I love the concept of woodshedding, a term mostly used in jazz circles to describe isolating yourself and practicing your chops. Because there are only so many hours in a day, I tend to fluctuate between playing a lot and playing none at all, and when I’m not playing, attending to the other aspects of music production or life.
The past several days I’ve been getting back to the basics – not woodshedding in the real sense of the word, but just rediscovering my love for and the joy of great music. It’s a serious cure, and lately I’ve been taking it all in…
Sunday night I saw an incredible performance of Steve Reich‘s Music for 18 Musicians at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC, put on by Wordless Music.
Yesterday I found a copy online of the Dave Matthews Band’s first studio recordings from 1992, which blow me away for several reasons: at times they sound like total shit, which is reassuring. But Dave’s songwriting abilities were mature from the beginning – these early versions show that some of his best songs were forged in the group’s most amateur moments.