On October 17, the day after my 60th birthday,
I was honored to be one of the musicians participating in the Hal David tribute to benefit the ASCAP Foundation and the Blue Ribbon of the Music Center of Los Angeles. The event, named “Love, Sweet Love”, was an amazing night of music at the Mark Taper Forum with a gourmet dinner at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. I played keyboards, Sax, flute, and background vocals. One of the highlights for me was doing a 2 part harmony with Dwight Yokum, on "Trains, Boats and Planes, and doing 'Willie Nelson's part, on "To All the Girls I've Loved before" with Albert Hammond, Hal David's Co-writer on the song. I wish I had more pictures to show here, but I had my hands full with so much music to cover.
I was 16 years old when I bought the Burt Bacharach, Hal David Songbook from a music store in Monroe Louisiana. It opened me up to a different concept of songwriting, odd time measures, and jazz chords, like 13ths, and #11 chords, and inspired me to be a songwriter. Hals lyrics, were deep, profound, yet had a spiritual honesty of simplicity that always hit from the heart.
We didn't know until soundcheck, a few hours before showtime, that the surprise guest, Stevie Wonder would show. He had just performed at the dedication of the Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington, the day before. He called our music director, Chris Caswell from his cell phone in the limo, on the way to the theater, and explained that he wanted to do Hal David and Burt Bacharach's first big hit, "Make it Easy on yourself" as a reggae groove. Stevie was one of the last acts on the show, and as he started out a funky reggae groove on piano, I came in a few bars later on organ, while Stevie's smile lit up the standing room only crowd.
I was covering strings, french horns, brass, organ, and other orchestral parts, and blending with some of the greatest background vocalists in the country, including Vaneese Johnson, who tours with Aretha Franklin and is the daughter of Rufus Thomas. It's a small world we live in, Vaneese is from Memphis, and knew my grandmother, who taught piano in Memphis much of her life.
Our rhythm section included some of the greatest session players in the world, including Leland Sklar on bass, who's probably played on more platinum recordings than any bassist in history. John Ferarro, on Drums, who tours with Barry Manilow, Boz Skaggs, George Benson, Debbie Boone, Vikki Carr, Randi Crawford, Robben Ford, Jay Gradon, Abraham Laboriel, Albert Lee, Steve Lukather, Keiko & Kazu Matsui, Steve Morse, Aaron Neville, Carlos Rios, Linda Ronstadt, Michael Sembello, Umberto Tozzi, Leslie Ugum, Eddie Van Halen, Carl Verheyen, Kirk Whalum, and Tim Weisberg over the course of 20 years.
Pulling this whole thing together, was Our Music director, Chris Caswell, who's been my good friend and co-writer since 1988, Chris began putting this show together months before the gig, juggling working on the score to the new Muppet movie, and dozens of other projects.
Having so many sounds and parts to cover, I didn't have time to program rental keyboards at soundcheck and rehearsal, so I loaded all of my sounds into a Macbook pro, and used a great program called "Mainstage" with a bluetooth keypad on the keyboard, and called up every sound I needed in a flash. As I programed the sounds effortlessly into my Mac, I thought much about Steve Jobs, who had died the week before, and how my life had changed when I moved to Silicon Valley, Mountain View and Palo Alto 1977, where all of this innovation began.
David, one of the most beloved songwriters of all time, whose lyrical repertoire is full of gems such as “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head”, “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before,” “We Have All the Time In the World,” “One Less Bell to Answer,” “Don’t Make Me Over,” “Close to You” and “Walk on By,”
The celebration concert included a whole group of world-renowned musical talents, from David’s long-time collaborators, composer Burt Bacharach and singer Dionne Warwick, Stevie Wonder, Herb Alpert, Dwight Yoakam, Freda Payne, Jackie DeShannon, Lani Hall, Michele Lee, Smokey Robinson, Valerie Simpson, B.J. Thomas, Steve Tyrell, Albert Hammond, the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA) Vocal Jazz Ensemble and others. Academy Award-winning composer Paul Williams was the MC, my friend who I've toured with off and on since 1988.