of my album, which is all solo recordings of me playing drums in my basement, this track came from a 2018 studio session that never got used. It was actually a soundcheck. It features myself on drums improvising with Leo Galbraith-Paul and Justin Enoch, both playing laptops. This little jam stuck with me for years after the recording session, and when I was putting together Original Medicine in 2020, I thought it would be a good throughline between the pandemic necessitated solo music, and my broader musical vision.

I call it Multidirectional Beams because Jack’s drumming is frequently described as multidirectional, and his self-produced record label is called Golden Beams.

I think the “loose tightness” of my drumming combined with a futuristic timbral landscape is very much in the spirit of Jack. I hope you enjoy it, and also spend some time digging into the music and history of Jack DeJohnette.

Listen here