Trop Rock Music: A View My Angle...
it's a bit different!
Trop Rock is often said to be
escapism. For those who that pertains to, are folks who live in
non-tropical environments and hearing stories of people going to
tropical environments for a visit is something they can relate to.
It's something they appreciate. Kind of a breath of fresh air.
More often than not, these songs are
written by artists who live in similar environments. Places where in
the winter months, it can get quite cold. So in say a January day
when the snow is blowing outside, someone will pop on a CD that takes
them away from that and onto a tropical environment vicariously.
Suddenly, they close their eyes and
find themselves on say an island they always wanted to live in, but
have never been able to do. It's a great thing!
In 1978 I moved to South Miami and with
the exception of several years in Boston, in between, I was in
Miami/Dade for twenty five years. For myself, I didn't need to escape
to the tropics, I was already there. I lived a tropical lifestyle.
Outside of work, I was always doing stuff that memories are made of.
Early on I would take bike rides on the
weekend. I had a great bike, a Fuji 12 speed. I'd head over to Old
Cutler Rd, an extremely beautiful road that runs south from Coral
Gables and heads south. I recall once there I was heading to Coconut
Grove at a pretty good clip on the bike path that is part of Old
Cutler Rd. when one of these guys in spandex racing gear passed me on
his racing bike. He threw down the gauntlet and I picked it up
without hesitation. We were about three miles out of Coconut Grove
and I immediately picked up the pace and drafted him, no more than a
foot and a half from his rear wheel.
The bike path is quite rustic on Old
Cutler. It's not a straight path at all. Its laden with turns, ups
and downs, the works. It was January or February and around 80
degrees Fahrenheit (26C) and the two of us were going at 95%,
shifting gears with no let up, as we swept up and down, over and
about on the bike path. When we reached the entrance to Main Highway,
the final half mile to the 'Grove, on athe blind sweeping curve, I
passed him. What a sight that must have been Some guy in cut off
shorts and a t shirt passing Mr. Spandex professional. As we arrived
in Coconut Grove, I stopped at a rickety little old bar, went inside
and rewarded myself with a couple of ice cold Red Stripes.
January/February, 80 degrees and riding my butt off like there was no
tomorrow. Living a Tropical life.
On other times I was out with my friend
Bob Mejia and his wife Kim, who had a Bertram 46.6 sport fishing
boat. We were out almost every weekend on Biscayne Bay. It's amazing
when you go off the continental shelf. The water goes from aqua
blue/green to the darkest blue you can imagine! The foam breaking
from the bow cutting through the water is the whitest white you've
ever seen as well!
We would often party on the sand bar,
south east of Key Biscayne, far inside the shelf, of course. Once we
also partied at one of the houses in Stiltsville!
Stiltsville is a group of houses built
on the water about a mile south of Key Biscayne, where Biscayne Bay
meets the Atlantic ocean. At one point there were twenty seven, or
so. Hurricanes took their toll and there are only seven left. What a
treat that was!
I recall once earlier, on my friend
Bill Newcomb's boat, we came across a couple of dolphin. We shut the
engines down and stopped to take a look at them. As we looked into
the deep blue water, dark blue as can be, it became clear that at
various different levels this was a pod of around ten to twelve
dolphins, all swimming at various depths, as far as thirty feet down.
That's how clear the water was! Living a Tropical lifestyle.
Then there was the Coconut Grove Art
Festival, the largest art festival in the Southeast. What a blast
that is every year!
In 2008 I moved further south to the
Conch Republic, A.K.A.The Florida Keys. As a matter of fact, I moved
to the furthest south the road goes in the Conch Republic, to it's
capital, Key West, 126 miles south of the “border”, Which is at
The Last Chance Saloon, in Florida City, and I've been here ever
since.
The point of all of this is to
underline the fact that I'm in my thirty fourth year living in the
tropics.
So when it comes to writing songs, I'm
not escaping anything, I'm here and I have been for a long time. When
I used to come to Key West, I always wanted to be part of the town,
not so much someone visiting for a commando attack of Duval Street.
Likewise, when I was living in southern
Miami/Dade County, I'd run down to Key Largo, or Islamorada (say:
Isle amorada) often for the day on a weekend, as well as playing gigs
at Gilberts, Pirate's Cove, Wahoo's at Whale Harbor, the former KOA,
the former Kenny's in Key Largo, plus I sat in with friends many
times at The Caribbean Club, Sharkey's, and a few others. It was only
thirty five minutes away.
So unlike many other Trop Rock artists,
I write from a local perspective. While others may write from a
perspective of coming to, say Key West, for a weekend reprise from
their regular life, I might write a song like this, about living on a
tropical harbor.
“Yeah, Something About A Harbor”
I'm seeing it with Dani as well. Of
course she wrote popular songs like Drunk on Mallery Square, and End
Of The Road before she moved here. As I write this, she's been here
over two and a half years. She's a local. On her upcoming release she
has a song called Back Country Pontoon Party, which is a song
influenced by our many local excursions to Marvin Key, which is
around nine miles west of Sugarloaf Key, which itself is seventeen
miles north of Key West. It's only accessible by boat and we often
rent a pontoon boat at Back Country Boat Rentals,
http://www.backcountryboatrentals.biz/
Before I had a Trop release, I made a
demo of a song I wrote named “Raise My Glass To The Upper 48”. I
wrote this shortly after arriving. My friend George Cornejo came down
to visit and when he was leaving he said “You're down here in the
Keys and we're all in the upper forty-eight”. The song took off
from there. It's not common among songwriters, but I gave George 10%
co-writing credit. My view of it was, if he never said that, the song
never would have existed.
It talks about living in Key West and
mentions the things you'll see in day to day life here. Again, not
the tourist viewpoint, but the local perspective and why I live here.
It's played with a Brazilian Bossa Nova feel. Living a tropical
lifestyle.
I thought it would be fun to make a
collage video using still pictures I had taken, that would match the
places and scenes that the lyrics mentioned in the demo. It turned
out pretty good, all things considered. Keep in mind that the song
was a demo, not something that was acceptable for radio.
At MOTM in 2009, the annual Trop Rock
gathering in Key West, D.J. Jeff Allen, far and away the most
influential radio personality in the genre at the time, actually
searched me out. He introduced himself and told me he absolutely
loved the video I made. He looked me straight in the eyes and said
“When you make a CD, I WANT it!”.
Later, when my CD did come out, he was
my biggest cheerleader! He often said to me “You bring so many new
ideas into Trop Rock!”. He particularly loved the fact that I used
a clarinet on my song “The Beach!!!!” and mentioned it often.
For me, this was a natural thing. Bear
in mind that I had lived in Miami for twenty five years. My first
wife Mercy, is Cuban and I was part of her family. Cuba consequently
has a very large influence on me in so many ways. I wrote “The
Beach!!!!:” in a Cuban style structure. The clarinet is one of
several main instruments in Cuban music, so by adding a clarinet to
the song was a natural for me. For Jeff, it was a major eye opener.
Jeff was all over my album for years.
He always said to me “Your music is so different, I love it!” I
recall my friend Artist Koz, who had the radio on all the time in his
Green Worls Gallery here in Key West
(http://www.greenworldgallery.com/), once mentioning to me
“Beachfront Radio (Jeff's station) is playing the heck out of your
CD man!”
Yes, my music is quite different than
most. The reason for it is elementary when you look at it. The vast
majority of Trop Rock songwriter's main influence, is Jimmy Buffett.
I always enjoyed Jimmy Buffett as well! He's a great songwriter and
I've always enjoyed his work. Later, I also went head over heels with
his phenomenal books!
However, as far as being a musical
influence goes, Jimmy Buffett was on my second tier. He wasn't my top
drawer. Who were? Lets see, Bob Dylan, Gregg Allman and Dickey Betts
of the Allman Brothers Band, Jerry Garcia Robert Hunter and Bob Weir
of the Grateful Dead, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Frank Zappa, Djavan,
Santana, Robbie Robertson, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Jean Luc
Ponty, James Taylor, Glen Miller, Neil Young, Michael Franks, David
Crosby, Steven Stills, Asleep At The Wheel, Albert King, B.B. King,
the list goes on and as you can see, it's very diverse. Progressive
Rock, Jazz, Blues, Western Swing, Folk/Rock/Songwriters, Brazilian,
Cuban, Big Band...
So I came into Trop Rock from a very
different angle than virtually everyone else. It's no wonder my music
sounds different that most. Jeff realized this right off the bat and
that's what he appreciated most about my contribution to the genre.
I always loved the tropical sound!
Growing up, my parents played Martin Denny records quite often. I
always loved that sound! Martin Denny had spent quite a few years
touring Latin America and when he relocated to Hawaii, he brought
that influence to his music as well. I love that, especially the
rhythms and percussion instruments!
We also had music from the Caribbean
flowing through the house. Harry Belifante was one of their
favorites. Calypso and Bahamian music were were often played.
On the radio I was hearing Antonio
Carlos Jobim. I loved the different sound he had! The chords weren't
the same as everyone else. It was as though they were from another
dimension and offered so much different color! Instead of hearing
chords like C, F and G in a song, which is just fine, here I was
hearing much more colorful sounding chords that had a magic feel to
it. F Maj7 G7 Gm7 F#7 Fmaj7 F Maj9 F Maj7. What was this? Well, it's
some of the chords to Girl From Ipanema, specifically. It sounded
incredible to my ears. What it was, was jazz in a Latin setting.
Plus, here I was hearing songs that painted pictures of Rio, or
Brazil as a whole. I clearly saw beautiful beaches with swaying palm
trees, populated by people who loved the sun, water, and living life
to the fullest.
This clip has Astrud Gilberto singing
the Jobim song “Girl From Ipanema”. She was the original voice of
the song with Jobim and Stan Getz. (The clip starts at 36 seconds)
This version was recorded over twenty years after the song was a hit.
The Allman Brothers, The Grateful Dead,
and Jazz were always big influences on me for several reasons. For
one, I always liked improvisation. Music is a living organism when
allowed to be. There's a big difference between playing on top of the
music and playing within it. I recall leaving a concert once that I
was very disappointed with. Some guy behind me says to his friend
“Man! That was fantastic! It was just like the record!”. I turned
around and said “That's what was wrong with it! It was completely
canned. It was sterile. I just paid all this money and I could have
stayed home and heard the exact same thing.”. This is one of the
core reasons people follow tours of bands like the Dead or the
Allmans. The Allmans might play Whippin' Post, or the 'Dead may have
played Truckin' twenty times in a month, but every time it's
different. Where are they going to take it tonight? Who knows? It's a
living organism.
Additionally, within these bands and this style of
improvisation, musicians don't play on top of the band. Everybody
listens to what is happening around them with their fellow musicians,
and the music is a weave of everyone playing off one another. Yes,
they're playing on the high wire without a net. Do they fall off? On
occasion, yes. However, this is art and art is never perfect. True
art is always on a razor's edge and always runs a risk. How many
times did Picaso take a canvas off the easel and throw it away? How
many times did Hemingway tear out a paper from the typewriter,
crumble it up and throw it in the trash next to his desk? The more
appropriate question here was more like: How many times did Ernest
throw out his trash can in one day? Sage points indeed for any true
artist.
Frank Zappa taught me that there are no
limitations in music. The sky is the limit and don't let any barriers
hold you back. If you feel like doing something, just do it.
The first thing I listen to in a song
is the music. There has often been times that I've never known what
the lyrics were to a song were. I only heard the voice as the melody
line. From my vantage point, the very first thing a great song must
be is great music. That's the foundation. It's a lot like building a
house. With a weak foundation, the house will collapse. With a strong
foundation you have something you can bank on, to build and color the
song. The music will set the stage and the lyrics then will navigate
the song to where it's going. It's a team effort.
Back to the songwriting aspect, with
Buffett not being one of my top tier influences, I've come into Trop
Rock with a totally different approach. DJ Jeff loved it and I'm very
grateful to him for it! Regretfully, we lost Jeff to cancer a couple
of years ago. We were good personal friends as well. I miss him.
Lastly, I'm Trop Rock, not so much Trop
Pop. Pop does exists in my catalog, but it's not as prominent. I
wrote my first pop song with “The Beach!!!!”, plus I've written
others that haven't been recorded like “Island Ladies” and “Jump
Into de Fiya!”. However for every twenty songs I write, two or
three might be pop orientated. Rock, Southern Rock, Jazz, Country,
Latin, Blues, Bahamian, even blues.. it falls under the Trop Rock
umbrella. I must also say that I write in other genres and don't
limit myself. For instance, I've written some music and sent it to a
Nashville lyricist who's working with it currently.
While on the subject of Nashville, I've
been published there since 2000 with McClure and Trowbridge
Publishing. Because of that, I've also been in the Key West
Songwriter's Festival (KWSF) since 2010, which is largely a BMI
Nashville event held in Key West, with major support and colossal
organization here in Key West via Charlie Bauer and Danielle Holiday.
It is my highest honor in music to be a part of it, bar none. Thank
you Charlie Bauer, Dani Holiday, and BMI!
Not having Buffett as a top drawer
influence has it's draw backs as well, and some are major. There are
members of the Trop Rock press that just aren't interested at all.
It's an old school approach. I know one Trop Rock performer who hit
big when they made their debut. A friend said to them “You know a
lot of people in the genre think you're moving way too fast and
haven't done your due diligence”. Huh? What kind of attitude is
that? That's a similar outlook. There are those who are very guarded
and won't push anything until it gets a certain degree of popularity.
DJ Jeff wasn't like that at all. He was someone who if he liked
something, he'd jump out of the plane without checking his parachute.
He had that type of confidence. Perhaps that's why we were friends.
Without taking risks one is destined for mediocrity.
However, the genre is changing and it's
changing very quickly. Two of the Trop Rock stations, Radio A1A and
The Shore have listener ratings held weekly. The people who the
listeners are voting and calling in for are not the ones that play at
The Casa Marina for MOTM, for the most part. Those artists amount to
only around 10% of the weekly tallies. I'll be curious to see how the
Trop Rock Music Association (TRMA) deals with the remaining 90% that
fans, who don't have to pay and join an organization, are voting on?
Additionally, there are a lot more fans voting and calling in on the
stations, than those paying for the privilege of voting in the TRMA.
Anyway, if you got this far you see
what I'm bringing to the Trop Rock table. Is it conventional? Hell
no. Conventional? That's just not me, no matter if it's Trop Rock,
Blues, Jazz... or anything.
A local approach, with influences from
all over the place, Rock, Jazz, Country, Brazilian, Cuban, Caribbean,
with the emphasis on music being a living organism, with the freedom
option for any song to go anywhere at any time.
Meanwhile, I have my book to promote,
the new book to write, the two podcasts I'm involved with, The
Chillaxing Party (https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheChilaxingParty/)
JOIN!! Playing in The Shanty Hounds, writing music... I can't keep up
with myself!
An important note: Music is like a
language. When languages don't evolve and progress, they die. Look at
the Latin language as an example. English is constantly evolving, as
a contrast. Music is no different, albeit on a much more accelerated
level. As I said earlier:
Without taking risks, one is destined
for mediocrity.
Myself, I'm taking risks from a
residential tropical perspective.
All the Best From Key West!
