Dig the bass. The east bay grease that was hopin' in and out of Vietnamese Restaurants in Oakland as my guest plays a reality fender. Locking the groove like Bob Cranshaw, helping swing the band with David Garibaldi whose big band background helped drive the Tower of Power. Of coarse it's deeper than that. It always is and my guest is too modest to call attention to himself. If anything he encourages cats to play their own bass lines rather than coming his. Be yourself and don't change horses in...
Sep 30, 2020•30 min
Last time I spoke with my guest he hipped me to Herbie Nicholas, Village Music and the album Bass Ball which I still haven't found. Since that time I Have been Woodshedding in many different regions of the country. Talking to Charlie Daniels about his bluegrass upbringings in Appalachia, or maybe Bill Keith who is a master of the banjo. It Could have been talking with Peter Rowan before a concert I promoted for him in Sahuarita where he talked about why the outlaws migrated from Texas to Stinson...
Sep 29, 2020•1 hr 3 min
My guest today is the drummer for one of the most recognized psychedelic rock bands in our countries history. The band was already intact when a young woman named Janice Joplin came aboard from Texas with an unpretentious style in the same mold as Ron McKernan, Jorma Kaukonen and David Bromberg. Her style was unique and she gravitated to the Bay Area where the folk rock scene was burgeoning with open minded musicians who were drinking bathtubs full of LSD. The whole vibe was less uptight than th...
Sep 29, 2020•1 hr 56 min
Preserving American Folk Music with the Dawg!
Sep 28, 2020•1 hr 27 min
Gifted musician and producer talks about his debut solo EP and the necessary adaptability of musicians in the age of COVID.
Sep 28, 2020•1 hr 13 min
San Francisco, back again my friend to the days of wine and roses -Cal Tjader, Bayete, Armando Peraza, Eddie Marshall Ron Stallings, and the rest of the Mill Valley Gang which included David "What are their names" Crosby. San Francisco was a beautiful artistic enclave before anybody knew it was great. It was an incubator of Latin Funk mixed with Psychedelic Rock and 1st generation blues players like a John Lee Hooker. Marin City was filled with the sounds of Wes Montgomery and Bola Sete. My gues...
Sep 28, 2020•59 min
As I continue to wade deeper into how real music is made I have stumbled across cats who were masters of all trades and helped the music grow both sonically and substantively. By this I mean they had the chops to play across the entire musical spectrum, they had gods gifts of love to feel the music. To swing from Rock to Bach to Soul. My guest is one of the cats with huge chops and great feel. Except my guest today is different in that his trades expand far beyond the keyboards. He is one of the...
Sep 28, 2020•39 min
The just way It Had to Be....isn't that the old saying when you look back and ahead in the moment. It's teddy Edwards blowing some West Coast Southern California Hard Bop with the melodic percussive vibes of Milt Jackson playing bags groove keeping time with Ray Brown and the late great Dick Berk. My guest today is from the island of Jamaica where jazz had come to the forefront because of contributions of Dizzy Gillespie, Bennie Golson, Big Black Clu J and The Blues Blasters Aubry Adams and my g...
Sep 28, 2020•47 min
King of the session cats breaks down his love of all music.
Sep 28, 2020•1 hr 8 min
Incredible vocalist talks about his humble upbringings backing up Ben E. King and other American blues artists and moving to the States and playing with Carlos Santana and Bill Kreutzmann.
Sep 28, 2020•50 min
My guest today is the greatest banjo player the world has ever seen. That could be because of the advent of air travel but probably not. He was born in Boston, MA a city rich with history and prose and fiddling. This breadbasket of culture lent itself to my guest who was bubbling with an urge to play burning music- bluegrass music. From the Ash Grove Fiddlers Convention to Farms in Appalachia my guest found himself playing with the father of bluegrass Bill Monroe. In time he recognized Monroe's ...
Sep 27, 2020•58 min
The dirt farmer, a cultivator of land in Arkansas. Toiling in the fields with a rhythm of his own. Unique, not like Gene Krupa or Buddy Rich or Earl Palmer but a pulsating percolating personification that set the dirt farmer apart from every other drummer. My guest today is a guitar player with a unique and distinctive sound that roils in his hometown of Woodstock, NY. Unlike every long haired kid who showed up on a bus my guests roots are in Woodstock before Dave Holland and John Simon and Bern...
Sep 27, 2020•1 hr 34 min
I have been marinating in different regional pockets of music for quite sometime. The pockets of this country where unique music developed because of culture, heritage and a need for individuality. Of late the great state of Louisiana has been turning round inside as I have interviewed Ellis Marsalis, Allan Toussaint and last weekend Leo Nocentelli. Those cats call New Orleans home with all the beauty and bumps, they saw their individuality accentuated, they saw their families moving upward and ...
Sep 27, 2020•1 hr 40 min
RAT ON Rat on Rat on. My guest is not himself these days because if he was he would be settling in to the latter stages of life, winding down and having his larger family contingent pick up where he left off. But that's not how this chapter is being written. My guest today is performing at a prolific clip criss crossing the country in an effort to be a link in the chain. It could be doing the Hickey Burr with Cleveland Eaton raising money for Miles College in Alabama or any black college that su...
Sep 27, 2020•1 hr 4 min
My guest was born near the Mason-Dixon Line but was close enough to Rock Creek Park that he sucked in all the sounds of Mid-Atlantic America. The bluegrass of Chubby Wise and Bill Monroe, the baselines of Richard Davis, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Garrison, the soul sanctification of Wilson Pickett and Sam Cooke and the Chuck Berry, Little Richard Rock beat. My guest studied and studied. By studying I mean on the bandstand. Getting comfortable expressing himself at times like a melodic instrument wh...
Sep 27, 2020•40 min
This man gives me faith in human evolution. Rock on....
Sep 27, 2020•56 min
One of the 4Ls of the JFS is Lineage. The idea of a family tree, where unique sounds originated from and where the sound spectrum lives in today's electronica world. The father of Bluegrass was Bill Monroe, John Lee Hooker Champion Jack Dupree, Howlin Wolf and Muddy Waters, Michael Bloomfield, Nick Gravenites were fathers and sons somewhere in that mix. Sam Cooke and Ray Charles slow cooked soul music was real rhythm and blues along with Chuck Berry who could play in 7/4 it didn't bother him. My...
Sep 27, 2020•58 min
*w/ special guest Will Duncan The cycle of birth and death. Who are you born to, what kind of family is it? Is it love or hate or both. Love and Hate, Fear and Insecurity, Stone Genius one step forward 3 back 2 sideways. I'm Grateful for it all. I'm grateful to be surrounded by people today who feel the emotions that drive the cycle of life and death. My guests today have been preparing themselves for peace in different ways. It could be through silent retreat for three years on a Mountain of Di...
Sep 27, 2020•41 min
Brilliant Taiwanese pianist talks about her passion to teach and stretch out past her boundaries.
Sep 27, 2020•25 min
Burning guitarist and human being shares his musical tales.
Sep 27, 2020•51 min
In a day in age when younger cats including myself feel a need to change the subject it has created a musical feel of anxiety and over reaching. The need to show off ones chops at the expense of real authentic music seems to have pervaded the universal language of communication. My guest continues to play music that don't allow for attention deficit disorder. He grooves you with Sticky Stuff that if you don't get the first time, he'll do it again and again and again. It's not how many notes you ...
Sep 26, 2020•21 min
Master human being.....
Sep 26, 2020•1 hr
Diaspora, the actual transfer of slaves from Africa to the middle islands was endemic of the cut throat policies that empires had and still have. What kept the slaves together spirituality was the drum and the rhythms that came from the drum...let the body dance the mambo or the bolero or Afro Cuban or bebop. My guest today is one of the most rhythmic percussive pianists in the world. His sound is unique and has been for the last 70 years. He came of age with Bird and Duke Basie and Ellington be...
Sep 26, 2020•58 min
My guest today is a rarified drummer that can vacillate effortlessly between the studio and a live setting. It's not your typical live musical setting. Often there are beatniks and lifers who come to the shows to grab the essence of the live music experience. The one were time and place seem to stand still as even those with anticipatory tendencies are hanging on every note, lyric and fate. Doing this in Casino's and Community Colleges and renovated Cathedrals and Roller Rinks. Flying from LA to...
Sep 26, 2020•1 hr 59 min
Badass jazz and funk drummer breaking it down....
Sep 25, 2020•1 hr 7 min
In the late sixties and early seventies many of the cats who were playing improvisational music were trying to add on to the musical thesaurus that was John Coltrane. A spinning wheel of scales and rudiments played within different scales and modalities. Expanding consciousness and spirituality in that people got to witness these performances live. Maybe it was at a bar with 9 people but this music the music of Train and Dizzy, Miles and Charlie Parker affected every musician of the next generat...
Sep 25, 2020•1 hr 20 min
The evolution of the blues written and performed by Jon Hendricks was a direct critique of where the blues emanated from. It was a reminder of the gospel tinged spirituals of the church and the preachers who slung a guitar over themselves to sing and pick and lament those lost days in the fields picking cotton in slavery. Cats like the Reverend Gary Davis, John Lee Hooker,Indianola's own BB King, Muddy Waters, Blind Willie Johnson, Mississippi Fred McDowell epitomized this pan African struggle f...
Sep 25, 2020•56 min
Technique on the drum kit is essential but meaningless without the infusion of soul. Cats have monster chops but sometimes you look up on the bandstand and they are not listening- they are thrashing trying to eek out some kind of ego maniacal communication that does nothing to elevate the music. My guest today has serious chops and serious soul. It started back with Larry Harlow and Willie Colon and Ray Barretto and Joe Cuba playing drums and timbales on countless Fania albums. The Latin feel th...
Sep 25, 2020•1 hr 1 min
Songs of the Unsung. RIP Brent. Love Always, JF
Sep 25, 2020•1 hr 44 min
Shamanic healer and yogic practitioner talks about Vedic wisdom and indigenous healing modalities that have healed her and her clients.
Sep 25, 2020•1 hr 35 min
