From den121961@yahoo.com Wed Feb 27 12:21:11 2013
Subject:Re: American news from KeyB

I'm going to weigh in on this and probably get in trouble! I had a chance to interact with Joey and see him up close with a bunch of hammond enthusiasts when diversi had their open house a while back, Joey had just bought into Diversi. One of the first things I picked up was that "showboating" someone else mentioned. THat kind of turned me off at first until I watched him for a while. He was an extremely humble person once the night went on, and actually very likeable. Keep in mind though, this was an event set up so people could hear the diversi, after a lot of criticism (me included) on this forum. SO you had a bunch of guys down there to "try" the organ, and they all seemed to think this was their chance to "impress" Joey D. I thought that was futile knowing my skills and being familiar with his, so when it was my turn I just went note for note between the C3 they had and the Diversi. However, most were kind of doing the alpha male thing. Joey being Italian American wasn't going to let that go by. I don't mean this to at all denigrate Italians, but it's part of the culture here in america. I got the feeling that it was entirely cultural rather than him being in any way conceited. THe guy had a humility to him that was able to override the bravado in my opinion.
Now as far as the mindless riffing, I think it's the opposite. I think it's mindful riffing, this guy knows more bebop stuff than any other organist I've ever heard. I was taking jazz theory lessons from a guitarist, and he was going to hear Joey. I told im I wasn't that much of a fan, and boy did I get an earful! After his initial reaction he told me that most jazz organ guys like McGriff, McDuff, Earland, etc. are more blues based in their soloing but Joey is way ahead of that. SO I started listening a little closer after that, and yea, his melodic and harmonic knowledge is immense. But honestly, for it to impress me I have to slow it down and break it apart in my head, it's just that far ahead of where I am musically. But the guitar guy can follow it real time while it's happening, because he can play like that. And having observed him in that informal setting at the diversi thing, he doesn't play fast to impress for the most part, he plays fast because that's how he thinks. It's quite natural for him. I've seen him play soulfully, but it don't take long for the real him to let loose and him to go into that world where he's at home. I think the natural inclination for me and probably a lot of us is if we don't understand it we dismiss it thinking the person doing it doesn't understand it, that's just human ego maybe? I did that when I first got into organ jazz with Jimmy Smith. I loved McGriff, because he played a lot of things I could approach on the organ, and therefore understand. His music really resonated with me. But then I started really listening to Jimmy Smith, and realized he did know what he was doing. AS I grew harmonically, he started resonating with me more and more. I still love listening to McGriff, but now I can listen to Jimmy at Smalls and kind of understand where he's going and it's fascinating.
I can keep giving examples of this with different artists, but I now have come to the point if I hear someone and it sounds like they are doing the same kind of thing over and over, and everybody else I know who is ahead of me is raving about them maybe I need to give them another listen and try and understand what they are trying to say. And I remember giving a guitar friend of mine a Sheryl Baylee CD, thinking he's going to love it. I really liked the organ guy on that (Gary Versace) and was entranced at his use of different outside pentatonics. I think I came as close to hearing CD's out as I could as I did with the three CD's I had of him playing on Sheryl's stuff. I asked the guitarist what he thought. This guy was a classic rock guy, who struggled to capture riffs of some of the greats like aerosmith, zeppelin, etc. and never ventured anywhere past that. His comment on the Sheryl Baylee stuff was "they're just running scales". I was dumbfounded but that's what he heard. And I have a feeling my theory teacher was dumbfounded when I told him Joey didn't do much for me.
Am I a huge fan of joey? Well, when he's in town I try and get to hear him. He came to the local casino with the Pat Bianchi show (He used my friend's B3, Bianchi used a Nord Electro. My friend Craig Kastelnic opened for him. I thought my friend had more fire than Joey did, and enjoyed him more than Joey. But my friend who is the undisputed king of the hammond around here with all us organ guys looks up to Joey as the king. I stuck around to hear Joey, and he did things with the C/V and the start run switch that blew me out of the water, and had I not known it was my friends completely stock B3 I would have sworn there was a synth in there. He also played a million notes per second. I was lost, knew he was good, but it didn't do near as much for me as my friend did. Craig is a world ahead of me, so if he's totally impressed with Joey I know there's something there. I do have a few Joey CD's, and listen to them a bit. But he's still a little unaccesable with me, maybe down the road he won't be. I hated Medeski the first time I heard one of his MMW CD's where he wasn't somewhat restrained by Schofield, but now he's my favorite organist hands down. I thought Larry Young was weird and now he's one of my favorites out of the legends. And it took me listening to Scofield's Ray Charles CD with Larry Goldings which was real accessable to me to make me want to check out his solo stuff which I now love.
I've heard stories of Joey D being a bit snobbish and rude, and I could see why the people thought that. But who knows what was going to that night, maybe he was tired, or maybe that is a part of his personality. I do know that I had a conversation with him about learning bass on organ and my frustrations about it not going good, and not being sure I wanted to go that way. The man listened to what I had to say, told me that he was playing pedals since he was a kid, so it took a long time of a lot of playing to get there. But he also named a bunch of organ guys that don't play bass, and said they are great organists too. My impression was that he actually listened to what I was struggling with, came up with some reassuring advice and didn't think he was all that. The "I can top that" attitude I first noticed seemed to be purely a "guy thing" but he was a pretty humble guy. I remember hearing him discussing with another organist from the gospel end of things how he is able to solo like he does. He said something to the effect of when he hears things he played, he knows he can't do that and he can only attribute it to the fact that God is somehow moving him to play it. Regardless of your feelings about religion, the way he said it was pure humility, like "hey it ain't me".
That's just my impression of him based on a limited personal interaction of a few hours, and some serious listening time. But I think if we're gonna dissect the guy here we need to make sure we ain't guessing motives by an onstage persona we seem to think we see. Maybe I caught him on a good day, and I'm sure others caught him on a bad day. And this isn't directed at Craig here I just hit his reply button. We're all at different places musically and there's nothing wrong with preferring Steven Stills holding a few chords down that insanely fast Jazz. I look at where I've come as far as my musical growth, and one of my favorite organ CD's is Bob Dyan's "Together Through Life" CD. He's playing organ himself, and he's definitely not a virtuoso! But the organ fits and sounds so good you can smell the oil! However, it doesn't detract from Joy D's incredible skill on the organ.