New Album! – Name & Form
Back in late 2018, while reading Eknath Easwaran’s translation of the Chandogya Upanishad (an ancient Hindu scripture), these words popped out at me:
“As by knowing one lump of clay, dear one,
We come to know all things made out of clay –
That they differ only in name and form,
While the stuff of which all are made is clay
As by knowing one gold nugget, dear one,
We come to know all things made out of gold –
That they differ only in name and form,
While the stuff of which all are made is gold
As by knowing one tool of iron, dear one,
We come to know all things made out of iron –
That they differ only in name and form,
While the stuff of which all are made is iron”
Reading this, I started to think about and feel inspired by this idea – by looking deeply into one thing, we can gain knowledge and insight into so many other similar things. This concept got me thinking about going deeply into one direction as a composer and using like elements throughout a series of pieces. In this case, I somehow settled on two mbiras and two alto saxes – the like components of two mbiras bouncing off of each other and two alto saxes in dialogue with each other. For me, these two pairs seemed to be an apt reflection of the words of the passage. There are specific elements/materials in this passage – Clay, Gold & Iron. I decided to compose three pieces for this specific instrumentation – each composition representing one of these materials.
To bring these pieces to life, I decided to enlist my Tumble bandmate Randy McKean as well as multi-reeds player Dan Plonsey. I have played music with Randy in Tumble over the past decade, but since he never plays alto in Tumble, I thought the dominant presence of alto saxes might help to differentiate the sound from the familiar sound of mbira and reeds in Tumble.
Dan Plonsey is a composer as well as a fine improviser.
He has produced many albums of original music over the years and has collaborated with many great musicians including Tom Waits, Anthony Braxton, Vinny Golia, and Ben Goldberg amongst others. Randy and Dan have worked together for years, most prominently in the wonderful and innovative saxophone quartet Goggle.
I knew that recordings and possible performances of these pieces with Randy and Dan would benefit from the well developed musical chemistry that they have from their years of playing together.
The album was recorded over two days in Spring of 2019. We recorded in my living room studio (Old Home Place Studio) and had a great time laying down these tracks.
In addition to the three primary tracks (Clay, Gold, Iron), we also recorded some free improvisations. Two excerpts from these improvisations ended up being used as transition interludes on the album.
After we had recorded all tracks, I was listening back to my overdubbed mbira parts. I was wanting to add another element to this rhythmic bedrock and thought that a pizzicato violin part might fit well with the mbiras. So.. I enlisted my daughter/violinist, Mei Lin.
She added pizz parts to all three of the primary compositions, and her parts added so much to richness of the overall “musical stew” I was going for! We ended up recording her parts through an overdriven channel on my Mesa Boogie amp. We found that the distorted tone blended nicely with the buzz from the bottle caps on the mbira. I absolutely LOVE collaborating with my kid and I am SO incredibly proud her! She is such a fine musician! In addition to her fiddling, she is also a singer/songwriter. She has released fabulous solo tracks as well as collaborations with her band Broken Compass Bluegrass.
Although I mixed most of the album myself, there was one particular track, Iron, which had many moving parts, and so I enlisted the great Oz Fritz to mix this track with me.
Oz has worked with SO many of my musical heros – Wayne Shorter, Tom Waits, Bill Laswell, Henry Threadgill, & The Golden Palominos to name a few – and it was such an honor to get to collaborate with him! Oz would later record and master my band Tumble’s album Dragonfly, but work on Name & Form was actually the first time I had the opportunity to work with him. He is so incredibly creative and it was great fun to work on this crazy track with him!
The album was mastered by Myles Boisen at his studio Headless Buddha in Oakland.
I’ve worked with him on many projects through the years. Myles has such an ear for details, and it was great to work with him on this album!
After the recordings were finished, I gave the tracks to my wife/artist Juli Marks to listen to and see what images she might concoct.
She ended up creating a piece of art for each composition. I LOVE how the abstract imagery complements the music!
CLAY
GOLD
IRON
Graphic artist Julia VBH did the graphic design for the album cover. Juli and I both love what she did with the imagery!
It has certainly taken me quite awhile to put this all together for a proper release, but I’m really happy with how it all turned out and so excited to share this with you all! The album will be officially released on Friday 11/7/25. It will be available on a physical CD, digital download, as well as all streaming platforms.