Are You Cosmic?

I ran a 5k on Thanksgiving. You don’t believe me? Here’s a picture.

Amy in a turkey suit, me in a Soul Bounce hoodie, both very cute.

I ran with my friend Amy who I love. I bring that up cause I’m about to dunk on one of the things she likes so I’m giving a nice layer of love in this compliment sandwich. Awesome turkey hoodie too Amy. While we were freezing our asses off before the race started Amy mentioned that Lake Street Dive shows up on her top five bands of all time. I like Lake Street Dive but I believe they have no business on your top 5 bands of all time list. She also mentioned Barenaked Ladies which is a group that shouldn’t be in your top 5. I understand that Lake Street Dive is quite good. I even got to interview Rachael from the group, primarily to talk about her jazz group. I told Amy that I thought Lake Street Dive was ‘Diet Coke Soul’ and although certainly a great group to enjoy live and love, they aren’t aiming for the type of music that belongs in a music lovers top 5. The conversation kind of fizzled there and we started our 5k. I had an epiphany later that day in a hot tub while drinking a light Mexican lager listening to Van Morrison. Let me expound Amy.

Music can be used for many things. You can curate performances to make your classmates down the hall at New England Conservatory chuckle. You can write songs and do videos that are designed for the share, for the punch line, for the moment where the room laughs. And I believe doing those things is worthwhile, but I don’t think it’s the highest potential for music. The highest potential I know of for music is to go somewhere more cosmic than anything else will give you on Earth. You spend time with the life you’ve lived, the chords you know, the keyboards you can program, the violin players you can afford and you craft something that might talk to the ages, something that might bring you, your listeners and perhaps the universe in general closer to each other and to the very essence of our existence. You adjust your pedals, write your outros and plan your performances in hope that the skies open up and together you find something that can’t be found without music. Cause I can make you laugh without music. But there’s things only music and poetry can do and those things are cosmic. Right when Amy said one of her favorite bands was Lake Street Dive my knee-jerk reaction, which I did not say at the time, was “you can still listen to D’Angelo.” You can pick whatever you want to put in your ears and Amy I wish you’d put something that might push us closer to the cosmos because it’s special.

I don’t mean to tell you that cosmic music is better than terrestrial music Amy. I mean to tell you that it is more than terrestrial music. It has a higher goal, it aims for a higher power. It comes up short all the time, but I love that it aims. I saw Lake Street Dive live at Palace Theater a couple years ago. They killed. They had the audience in the palm of their band but it was all linear, it was all measurable, it was never cosmic. It was great players, great sounds and spectacular production. But no cosmos. And there are people who fight toward the cosmos every night and they belong in your headphones and your top 5.

Do you know Phil Hey? Phil Hey is one of the greatest drummers and music educators in Minnesota history. Like the grand majority of players in town I spent some time with Phil at the University of Minnesota in ensembles. Playing world class music at 11am on a Wednesday with a truly qualified practitioner. One day Phil Hey talked about the principal of a walking ballad. A brisk moving ballad that breaks into almost a mid tempo groove for solos. And Phil says “allright let’s try it” and no one hops to it. No one jumps on it. No one counts it off and he said something to the effect of “we might be wise to remember we are playing the world’s greatest music in a comfortable room on nice instruments at 11am on a Wednesday and we might be well served to stay positive, energetic and dedicated to this music and remembering that it is a gift from heaven and our duty is to honor that with our playing and our spirit.” I’ve never heard a ballad counted off with more urgency than after that diatribe. Music is a gift. If you think of music as a product, as a punchline, as “content” you’ve missed something. It’s not that it’s wrong, it’s just that there’s more.

I fear I sound like a snob and I promise you I’m not. I adore music that doesn’t shoot for the cosmos. I love it love it love it. But I just think those artists that muster their definitionally limited skills to try to speak to the ancestors, the planets and existence itself are on a different plane. And I want you to spend some of your time on that plane Amy.

And I know you do Amy. You are immersed in choral music, a music that I think of as explicitly focused on transferring a room of people to a different place, to a different experience. Music is more than the nuts and bolts. More than the notes and tones. And more than the yucks and the scales and the runs and the drum fills. It is all of those things. . .but it’s more than those things.

Music is a gift, music is a vehicle. Music is things the rest of the world is not. Music is not completely of this world. Let all the music shine, but put a thumb on the scale for the musicians who aim to bring it higher, deeper and further. Long live our cosmic heroes.

This weekend on Saturday Big Trouble is hitting at White Squirrel. I’m certain we’ll aim for the cosmos and come up short frecuentemente. But I hope you’ll join us for the journey. A little Thanksgiving weekend instrumental music from 6-8 might be just what you need to keep the vibes at a steady low boil. Come join us!