About James’ important music: In the early 1900s, an important change took place, driven by the Black folk musics of the time. Rather than following traditional accompaniment roles reinforcing root notes, providing a rhythmic background, or punctuating dramatic moments, drummers and bassists began doing something different. Driven by new rapidly evolving repertoire, some forward-thinking virtuosos started developing bass lines and drum patterns based on short, repetitive rhythmic phrases, creating a groove culture.
Forty or so years on, this led to one of the grooviest periods in music history, when what came to be known as funk rose to prominence. I want to state clearly from the outset that I do not believe that groove as an innovation—and thus funk, or musicians such as James Brown, Bobby Byrd, and their crew—has gotten appropriate credit for what it brought to the world. I’m naming people here, but most music is a community effort. Funk was no different. It was the development of a vast collective, which involved many great musicians. But James Brown, Bobby Byrd, and their musical circle—the Famous Flames, the J.B.’s, etc.—did a whole lot to get the ball rolling!
To really appreciate the massive contribution that funk made to the very concept of groove, one really needs to only listen to music pre 1965 (including the Famous Flames’ own songs), and then compare this with what was happening by 1970. In 1965, James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” which distilled a few important groove innovations from James’ earlier songs, was a turning point. To me, this period sounds as though they traveled forwards in time to a parallel dimension and came back with the unadulterated funk! A few years earlier, they were singing songs like “Please, Please, Please.” By 1970, with the release of songs like “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine,” “The Payback,” and “Funky Drummer,” they were now in the midst of a whole new branch of musical evolution. This music was so different that it changed the way singers sang, audiences listened, and even the way people danced to music.
“I can remember digging through my dad’s record collection as a young kid in the early ’80s. I will never forget the day that I stumbled upon the James Brown section.”
The drums were now front and center, playing hard, delivering repetitive patterns based on a backbeat. There was little to no variation, and that was the entire point. The remade bass role now followed a similar concept of stripped-down repetition—we’re talking about bass lines that only involved two to three notes. Each musician, from the guitarist to the horn player, had specific parts, which fit together like a jigsaw. This was important enough for James to fine musicians for straying too far too often. An entire song might only consist of two sections, a vamp and bridge, and that vamp might go around for five minutes before the bridge ever happened.
I can remember digging through my dad’s record collection as a young kid in the early ’80s. I will never forget the day that I stumbled upon the James Brown section. Even back then, some 15 years after these records had been released, I knew that there was something very different that these guys were doing. It sounded like an earlier version of what I heard so many artists doing at the time, but I didn’t know to call it funk. I did, however, realize that I wanted to learn to play that way.
Of course, what James’ band did in the ’60s and ’70s also formed the foundation for what came soon after: Sly and the Family Stone, Parliament Funkadelic, Cameo, Tower of Power, the Meters, Earth, Wind & Fire, Kool & The Gang, the Ohio Players, the Doobie Brothers, Rufus, and, eventually, hip-hop. This puts James, Bobby, and their circle at the center of a lot of amazing music. But if we were to consider their contributions to groove itself, we should probably see them as the root of almost everything remotely groove-based post 1970!
At the very least, I am convinced that much of my own approach to music, and certainly to bass, was shaped by the sound they created. To this day, when I am in the studio thinking about how a kick, snare, or bass should sound, or how a groove should feel, I am thinking of their groundbreaking records, recorded almost 60 years ago! I am certain that there are a whole lot of other musicians who are doing the same, even if they are not aware.
Supported by Aguilar
Hitson might be the most consequential, influential guitarist you’ve never heard of—even though it’s quite possible you’ve actually already heard him. For example, the 1966 song “Free Spirit,” which was released in 1980 as the title track of a posthumous Jimi Hendrix album, is most likely Hitson. It’s one of many instances that seem to epitomize the kind of career oversights and near misses that are all too common for many underserved and exploited Black blues masters of the 20th Century. His backstory also includes a near fatal heroin addiction, run-ins with the law under the suspicion of murder, and even working as a snake-clearer in the sugar cane fields of South Florida, armed with a flamethrower.
Herman Hitson - Let The Gods Sing (Official Music Video)
Though his musical career often ran parallel to, and intersected with, his more famous contemporaries—like James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, and B.B. King—Hitson’s path was not quite as linear in terms of success, or even acknowledgment. The myth, heartbreak, and redemption that appears to define his life story is countered by the tangible fact that Hitson is truly a bona fide, gunslinging guitar player of the highest order, channeling an innermost connection to the divine through his chosen instrument in ways the rest of us often only ever dream of doing. Simply put, as a blues musician, Hitson walks the talk. He doesn’t appear motivated by fame and fortune, but rather a seemingly innate desire to connect with God through music. He is what his producer/guitarist Will Sexton calls “a cosmic communicator and wah-wah guitar whisperer.”
Recently, Big Legal Mess released Hitson’s latest album, Let the Gods Sing. Produced by Bruce Watson and Will Sexton at Delta-Sonic Sound in Memphis, Tennessee, Let the Gods Sing captures the adventurous, musical spirit of Hitson, whose eclectic mix of funk, rhythm & blues, and soul is elevated by righteous grooves drenched in wah-infused psychedelia. The otherworldliness of the album lies in Hitson’s musicality—always inspired and seemingly off-the-cuff, his guitar performances resonate like sermons channeling some higher power. Let the Gods Sing features new versions of Hitson’s back catalog, including songs like the funky, frenetic “Ain’t No Other Way,” “Bad Girl”(originally recorded in ’68 and written by his longtime bandmate, singer/guitarist Lee Moses), and the Hendrix-attributed “Suspicious!”
“My guitar playing was improving real good, man, because I was working regular. And that’s when I met this little fella, Jimi, you know Jimi Hendrix, and we’d sit down and play together and learn different licks and stuff like that.”
On these new iterations, Hitson’s wah-heavy solos are melodic and lyrical, filled with the kind of emotion that can only be derived from lived experience, not just technical expertise. And though he’s clearly the bandleader, the songs have a great ensemble feel to them, indicating that Hitson’s ambition to connect is not only spiritual, but interpersonal, too.
Hitson was born in 1943, in Philadelphia, but grew up in Ocilla, South Georgia, at a time and in a place when there really was no such thing as Black radio, he says. “All I could hear was country and some Black gospel.” Interestingly, Hitson was a singer before he was a guitarist, which may account for his lyrical sense of phrasing on the guitar. A move to Jacksonville, Florida, paved the way to singing. It was there that he first joined the doo-wop group the Stereophonics and began to get a taste of traveling regionally as a working professional. Eventually, the Stereophonics hired a guitarist, who first inspired Hitson to pick up the instrument, but he says he was primarily influenced in those days by the Black blues players who sat by the front doors of barbecue joints and bars in Jacksonville, “just playing the blues,” he recalls. He maintains he was still only about 15 years old at the time.
Let the Gods Sing was produced by Bruce Watson and Will Sexton at Delta-Sonic Sound in Memphis, Tennessee. It features newly recorded versions of songs that have been in Hitson’s repertoire for decades.
Though he learned a lot from his experience with the Stereophonics, he regrettably never got to record anything with them, so when the opportunity to go on tour presented itself, he jumped at the chance. “I had never did that, man,” he says of touring. “I had played around Florida, and a few places in Georgia, so I left, and ended up in Atlanta—that was about ’60, ’63.” Hitson says that arriving in Atlanta in the early ’60s was like visiting Las Vegas for the first time. “Only this was all Black,” he remembers. “The clothing stores, the banks, and the Royal Peacock, where I could hear this guy singing, coming out of the windows, I can hear the voice, I recognize it, and it was Major Lance, and he was singing ‘Monkey Time.’”
Newly influenced by his surroundings, and the musical likes of the Tams and Jackie Wilson, coming to Atlanta was clearly a pivotal venture for Hitson. “All these guys I wanted to meet [when he was still living in Jacksonville], they was coming to my dressing room to meet me. I’d be walking down Auburn Avenue, and you might run into Sam Cooke, Gorgeous George, Wilson Pickett—everybody, man.” Eventually, he says he was approached by Arthur Collins’ manager. “He came to me and asked me, would I like to be recorded,” he recalls. “And I said, ‘Of course,’ because I had never recorded before, you see? So, he asked me did I have at least two songs that we can do, and I told him yes, but I didn’t [laughter]. I wasn’t gonna tell him I didn’t have no song [laughter].” What Hitson did have was a letter he’d written to his wife back in Jacksonville. And so he used those words for what became “Been So Long,” a crooning, soulful ballad credited to Hermon and the Rocking Tonics that garnered Hitson his first fleeting taste of popularity.
Herman Hitson's Gear
Herman Hitson names every guitar he plays "Sweet Rose." Here he's playing a Tele at the 2018 Bob Sykes BBQ & Blues Festival in Bessemer, Alabama.
Photo by Roger Stephenson
Effects
- Dunlop GCB95 Cry Baby Wah
- EMT 240 Gold Plate Reverb
Strings
- D’Addario EXL110 Nickel (.010–.046)
Because this was during the era of singles and 45s, these vinyl discs included an A and a B side. For “Been So Long,” the B side was a tune called “Georgia Grind” that “sounded like James Brown somewhat,” he sheepishly admits. “I didn’t know my record was playing nowhere, really, until I began to get fan mail, and many people really thought that was James.” And so, when Hitson was booked in Augusta, Georgia, James Brown’s hometown, the Godfather of Soul paid him a visit. “I always called him Mr. Brown, ’cause he never called me Herman, he always called me Mr. Hitson,” says Hitson. “He came to me and said, ‘Look brother, there ain’t but one James Brown [laughter].’ We became good friends, man.”
By the time this first encounter with Brown took place, Hitson’s guitar prowess had also begun pricking up ears on the Chitlin’ Circuit, a collection of performance venues throughout the Eastern, Southern, and upper Midwest areas of the United States that provided commercial and cultural acceptance for African-American musicians, comedians, and other entertainers during the era of racial segregation in the United States through the 1960s. “My guitar playing was improving real good, man, because I was working regular,” he says. “And [that’s when] I met this little fella, Jimi, you know Jimi Hendrix, and we’d sit down and play together and learn different licks and stuff like that. And so, that’s how it’s been with me and my guitar, Sweet Rose.”
“Sometimes you can hear the note and you can see colors that don’t have no names.”
Though Hitson refers to his guitar as “Sweet Rose,” it isn’t any one specific instrument, but rather the name that he bestows upon all his axes. “My name was ‘Sweet Rose’ at first—people called me ‘Sweet Rose’ with the ladies,” he explains. “I grew up and got out of that, but I used that same name for my first record label [Sweet Rose Express Records]. After that, I named my guitar Sweet Rose. The first one was a Guild. This was in ’69. Semi-hollowbody. It was a good guitar; I really miss it. The guitar that come in after that was also the same name. They all had the same name, like all of B.B. King’s guitars are going to be Lucille. Me and B.B. King talked about that. He said, ‘I got one woman, and her name is Lucille. I don’t need to name the guitars any other name.’” Throughout his career, Hitson has played Gibson, Fender, Guild, and Gretsch. “I had plenty of guitars and they all named Sweet Rose,” he chuckles.
As for Hendrix and the “Free Spirit” debacle, Hitson says “they,” likely referring to record company execs and/or radio personalities, always associated his playing with Jimi’s. “They put Jimi’s name on some of my stuff,” he says. “The thing is, they did that stuff. And they kept that stuff hid somewhere. I didn’t know where it was—I had forgotten about it. I would think about it sometimes, but then I found that them cats had put that out and put my name on the back, and under some of the songs, it had Jimi’s name—Jimi was my friend.” During their time together on the Chitlin’ Circuit, where they first met, Hitson says he’d sit all night in the hotel with Hendrix, just playing and talking. “I was telling him, man, he could sing. He always said, ‘Man I can’t sing.’ I said, ‘You can sing. If you think you have to sing like Jackie Wilson, well, you got a problem [laughter].’ I said, ‘If you sing like you, people are gonna love you.’ He was great dude, man. I really miss him.”
Herman Hitson in the studio with producers Will Sexton (middle) and Bruce Watson (right).
Photo by Tim Duffy
Let the Gods Sing features newly recorded versions of songs that have been in Hitson’s repertoire for decades. For example, he originally recorded the title song around ’66 or so. Perhaps the most illuminating takeaway from the title is that it alludes to Hitson’s spiritual beliefs, which directly inform his approach to the guitar. “I see God in music,” he explains. “I see God in music because music will give you comfort. It will relax you. It will put you in different moods. I look at the music the same way people look at the prophets. The prophets got 12 disciples. And so, in music it’s 12 notes: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and then the sharps and flats.”
For Hitson, there’s also a connection between music and the biblical struggle of the 40 years in the wilderness. The story is a reference to the plight of the Israelites and their search for the promised land. Hitson, who converted to Islam in 1971, looks at his relationship with the guitar similarly. “That’s why I don’t never take all—what you call—errors, out,” he says. “I leave something in there to show the struggle. So, that’s the way that is, man—pain and expression. It’s a spiritual thing. If you’re talking about a religion, that’s what I do religiously—music.” One could argue that creationism is essentially at the heart of Hitson’s spiritual and musical perspectives. “I look at God in everything in the creation,” he explains. “How the wind blows the trees—you can see the trees dancing. This is where I see God. But you can’t see God—you can [only] see spirit in people. So, the spirit of God, that’s what I look at. And so, that’s how I play, and that’s how I see music. Sometimes you can hear the note and you can see colors that don’t have no names.”
“I look at my guitar playing as part of my soul—what’s coming out of me. It takes a person a long time to find themselves.”
The music, and magic, of Let the Gods Sing is further elevated by the fact that the album was recorded old school, as in live, in just two days, and deftly performed by a backing band (dubbed the Sound Section by Watson) consisting of Will Sexton (guitar), Mark Edgar Stuart (bass), Will McCarley (drums), Art Edmaiston (horns), Al Gamble (organ), and Marcella Simien (vocals/guitar).
“Those guys were pros,” says Hitson. “So, it was easy for me to play with them. We can look at each other and we can tell where we’re going from there.” It was the first time Hitson recorded with an all-white band. Previously, “It was always all Black, or it was integrated,” he says. Most of the tunes, having been previously recorded, were sent to the musicians in advance. “It didn’t take long because everything was easy to follow, and the spirit was there, man. When the spirit is in there, everything is made comfortable, and it’s easy to think, with no distraction. And so, everybody just played their butts off.” Recently, Hitson became part of the Music Maker Foundation, an organization led by Tim Duffy committed to supporting carriers of America’s oldest roots music traditions. “I really feel good about it,” Hitson says of the relationship. “I’m very glad that they chose me, and I’m hoping this album here can bring me back into where I need to be.”
Hermon Hitson - Hot trigger
Herman Hitson lets his wah-wah do the talking on his song “Hot Trigger,” which has sometimes been attributed to Jim Hendrix. It’s easy to hear a relationship between this song and Hendrix’s “Pali Gap,” perhaps reflecting their friendship and occasional late-night jams.
"I don’t like any type of art that has to be explained."
“The robots are machines that I made in Max/MSP,” clarifies Okazaki. (Max/MSP is visual programming language for music and multimedia.) “It’s kind of a long story, but I’ve been doing this stuff on the side for 20 years or so. Some of the music theory, some of the conceptual stuff involved in the album, I programmed into these things that I built. These improvising machines can do things that humans can’t do. They’ll play faster than humans, but they’ll fit in because they’re playing the same type of material.”
I'll Build a World, by Miles Okazaki
Okazaki explains that he creates parameters for the robots to improvise within: “I’m just telling this robot, ‘Play at this tempo and play this many subdivisions per beat—eight subdivisions or something like that—so that it’s linked up with the drums.” For pitches, he assigns a scale and can control the phrasing. “I’m saying for the pitch choices, ‘You’re going to use a chromatic scale and you’re going to play each note of that scale until you exhaust the scale without repeating a note,’ which makes a 12-tone row. It could be any scale, but that’s one of the settings that I have made in there. [After each 12-tone row is done] I tell it, ‘You’re going to take a little break, but I don’t want it to be the same break every time,’ so that it’s a phrase.”
To get a sound that convincingly blended in with the rest of the tracks, Okazaki had keyboardist Matt Mitchell run the robots through his Prophet Six analog synth. “I wrote a file of them improvising and ran that file through the synth,” explains Okazaki. “Matt would do the sounds for it,” so both the robots and Mitchell used the same Prophet Six in their own way.
“I’ve never been that interested in imitating anybody’s style.”
Okazaki, a family man with three children, seems busy in all parts of his life, but he must have learned to maximize his time because he’s incredibly productive. In 2018, he recorded his magnum opus, the critically acclaimed Work—a five-hour, 70-song marathon of the complete works of Thelonious Monk, all performed on solo guitar. It’s a project he’s wanted to do since his teen years. But in the process, he labored so relentlessly that he ignored his body’s warning signs and suffered a repetitive stress injury. That didn’t stop him from intensely preparing for and entering the New York City Marathon just a few months later. When that chapter was over, Okazaki again focused on his musical pursuits and proceeded to record several more albums, both as a leader and side musician.
Thisness is Okazaki’s fifth album in a three-year period and reflects his collaborative approach. It features his Trickster band, which includes Mitchell on keyboards, Anthony Tidd on electric bass, and Sean Rickman on drums. Okazaki has worked with each of these musicians for years, both in his own group and in saxophonist Steve Coleman’s, and they’ve developed a creative relationship that made it possible to record complex music quickly. The entire album was recorded over a two-day span with the quartet recording live on day one and overdubs the following day.
The Trickster band (left to right): bassist Anthony Tidd, keyboardist Matt Mitchell, drummer Sean Rickman, and Miles Okazaki.
And the music on Thisness is incredibly complex. Though Okazaki has studied Indian music seriously, his compositions are also somewhat reminiscent of contemporary Western classical music. You’ll see no shortage of odd note groupings, polyrhythms, and mixed meters carving out space for intricate atonal melodies throughout. Plenty of advanced jazz musicians that proudly boast about their ability to play John Coltrane’s “Countdown” in all 12 keys would cower in fear if they were asked to perform some of Okazaki’s works.
Despite the puzzling, esoteric nature of his compositions, Okazaki’s roots draw from the jazz tradition. After initially starting on classical guitar at age 6, he developed an interest in jazz at 12 and was doing solo guitar gigs at a local Italian restaurant by age 13. His first guitar teachers were Michael Townsend and Chuck Easton (a bebop-influenced Berklee grad), and he took music theory group classes in a cabin in the woods with a teacher named Alex Fowler.
Miles Okazaki’s Gear
Miles Okazaki can be seen with a host of instruments, but his 1978 Gibson ES-175, which has a Charlie Christian pickup, is his most common 6-string companion.
Photo by John Rogers
Guitars
• 1937 Gibson L-50
• 1940 Gibson ES-150 Charlie Christian (bought with matching EH-150 amp)
• 1963 Gibson C-O Classical
• 1978 Gibson ES-175 with Charlie Christian pickup
• 2018 Slaman “Pauletta” with Charlie Christian pickup modified with adjustable pole pieces drilled into the blade. A hum-canceling coil was recently added by Ilitch Electronics.
• 2002 Yamaha SA2200
• 2016 Kiesel HH2
• 2008 Caius quarter-tone guitar
Amps
• Quilter Aviator Cub
• Quilter Tone Block 200
• Raezer’s Edge Twin 8 cabinet
Effects
• Boss OC-2 Octave
• Boomerang III Phrase Sampler with Side Car controller
• One Control Mosquito Blender Expressio
• Gamechanger Audio Plus Pedal
• Dunlop CBM95 Cry Baby Mini Wah
• Boss RV-5 Digital Reverb
• Analog Man Peppermint Fuzz
• MXR GT-OD
• Electro-Harmonix Micro POG
• Dunlop DVP4 Volume
• Sonic Research ST-300 tuner
Strings and Picks
• Thomastik-Infeld Flatwound .013s (Gibson ES-150 Charlie Christian and Slaman “Pauletta”)
• Thomastik-Infeld Flatwound .014s (Gibson ES-175 with Charlie Christian pickup and Caius)
• Thomastik-Infeld Flatwound .012s (Yamaha SA2200)
• Thomastik-Infeld Flatwound .011s (Kiesel HH2)
• D’Addario Roundwound .014s (Gibson L-50)
• D’Addario Pro-Arte high tension nylon (Gibson C-O)
• Fender .88 mm for .012 strings, 1.0 mm for .014 strings
• Homemade picks using Pick Punch (Preferred material is American Express Delta Sky Miles Credit Card)
• Ilitch Electronics Driftwood pick
• Knobby picks bought from an Instagram metal shredder
During his teens, Okazaki went through a jazz-snob phase, and although he hails from Port Townsend, Washington, he never got into the nearby Seattle scene. “The ’90s, Nirvana and Soundgarden.… No, I kind of missed all that,” he admits. “I was there, but I was into Wes Montgomery and Thelonious Monk. I was stuck in the ’60s and ’50s at that point.” He still cites those musicians, in addition to Grant Green, George Benson, and Charlie Christian (whom he hailed as “the greatest guitarist that ever lived” in a blog post) as influences.
After attending Harvard University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in English Literature, Okazaki came to New York to pursue his master’s degree in guitar at Manhattan School of Music. There, he found a mentor in Rodney Jones, a jazz/R&B player with tremendous chops. “I studied with, and continue to study with, Rodney,” explains Okazaki. “He was my teacher from 1997. I worked pretty closely with him for about 10 years, rebuilding my technique. My technique wasn’t good. You know I didn’t really have a teacher before him that really talked about guitar so much. I had teachers, but it was more just sort of like other people from other instruments. His technique is based on a hybrid George Benson type of deal. It has to do with the picking, but also there are many, many things that have to do with micro movements of the right hand. So, I spent a long time studying that. I still don’t really play like that, but I play kind of like a hybrid version of his hybrid version. Now mine is mixed with some other stuff.”
TIDBIT: On his new album, Okazaki creatively repurposed an influence in his approach to “And Wait for You”: “I played a piece of a Charlie Christian solo that I’m kind of riffing on. That’s a phrase from ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy’ but obviously the context here is a little different.”
Jones referred Okazaki to legendary saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, and Okazaki did a few gigs with the soul-jazz master shortly before his passing in 2000. It was around this period that Okazaki made his mark on the NYC jazz scene. He worked with vocalist Jane Monheit and was initially cast as a straight-ahead guitarist. “For a long time, I was just a standards player. I was pigeonholed in that area,” he recalls. “I did this weird stuff on the side—well, I didn’t consider it to be weird—but it was hard for people in their mind to imagine that you do different things.”
The guitarist found he was able to fully explore other sides of his playing when he landed a gig with Steve Coleman, whose M-Base Collective created a new language of incredibly challenging, forward-thinking music. From 2008 until 2017, Okazaki’s artistry thrived as he played alongside Coleman.
”I don’t know how many people you know that can play in James Brown’s band. It’s harder than playing in my band, that’s for sure.“
Very few players can comfortably hang with both the down-to-earth, bluesy jazz sounds of George Benson and the futuristic, ultra-heady maze of Coleman’s music like Okazaki can. The guitarist sees the two approaches as sharing common heritage. “Benson’s language is blues and R&B, and Steve Coleman’s is, too. There’s different theories and stuff behind it, but it’s not technically different to me,” he explains.
“If it was language, I’m interested in the grammar, not so much what language I’m speaking about,” he explains. “Or if it was cooking, I might be interested in the principles of ‘how do you cook a piece of meat,’ as opposed to, ‘I’m doing French cooking.’ George Benson has a style for sure, and a lot of people, when they learn about George Benson, will also sort of imitate his style. I’ve never been that interested in imitating anybody’s style. I kind of want to have my own style.”
Trickster performs during their recent residency at SEEDS:: Brooklyn.
Photo by Alain Metrailler
Okazaki’s style is radically different from both the sounds of his main guitar influences and other offerings in today’s jazz landscape. His abstruse music has been called academic, but that’s a label the guitarist isn’t particularly fond of. “I would push back a little on ‘academic’ because, first of all, I don’t like academic music,” he says. “I don’t like any type of art that has to be explained. When I go to an art museum, I don’t want to have to read the little blurb. I don’t want anybody to have to know anything about music to appreciate it. There are things involved in how it’s made that are interesting to me, but I don’t care if they’re interesting to anybody else, or I don’t want that to be a feature of it that’s really that important, unless people want to look for that.”
For Okazaki, his music might be also called academic, or complex, or cerebral, but that doesn’t explain his purpose, or set him apart. “James Brown is complex, or Robert Johnson is complex,” he says. “All these things are complex, meaning that they’re not easily explained. I don’t know how many people you know that can play in James Brown’s band. It’s harder than playing in my band, that’s for sure.”
“The test is: Does it sound good, or does it not sound good? That’s the only question for me.”
Complexity comes in many forms. Just because a piece of music happens to be based on one chord “that doesn’t mean that it’s simple,” Okazaki observes. He believes the opposite is true as well. “There are things that take a lot of work, and there’s a lot of machinations involved, and a lot of manipulation of materials and thought, and construction, and it still sounds like shit,” he laughs. “And there are things that are just one chord and amazing.”
As much as Okazaki is known as a musical thinker who can throw down some heavy information in his compositions and playing, what matters most is how it sounds. “It might look good on paper, but if it doesn’t sound like anything, then it’s not good,” he says. “The test is: Does it sound good, or does it not sound good? That’s the only question for me.”Trickster's Dream - "The Lighthouse"
The Trickster band was scheduled to go on a six-week tour starting in May 2020 but got derailed by the Covid lockdowns. Instead, they created a video concert featuring music from Okazaki’s 2019 release, The Sky Below. This version of “The Lighthouse” is from those sessions and captures the band conjuring the energy and spirit of playing to a captive audience.