In the middle of my first world tour as Jackson Brownes' guitarist, my tech brought me a VHS copy of Spinal Tap for the bus ride after that night's show. We had just played Cleveland. We had just gotten lost in the basement of the arena trying to find the dressing rooms. We had also run into the janitor who had to guide us back out. Now I understood why our bassist, the legendary Bob Glaub, had been banging his head against the wall mumbling "my life is Spinal Tap". I yanked the cassette out of the player 15 minutes into the movie and it took years to make it all the way through and find the humor in any of it. Now any reference to it cracks me up. Such has been my career.
Growing up in Natchez, Mississippi I dreamed of being in a big band, playing big shows with artists I admired. I've been amazingly lucky to have done so, starting with Boz Scaggs, moving to Don Henley's first solo tour, on to Don's friend Jackson Browne’s band, to Billy Joel and his politically ground breaking tour of Russia and back around the world with all of them to the tour to end all tours (or at least mine), Peter Cetera's first solo tour after leaving Chicago.
In the process I got to play on dozens of albums with those guys and many more, as well as hundreds of TV and film soundtracks, national commercials and demos with some of the best writers and producers in the world.
During that first tour with Don, his co producer and co writer Danny Kortchmar (and huge hero of mine) took me aside in production rehearsals and asked "Do you write? You should write, you think like a writer". I hadn't thought about it since an early experience getting screwed out of 1/2 of a cowrite and all publishing royalties on a major film end title, but I figured if Danny says I should be doing it, I should. That led to a pub deal with Arista, which became RCA, which became, BMG, then Universal, then SONY, then... crap... who knows. I got to write with some great writers and got some decent cuts. Also got to ghost on some TV and film soundtracks and write some jingles that did OK. Thank you Danny.
Thanks to the tech advances of the 2000s my work went from driving into Hollywood, Burbank and Santa Monica for sessions to swapping files for guitar tracks and cowriting via the internet machine. That led to sessions for producers Busbee, Mike Elizondo and Greg Kurstin for artist like P!nk, Lily Allen, Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson, plus many more jingles, industrials and cowrites for Kompass publishing. I loved the tech, but missed the hangs. To make up for that, I ride my bikes a lot with guys I love hanging out with. All in all, a good middle ground. Keeps me out of rush hour traffic, which in LA now extends from 6AM to 8PM. Solid. But the trails and highways in the mountains above Los Angeles are a different world.
During the 20 teens I increasingly spent much of the year in my home town with my aging parents. Much of what I knew as a kid was now abandoned, standing empty and in accelerating decay. I began capturing as much as I could via my iPhone cam and would spend evenings over tacos and beers in a pub on the banks of the Mississippi River experimenting with software and apps in an attempt to turn a depressing reality that I wouldn’t care to revisit into pieces of art that might blend that reality with my romanticized memories. Practicing those techniques in that environment made me curious as to how it might work on other subjects which has led to a growing catalogue of pieces from the California coasts and mountains.
Hit the link below and drop me note to collaborate, just say hey, or ride a bike in some of the most beautiful country on the planet.
Peace,
KD