Everybody's driving the bus, and to the same destination.

I wish I could remember which song John Medeski was talking about when he proposed one of the most important ideas I heard all week at camp....I'm pretty certain it was the VSOP band (Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter) but don't remember the track. In any case, Medeski made this beautiful set of gestures with his arm to convey his idea, and it stuck with me. He compared a traditional jazz standard performance by sweeping his arm up and down and up and down in small arcs, like a roller coaster's motion. This represented each soloist taking his turn to tell his own story, then stepping back to let the next soloist take his turn. A fine way of doing things, not to be belitted when it's done well in a casual setting like a jam session or informal pick-up gig, or as a step in one's development as a soloist.

But the arguably greater achievement of a band like VSOP was something Medeski represented with a single big sweeping arc of his arm. He used that gesture to emphasize that each tune is a singular journey--one in which an individual soloist doesn't just get his chance to say "his thing" and then step back...instead, each soloist uses his time to add to the overall narrative arc of the whole tune, to push the band further into the groove and higher into the specific feel and sound of the tune.

Obviously, this is exactly what MMW does so well, and to some extent it may be obvious, and yet I really appreciated John making the idea so explicit and clear.

It's something I think we manage to do fairly well in a natural way with both the bands I run, but now that I've had it illustrated and pointed out so well, I'm going to try to focus on it the next time we play. (Sandcastle actually played last night and I do remember moments of thinking, 'Wow, we're doing it, we're really achieving that collective thing.')

If anything, the goal of a single narrative arc pushed along by everyone in the band may help me from getting hung up on the "false goal" of playing a great solo. It's not supposed to be about ME so much, even if it's my turn to take over the steering wheel for a few choruses. It's still and always about US and getting us all to the other side in the same big beautiful vehicle... I like that.