I’m halfway through quitting music, or playing music live to be more precise. Phase one is saying no to anything new; my current relationship with music - not good - is largely a byproduct of taking chances with strangers that haven’t worked out, so I’m taking a step back from that. I know I’m on the right track because on one hand, I dread every single music commitment I get entangled with these days, even good ones with people I love and music I ought to enjoy, but especially when I’ve committed to something I know from the beginning is a poor match for my interests and love. And on the other hand I glow with pride whenever I successfully avoid something music-related, it feels righter than almost anything else I’ve ever done, at least in recent memory. (more…)

I just finished Week 1 of my Super Busy Period™ and survived. It’s been so busy I haven’t had time to quite stress about any of it, and now that I have a minute to breathe, I’ve done a little math so I can quantify my relationship to it, the numbers tell stories. (more…)

I’m not sure what sort of metaphysical dynamics are involved, but I’ve gone from almost no music involvement to a temporarily crushing workload. Pretty amazing. I’m not sure why music, of all things, tends to be like that for me - it’s like an on or off switch and very few shades of gray in between.

It’s been OK to not be busy; conceptually I hate the idea of not playing more, but realistically, I have a pretty full plate with my business and my family so it’s usually OK. Like I didn’t have any gigs or rehearsals last weekend, so I built gates. Wooden ones. And I barbecued. And the weekend was too short. Add to that a couple of 150 mile drives and several hours of practicing or playing, and they get even shorter. (more…)

I’m a reluctant engineer. I studied classical piano, composition, and jazz when I was in school, and I used to chart most of my music by hand even when I had great software available, some kind of latent Luddite tendency that I still have. I’ve always loved keyboards and midi and computers, but only very specific parts of all that. So when I was doing my first home recording, I’d spend 20 hours on the music itself, and give or take zero dollars and more or less 5 minutes on actually recording the music. I figured ‘I’ve done the important, lofty work of actually “creating” the music, and if I ever need to document it better, I’ll just pay someone to mix it or record it or whatever.’ (more…)

I don’t really get complimented much on music, ever. Which is fine, I’m not fishing for anything, and I sort of walked away from the compliment-drawing world when I moved toward being a jazz musician anyway. Heh…

Just read one of the nicer things I’ve seen written about me on Peter Breslin’s blog, Stochasiticactus, and I don’t know if he or Dave Wayne wrote it, but in a description of Dave’s recent projects, I’m referred to as “the jaw-droppingly great keyboardist Robert Muller.” That’s one for the archives.

One of the only other ones that’s stuck in my mind was an email from a stranger that described a piece of music I’d done as “a mindblowing landscape of funk,” I’ll probably have that put on my business cards at some point like when Wile E. Coyote puts “genius” on his.

I got back from Alaska last Monday evening, the trip was great. The music went well, I loved travelling with everyone I was with.

After our first gig, a guy came up to me, Larry Mitchell and Howard Cloud. I’m 6′0″ and the shortest of the group, and the guy says, “First, I’d like to say that you all look a lot bigger in person than you did on that stage. Wow!”

He was a nice guy, Terry, and he’d enjoyed the music and came over to chat. He looked first at Larry and said something like, “You - you’ve got that funky… Larry Graham… cool guitar stuff up in there.” He turns to Howard and says, “And you, you’ve got some Brothers Johnson stuff going on and…” he holds his hands up and makes bass-slapping gestures. I eagerly await my turn, and he turns to me and says, “You, you’re a white guy, and you come from wherever you came from.”

We all sort of freeze with an awkward half-smile and I think I say “uh, thanks?” We busted up about it later. If it was a compliment, it was pretty hard to decipher. If it was a backhanded insult, it was also pretty unclear, because at the end of the day, I am white, and I do come from wherever I come from.

I had a rehearsal in Albuquerque, the first with Joy Harjo and her band, and it was fun. As I was picking up my last load of equipment, I hopped up the low stage, maybe 2 and a half feet, but I didn’t see the lip around the bottom. My sandal caught under the lip, and that mashed my toes into the stage as though I’d kicked it as hard as I could. The followup trip and BOOM onto the stage looked a little dramatic, but I played it off like nothing happened and stoically loaded my last equipment into my car. I sat in the drivers seat for a second and when I grabbed the 3 middle toes on my right foot, “something warn’t right,” and pain shot up my neck. I’d broken at least one toe again, I do it at least once a year. (more…)

I had to drive to Albuquerque last night to pick up a guest from the airport. Wife is always a madwoman before we have guests, and my charge was to occupy our daughter. There wasn’t anything on TV, it was getting too dark to play outside, we were both tired of the ball and were done with reading. I jumped onto my computer to check the flight status and it occurred to me to check Youtube for something kid friendly. (more…)