Stokesified!

By Angelo J. Falanga

Frank A. Stokes (1954-2010) coined a personal term, Stokesified, to describe how any sound he heard he made his own. Raised with an uncle running Brooklyn, New York's RKO Theater, Frank Stokes would from the age of three, as soon as he was able to stand, spend days and nights in the theater. Growing up in Brooklyn he would be backstage then up front as Alan Freed and Murray The K presented the seminal acts of rock and roll. Frank Stokes vividly recalled his admiration for Frankie Lymon, girl groups such as The Shirelles along with Martha And The Vandellas then spoke of remembering the spotlight shining on Jackie Wilson just feet away from him. His Native American father and his mother, who claimed to be a relative of Al Capone, never married. When his parents separated Frank Stokes was placed in a lower Manhattan orphanage. Upon finding his mother and bringing his siblings back together with her Frank Stokes was plunged into a nightmare of violence not at all of his making. His mother's first husband was an abusive alcoholic destined to die at a young age. In painfully honest detail Frank Stokes describes beatings, dishes being smashed over his head and a car crash that sent him through a windshield, permanently impairing his vision. Music would always be the focus of his life as he grew up. Frank describes buying his first bass and playing his first performances, including the time he stood alone as a teenager at a Pow Wow along Brooklyn's 4th Avenue to perform Old Ones Song, one of his first compositions, a song he would record and perform throughout his later years. Frank Stokes made his way into the 1970's New York City underground music scene meeting Geoffrey Crozier then Otto von Ruggins. Crozier had come from Australia as a nationally recognized magician with enough gear to fill 13 steamer trunks sitting on a barge moored off Staten Island. Otto von Ruggins was the founder and keyboard player of Kongress. With Crozier up front before a burning cauldron doing incantations Frank Stokes built a reputation as one of the loudest, most powerful bassists on the scene. Playing the 1976 Max's Kansas City Halloween show above Suicide and Dead Boys, Kongress would famously be banned from CBGB's after their pyrotechnics singed Hilly Kristal's beard as Kristal attempted to order them off the stage. The book brings Frank Stokes and Otto von Ruggins back together for what would be their only joint interview. The producer behind the show, the late Bleu Ocean, a former CBS Records session drummer who recorded for Pink Floyd's original album of The Wall, is also interviewed about how he expanded Kongress into Shanghai Side Show. Geoffrey Crozier was found dead in Australia in 1981. His letters back to Frank and Frank's late wife, Marie Stokes, (also interviewed for the book) make for a moving, revealing glimpse into the world of magic. Frank Stokes spoke of working as he got married then his mother died from cancer at a Brooklyn recording studio. Coming back from an audition in the city, Frank spotted Jaco Pastorius sitting under a tree clutching a basketball to his stomach. Frank exchanged numbers with Jaco, not expecting to hear from him again. Much to Frank's surprise Jaco called 2 nights later. Frank had a cab sent to Manhattan to bring Pastorius back to Brooklyn, then locked his friends out for a night as they played, Frank on bass, Jaco on drums and piano. Frank played Jaco a new composition of his, Prelude. Jaco would leave wearing one of Frank's shirts, as the shirt Jaco showed up in needed a week of soaking in Pine Sol before anyone would go near it. Jaco would keep in touch by phone, and upon Jaco's death Frank would not make music for six months. Frank Stokes would go from breathing fire as part of the underground's most deeply adventurous supergroup to playing jazz downtown in the shadow of the World Trade Center. Stokesified! details the effects of the attack on the life and career of Mr. Stokes and those around him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Angelo J. Falanga
• Release date: Feb 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311110572

Angelo J. Falanga

By Labor Day 1995 Angelo J. Falanga had been living in Brooklyn, New York for three months with his maternal grandmother, helping as she recovered from open heart surgery. Celebrating the holiday, a block party had been organized by too few of the neighbors to bother getting a permit to close off the street. Mr. Falanga was cooking chicken using a barbecue grill wheeled up onto the concrete in front of his grandmother's stoop when a neighbor sat down in a beach chair set up behind him. That neighbor was Frank A. Stokes. What began with a one hour conversation once the chicken was cooked would be for Mr. Falanga fifteen years of work and friendship with the late composer and bandleader. Stokesified! is Mr. Falanga's memoir of the experience, based on more than 20 hours of interviews he recorded beginning in 2001. Angelo J. Falanga studied Political Science at California State University, Long Beach. He left college for a job on the NBC game show Time Machine while studying comedy writing with Get Smart writer Dee Caruso at UCLA. Mr. Falanga worked from 1985 to 1992 for the late lighting designer Wally Russell as a personal assistant and in the stage management of the Los Angeles Opera while Mr. Russell served as the company's Technical Director. (See The Wally Russell Foundation and The Wally Award, bestowed for excellence in lighting design) Angelo J. Falanga lived and worked in Germany from 1992 to 1994, traveling throughout the continent during these years. For Mr. Stokes, Angelo J. Falanga assisted in the home studio where three albums were produced and with the booking then staging of live performances while managing Mr. Stokes' web presence, also serving as a photographer and videographer. Angelo J. Falanga now lives and works in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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Stokesified!

By Angelo J. Falanga

Copyright 2014 by Angelo J. Falanga

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Daddy loves the baby.

Frank Stokes spoke and made sure his daughter heard these words every day more than once, always as she turned from him after he had made then served a tasty breakfast on a school morning to leave with her friends. Frank would walk Raven there and back each school day from kindergarten until she insisted upon going to her middle school with the girls who’d call first then come happily bounding screaming and laughing in through the glass and wooden front doors where to their left inside the airy way what looked like two cubes on wheels were stacked atop one another, each case holding one of the massive eighteen inch diameter speakers Frank played his basses through since he’d bought them in the seventies. On the fake wood darkly brown paneled wall past the eighteens a folded black rectangular shopping cart was hung from a clip. Beneath the shopping cart there would be a pile of whatever couldn’t be crammed into the apartment like Frank’s beach chairs and an oversized umbrella to be driven into the sand. The kids screamed coming up a step at the back of the airy way then past Frank’s wooden door, the left of two, a flimsy lock flicked open, then charged up the staircase into the second floor Bensonhurst, Brooklyn apartment in a row house on 62nd Street between 19th and 20th Avenues from which Frank’s wife Marie would have left before eight to work in the city. Frank would always be included in the conversation with the girls as his daughter got ready to go. There would almost always be laughter as the voices of the kids faded with them drifting out the door through the airy way onto the stoop then going off up the block. Frank would fix himself a cup of coffee from the percolator on his stove and walk into his music room ready to play if someone was going to show up, to record when he had a part to lay down, to draw with his pencils when he had a piece of artwork started or to boot up his computer, check his e-mail then log on to play his favorite game if he just wanted to relax his way into another day.

Upstairs with a plastic window looking down onto the backyard that Frank and his family had no access to I’d make my breakfast in their kitchen after the kids left. Most mornings I’d flick on Frank’s early eighties GE color television set, no remote, just the knobs. It sat belt high on a flimsy white pressed board chest of three drawers to the right of a back window looking over enclosed row house backyards, a tree poking up from the neighbor’s yard to the left, a clothesline stretching from left of the window to a metal pole at the end of the backyard to be used with the overhang protecting the downstairs neighbor’s back door forming a wide ledge for stepping out onto. This almost cloudless September morning there were to be no distractions. Frank had been working steadily over the past few weeks. Frank seemed satisfied with the results he was achieving.

New York City was holding local elections that day. The houses in the row where Frank lived mostly had fenced off concrete fronts, but up the street there were signs from the candidates spiked into the lawns of the more valuable two family homes with garages in back on 62nd Street between 19th and 18th Avenues. Posters and flyers had been hung from light poles and taped onto first story windows throughout Bensonhurst, but Frank had never and would never vote. Frank had a track to lay down. Up the stairs inside with him there would be no turning on the TV, no tuning the stereo in the music room to WKCR or WBGO. I scrambled my eggs, made four pieces of toast on a tray in Frank’s broiler, ate, drank coffee, then did my dishes without having been called. Seeing what was up meant walking past the bathroom on the left and the head of the stairs to the right to turn left in front of Raven’s bedroom and enter Frank’s music room.

Frank was done setting up, this being a day when there wasn’t anything heavy to lift. I actually wasn’t needed for much more than hitting a switch out of his reach from where Frank would play. Frank had linked a Casio keyboard lacking touch sensitivity in its keys out through a MIDI cable then into his computer where the sounds would be generated and fed to the oldest piece of equipment in the room, his TEAC A-3440 reel to reel four track tape machine. The setup worked, but, there was a problem with the TEAC that complicated Frank’s life to no end. The machine was a perfectly capable recording device, capturing the warm analog sound that Frank knew how to take full advantage of given his years spent as a studio engineer, but here he was, in the front room looking out over the street to a tree taller than the house it stands in front of, there’s no mixing console, no soundproofing, and so track by track, Frank worked with the sound of his room and used signal processors, to the point of saying he’d endorse their brand, but, his no longer being able to punch that third button on the TEAC and get anything meant that Frank was left without the stand by recording mode so that all instruments playing continuously through the songs Frank was creating were recorded as if the sessions were performances. Frank’s horn players could be punched in from the breaks between their pads, but every track that Frank and his drummer Dan Walsh laid down was played through, take it or do it over, without being able to fix any faults after tracks were combined into a song by bouncing, feeding music out of the TEAC, to the computer, then back into the TEAC. Speaking to me after I had asked Frank for permission to write a book about his life but before the first interviews about his life and about songs he had composed were recorded Frank began the process by dropping hints about how he worked.

Every time I play keyboard I’m teaching myself something new.

Standing just inside the frame where there was no door to the music room I saw Frank tap a key watching the meters for two of the TEAC’s four channels jump up. He was working with the sound of a ballpark organ, first controlling the signal strength, then working on the part meant to carry the tune of his daughter’s favorite among his compositions, Fiesta. Frank had broken from his usual routine by recording the bass track for Fiesta directly onto his computer with only a drum box to accompany him before Dan Walsh would help Frank take the drum kit out of the closet in the music room next to Frank’s altar. Dan had played to be bounced, to have the recording of his drum tracks combined in Frank’s mixdown with the drum box standing in for the second drummer Frank wanted but did not have in the years before he met Randy Whitehead.

What Frank had was a live album of seven songs recorded in Lower Manhattan he had released in 1998 and an EP of six songs put together in the music room being turned into an album with Fiesta being worked on, and Want You, a song Frank had yet to begin recording. The EP was called Dance Tunes 2001. Frank’s friends and family loved it, his lawyer complimented him, but, thirty years after he had begun to play in public, Frank Stokes had no record company, no promoter. Frank Stokes was booking shows and recording track by track in his music room, feeling for the first time like the musicians around him were truly his bandmates, no more mercenaries. Respect was being shown as his parts were being played correctly for the recordings, and for the first time Frank Stokes recorded himself as a vocalist on the song Autumn, decades after a withering glance within the confines of a church from the alcoholic Frank’s mother married after breaking up with his father took Frank’s confidence in his voice from him.

The words Frank would use, alien to much of his process, were come up with for the sharing, chosen carefully, asked for if lacking. Many times Frank Stokes, the jovial, engaging conversationalist, would speak, then hold himself back. Explanations might drift, but evasive Frank Stokes wasn’t, lacking answers, asking questions. Frank made it clear to me that he had heard everything, at all times. Dreaming, his works evolved. Frank’s stories told along the way gave musicians bits and pieces to fill in as a song’s parts were laid out, songs decades old, or what Frank had come up with a week before. His songs would be born in visions, coming with a concept, a sound Frank heard from any number of sources, and then there was the artwork he created with his paints and pencils that covered the walls of his music room. In recording with others Frank Stokes could combine concentration with laughter. Stokesified phrases would be laid down as written, then onstage improvised upon as real, Frank offering every note as a prayer.

Angelo J. Falanga: Finish the sentence that would start with, Frank Stokes is…

Glenn Makos: -a multi-faceted, creative individual, generous with his time and his effort, who is consistent in furthering the goals of his music and of the band. He’s very thoughtful, always respectful of the musicians that he’s working with, open minded and flexible. He respects the individual personalities, not only on a personal level, but on a musical level, and he tries to celebrate that, within a cohesion of the band. He’s a wonderful, spiritual, warm, caring, loving person.

Dave Morgan spoke knowing me well by June of 2001, knowing his tone of voice would crack me up.

You can publish online like Denardo did. No one will read it anyway.

Mercer Street is one of those Lower Manhattan roadways where still the grey cobblestones slope towards the curb. Between Prince and Spring streets, on Mercer Street in 1995 an art gallery café opened with the menu reading beneath page one, LIVE JAZZ EVERY NIGHT. Frank Stokes debuted The Broadway Groove there and now it’s long gone, from #123. Across Mercer, a hotel famed in 2005 as the place where actor Russell Crowe threw his cell phone, wounding his concierge, was through the last years of peacetime a site perpetually under construction, boarded off at the sidewalk, ringed by a scaffold. While a dumpster sitting curbside twenty feet right of the café’s doors left us with a gap to unload the van, people still parked across the street up against big, dingy burlap off white debris filled trash bags piled three deep. At first, Dan Walsh laid down what was his baby blanket as the rug to keep his drum kit from skidding apart on the wooden floor. Later, a stage, the wine closet, and then, finally, a modest PA system taking the music off toward the street came with the addition of a four stool bar and two rows of bottles near the cash register. The waiter’s station bell rang while a coffee grinder’s screech drove the fast talk and laughter higher. Still, the applause came, for solos and as tunes ended with a nod from Frank.

By the third set, three hundred people sat at tables of two and four joined to accommodate groups, and on couches, stage right and up front by the six windows three quarters of the way from ceiling to street level set in rectangular wooden frames which swung in to open on warm summer nights. The art on display varied, abstract paintings, photographs of jazz players, and the first night after Frank bought an early digital still camera they’d hung graphic, kimonos open Japanese style sex lithographs. This wasn’t the kind of backdrop Frank wanted to be photographed in front of, not from any sense of shyness or prudery, but because the photographs to be taken that night were meant for posting on his first website. I took the pictures and we’d laugh about it later, but the sense of concentration as Frank played always as the years went on and the equipment got better drew people looking at the photographs with me to his hands and his eyes. Frank Stokes knew what it means to be a performer, even if it wasn’t his style to speak between songs other than to thank his audiences and mention the title of the next song, often after he turned to his band to ask what they wanted to play.

Dave Morgan’s words just before the gig as I greeted him outside the café on a book by Ornette Coleman’s son, someone he’d already known for years, underscored a moment of sharing in the fact that neither he nor I were there for the money. It was a perfectly mild night as the last of the twilight made the cobblestones nearly glow purple before a three hour, three set gig to be played the night of June 15, 2001. I’d told Dave how earlier in the day Frank had given me permission to write a book, how there was the possibility of talking about his life, but no promises as to how many things would actually be brought back up, and also I told him how Frank would be talking about his songs like Sacred Journey, a samba that shows began with a twelve minute version of, Frank playing in rapture, three hours, the three sets, seeming to fly by without having time to get to all of the songs Frank had wished to play, giving him time enough to step outside, smoke while talking to his bandmates and fans, walk back inside for his sip of coffee, then tune up and wait, happily, for musicians talented beyond any expectation for a cozy place with no cover and no hype. There were fans, but there would be no live performance reviews published of the sets Frank presented at the café as he found and engaged the musicians who would play out with him in song the story of his life.

Song Interview 1: Sacred Journey

Now there’s a tune that I enjoy playing SO much. I really get into it, you know? I, I’m looking forward to being able to play, like, longer solos live on it, just because, I, like, I always get carried away listening to everybody else. I forget about myself, you know? But this tune, it was a REAL surprise, I have to say, see, ‘cause I built the bass that I use onstage, my fretless bass. I took the frets out and such… Pickups, and the bridge, the knobs and the plate and this and that. I built it, you know, from parts. A little of this, a little of that, a little know how (Laughs) I know how. So I did. And, um, I was, like, I woke up, it was a Monday morning, rehearsal, we would rehearse ten ‘til one, you know, so it was right before I hadda get up and it was, you know, I, my daughter, was still getting her, wake daddy up at two, three o’clock in the morning, make formula, feed the baby, change diaper, go back to bed, let Mommy sleep, you know? I would do that stuff, and, uh, so this is one of those mornings that we got up, and, like, I’d had this, like, mad dream, ‘cause I was, like, I went crazy to buy a Fender bridge for the bass, and I put it on, O.K.? And, uh, for some reason or other, you know, rehearsal was, like, not, a problem, like, I was able, let me explain first. I had a dream before I woked up, right? Because I had changed the bridge, the bass told me, uh, ‘Look, you put the Badass bridge back on me, and I’ll give you a song or two.’ I said, ‘O.K.’ You know? I had time, that’s what got me, because I had time after I fed her and diapered her, and, um, I, I changed the bridge real quick, (Laughs) literally, O.K.? I had it all tuned up and, whoa, just in time to get a ride to go to rehearsal, and my daughter’s in the little carry thingy, you know, the little, uh, it was like a little carry swing, right? And, uh, I did what my dream said, you know, changed the bridge back, immediately (Laughs) and, like, first thing we played, when, after we were tuned up and he had the levels all set, was Sacred Journey. You know, in the dream it told me what key it was in, and, you know, how to use the fretless. (Laughs) ‘And by the way…’ Which I thought was pretty cool, that I was given permission to play the thing I had built, you know, ‘cause it’s, I’m not a luthier. I’m not a builder of guitars per se. I just maintain my instruments so I can play properly, you see? But, I thought it was like a… I can’t explain it. It was very, it was just natural, to like, feed her, diaper her, and like, almost ready to go to rehearsal, wow, I got time, Oh, I’ll talk to you in a few, click, and then I turned around, went inside with a cup of coffee and changed the bridge, (Laughs) restrung it, tuned it up, fiddled with it a bit, eh? Loved the way it felt. You know? It made a fretless sound, that I loved, you know, that I always wanted it to. I thought the Fender bridge was gonna give me a better, but the strings weren’t layin’ right with the Fender bridge, see, but, um, I stayed in the key I was told in the dream, and I’ve quite enjoyed it, ever since. That’s Sacred Journey.

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Dave Morgan: The thing about Frank Stokes that’s interesting is, he’s very childlike. He really likes playing music, and he gets very excited about doing it. He’s not particularly jaded or cynical, which is a very refreshing thing in New York, so even when you’re thinking something might be silly or ridiculous or ineffective, Frank has a disarming tendency to keep you happy because he never gets down about things. He stays excited. The best memories I have of the café are being able to interact with the audience, people who are fans, who like what we’re doing, and enjoy the music, and just, Frank’s sort of, ‘Gee whiz, ain’t this exciting?’ attitude about it.

Outside the café in twilight on June 15th 2001 while I was there talking to Dave Morgan about the book a cab pulled to the curb with Dan Walsh and his drum kit while Eric Roos walked up the block as well, Frank’s Swiss born pianist, trained by a student of the last student of Franz Liszt. Dave and I laughed, leaving me to sense the ring of truth to what he’d said in the same jovial, crystal clear, bright and succinct tone Dan still remembers hearing from behind his drum kit the night the school kids came to see their teachers play, Mr. Morgan on tenor sax, flute and clarinet, with Mr. Makos on trumpet and flugelhorn. This wasn’t just a school where they would teach and eventually Frank would bring his equipment to when he needed to record their horns. These kids were getting one of the best educations available anywhere. Standing six feet tall over the kids at a table to my left Dave had these kids who were learning from him in school laughing, joking back over the drinks that weren’t the drinks even being the kind of rich kids who could pay wouldn’t get them. The question that Dave floated over their table so as not to single any one of them out cracked up every speaker of English within earshot, a question blurted in an oh so happy tone.

So, you guys are all virgins, right?

Song Interview 2: The Broadway Groove

Broadway Groove is a fun piece. You know, it’s kind of my nickname. I’m, ‘Broadway,’ my friends from California are ‘Hollywood,’ you know? You know what I mean, On Broadway, but it’s more. This tune is, like, I’ve been all over Manhattan, all my life, and Broadway, always, I find myself on Broadway, one way or another. You know what I mean? It’s no specific street or anything, just in general, you know, Broadway and something, something, you know? It’s always Broadway. There’s a rhythm that, sometimes I just go to the city to hear the city breathe. To hear what she sounds like, and I captured a lot of it in this piece, the pulse, the groove, the way she breathes. You see what I’m saying? It’s an interesting city, place, you know? There’s a lot, see, I listen. When I walk around I’m not, even if I’m talkin’ to somebody, and I’m walkin’ in the open air streets, whatever city I’m in, I’m always hearin’ stuff. You know? Each borough sounds different, smells different, you know, and, um, makes, just, my, my being, me, captures it. In Broadway Groove I captured, you know, what it’s like to bop down that street, or drag your ass down that street, or, like, falling off the curb (Laughs) on that street, you know what I’m saying? I captured that. There was a lot of, ah, I experienced a lot, you know? You know, legal things, gigs, um, just, I’d go walkin’ through the Sunday afternoon or something, I, I wanted to capture that, and this song is like, yeah, Broadway Groove, what would that be? To me, the groove is, like, what its heartbeat would sound like, or its footprints, you know? You listen, sometimes you can hear these amazing patterns, footyprints, like, in the subway, or on the sidewalk, you hear, like, clippety-clop, the different styles of shoes, all are in harmony and make the sound. It’s really interesting, actually, you know, dangly beads people have, they always make a sound. Sometimes just their, (Laughs) chafey arms, (Laughs) and you hear sounds, you know? Broadway Groove is a representation of, of breathing the essence of Broadway, you know? Another side of it.

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Dave Morgan: I would say that a lot of this has been, for Frank, a development, both in the kind of sound he wants, and what he actually wants to do with the music. One of the things that I’ve been encouraging him to do all along is to take more ownership of this process. I think the newest record we just finished working on is even more of what he has a vision for, and at a certain point you can’t debate whether that’s good or bad. It might not be my vision. It might or might not be what I would do. Somebody has to have a plan, and in Frank’s sort of development as a bandleader he’s needed to become less collaborative and friendly, and more clear and assertive, so most of what I’m trying to do as a friend is to say, ‘Don’t ask me what I think, you gotta tell me what we’re gonna do here.’ I think the performances, for the musicians playing with him, for me, that’s been the same question; the quality of the performance improves as I have a better understanding of what it is he wants us to do.

Angelo J. Falanga: I’ll be writing about what happened when Frank was setting up to begin recording on September 11th and then how you played that gig-

Dave Morgan: What gig?

Angelo J. Falanga: Sunday night, October 14, 2001, at the café, three blocks above where Lower Manhattan was closed off, with the white smoke still rising from Ground Zero. The most vivid memory I’m left with from the performance is of you, before the second set, when the band began with The Broadway Groove, first you played My Country ‘Tis Of Thee slowly as a solo on your tenor saxophone.

Dave Morgan: I have no memory of it.

Angelo J. Falanga: You’ve drawn a blank, O.K. –

Dave Morgan: You should write that because you remember it, but, I have no, I don’t even remember that happening. That’s pretty wild.

Song Interview 3: Labyrinth

Labyrinth took me a couple of years to, as far as the composition goes, if you can understand that, you know? I, I thought about it, for a year or so, before actually recording it, and, um, I wanted to, to simulate, to make you experience, what you, like if you just sat in your comfy chair, with your eyes closed, and breathed, some good breaths, and, like, relaxed, and, take you on a cerebral, spiritual, let’s say, ‘Cerebral,’ you understand, ‘cause when you say, ‘Spiritual,’ people get, like, ‘Religious,’ and that ain’t what it’s about. Cerebral. Intellectual. And just relax. And you, I wanted to take you through a maze, like in ancient times. In ancient times they would take you deep into the cave, to where there was almost no room, and it was, like, maybe a couple of mile walk through, underground, and, you know, they have ancient paintings and stuff from these ceremonies I’m talking about, and Labyrinth takes you there, to your primitive, primordial consciousness. It’s a connector; to bring the modern evolution human and its primordial human together, see, because you need both, to survive, and, to BE. The Michelangelo’s and the Einstein’s and Galileo’s, they were connected, primordial and future. Labyrinth takes you to that, to that scariness, the unknowing, the aloneness, and it really, uh, gives you a chance, to, uh, explore that self… It can be scary, but it’s also, what, you know, by the, the way the song goes, it gets a little frightening, and, and like, it just takes you, and it, you know, like sometimes people experience things, whatever, and, and it goes ON forever. ‘When’s this gonna stop?’ they say, ‘When is this gonna be over?’ But you still love the music and you can listen to it over and over, but it keeps going, relentless, like, endless, like, uncontrolled. You see? That’s part of the way the true ceremony is. You know? It keeps going, ‘Am I gonna make it?’ ‘Can I?’ All those little internal deaths you go through, the panic attacks, the, there’s so much that goes on, internally, um, that, it, it, this song really takes you there. You see? That’s why it took me so long to, to think it out. Picking the key, and the structure, it had to be, just right, you know? Each key does something differently, so you see what I mean? The muse, you know, they’re not all the same, the muses. You see what I’m saying? Like a woman, or a man, it doesn’t matter, you know, the people all have a different, like, no two people are identical, as far as, demeanor, et cetera, you see what I’m saying? That’s what I was getting at, and it, everyone’s got, their own little deaths, and, and fears, and doubts, and this helps you face them because the mind becomes wide open from the, the cycle, you see? I really wanted to, uh, share that discovery with the world, and this piece of music helped me, uh, share it, ‘cause you can’t, you know, it’s hard to explain what I’m getting at, but with the song, it becomes easier. See, I could write the text of, of the uh, endlessness, and the, the journey of it all, and all that, and the fear, and the, then, you know, you get to the end, the text don’t always give you enough info, to really say, where you go, ‘I get what he’s saying.’ You see what I mean? It’s not always that easy, but with the song it became easier, to do. And um, and when you get to the end of the song, the middle, like, by the middle of the song, you’re like, the little deaths kinda start to stop, and you’re just trying to find the way, ‘cause the labyrinth, in it, what’s the goal of the labyrinth? To find the exit. (Laughs) You’ve got an entrance, a middle, and an exit, you see? And, and, and, that’s, uh… You know, but it gets comfortable all of a sudden, and, like, the melody, just, like, you start hummin’ it, and you’re enjoying it, but meanwhile, you just went through all this STUFF. You know, you may even get sweaty, or, you know, a little, what you do, anxiety-ish, you know, antsy, even, you know? I’ve seen, you know, I’ve seen children handle the song a lot better than some adults. I’ve seen some adults really get, like, some fear colors, but you know, toward the middle, end of the song that goes away. You see? And then by the time you reach the exit, you know, the, the resolve of the song, the end, it’s such a joyful thing. It’s, ‘I did it!’ ‘I accomplished it.’ ‘I reached the end,’ but not like, ‘Oh great, it’s over.’ Accomplishment. Achievement. You see? That’s the kicker of the song because it’s not a drudge, and, like, ‘Oh man!’ It’s more like, ‘Yeah, I did it! And then, I see them playing it again. I heard somebody whistlin’ it. I remember, I heard somebody whistling my tune, and I was, like, Wow," ‘cause he’s on that, he was, like, whistlin’ that melody. He was, like, re-living the song, you see, and, like, where it went. It did something good for him. You see what I’m saying? And that was the whole idea, about the song, of a, by, you know, to do the song, and what I, the philosophy behind the song. (Laughs) You see? My medicine. My power, what I do. I don’t wanna, I don’t want anybody to leave my place, and didn’t get what they need, you know what I’m saying? … I try to achieve… As best possible, and that, that really is what Labyrinth is about.

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Frank would take an old saying and reverse it.

Somebody let the bag out of the cat.

I didn’t speak during song interviews. There was no attempt on my part to steer Frank toward what he said. Frank let something personal out speaking about Labyrinth.

I’ve seen children handle the song a lot better than some adults. I’ve seen some adults really get, like, some fear colors, but you know, toward the middle, end of the song that goes away.

The words about seeing colors refer to a deeper truth I’m not sure Frank meant to share, a subject I didn’t push him to explain while being recorded. Frank spoke in passing about his synesthesia, a physical condition that’s not a psychic phenomenon, not mind reading, astral projection, or anything linked to the practice of his beliefs as a Native American. Frank described an ability to see colors radiating from living things and proved, time and again, over the fifteen years I knew him that what he sensed was the unvarnished truth. He knew what substances people had consumed and he knew to what degree he was being spoken to with truthfulness and sincerity. He also saw colors in filmed and televised images, and any difficulty I had accepting this to be true would be wiped away as I got to know him, seeing for myself. Things he mentioned mattered to how the truth played out. Years ago I sat watching a baseball game as Frank walked by the TV. Frank had no interest in sports, so, this game meant nothing to him. What caught his eye was the colors leaping out at him. Frank remarked upon the player up to bat.

He’s wasted. He’s got the speed colors.

Major League Baseball would later crack down on the use of amphetamines. Being the only person in his circle who was a causal fan of three New York sports teams, I had no idea that baseball players were gobbling amphetamines. No one around Frank would have mentioned this to him. He saw what he saw and decided when he’d share. I’d learn to respect his abilities, not to treat this sense as a parlor game trick. I understood why Frank was completely apolitical.

Frank Stokes didn’t ask for the kinds of insight into the human condition he couldn’t keep from experiencing. Being hurt by seeing what was behind the lies as many times as Frank was protected by knowing what he saw when someone wanted something other than what they were telling him, it was as if for him in life there was another dimension which was his alone, but life isn’t at all like the movies, and Frank Stokes couldn’t pull unknown truths from thin air. He would never press upon people speculation or conjecture. His life revolved around a love of his family that extended to all mankind, all living things, and the planet itself. He expressed this love through his lifelong devotion to the medicine traditions of his Native American ancestors. When people asked Frank always made it clear that he was not to be considered a Medicine Man because this was not a title one could simply assume for themselves.

Spiritually alive from the earliest days of his existence, Frank Stokes never claimed to be a Medicine Man because the tribal affiliations through which a title could be bestowed never existed for him. There would be no deeper, private conversations between us about his grandfather. Frank never spoke to me beyond what he said while being interviewed about how he was shown what he knew. When called upon, Frank Stokes would pray and sing over people who asked, helping, to the extent he could. Downwind on September 11, 2001, his home would become a place to seek comfort and consolation for those affected among his friends, as outgassing in the four months after the attacks Ground Zero continued to smolder made the smell hang in the air, both inside and out.

Anita: I was in Jersey City, on the waterline, facing the World Trade Center from New Jersey. The view is like a picture post card from that side of the Hudson River. I wasn’t high up in the office building; it was like the thirteenth or fourteenth floor. You’re at the waterfront, so there’s nothing obstructing your view. It started out as a typical day. It happened to be the day we publish our reports. It’s an extra busy morning, starting at seven. We’re working right along, when one of the gentlemen in the next office yells, Wow, that plane just hit the Trade Center! So, of course we’re all to the windows. Everybody’s in their own offices, nobody’s panicking, obviously, everyone was concerned, but, all of a sudden, because, it seemed like there was no time between the first plane and the second plane, to us, boom.

Dan Walsh: It was a Monday, the night before. I was out all night, playing a gig. I got home about four or five in the morning and stayed up until about eight, eight-thirty, something like that. I was debating even staying up, because it was so late at that point, but eventually I fell asleep. I lived right next to the Belt Parkway, so, it seemed like while I was sleeping I heard sirens going by, then, I got a phone call. I’m totally out of it at this point, so, I was, just, like, I said, I didn’t do it. My friend was, like, No, seriously, it happened. I told him I’d call him back. I had to try and wake up. I put the phone down, there’s no one in my apartment, I’m, like, ‘What?’ ‘What just happened?’ I turn on the TV, there’s Manhattan covered in smoke, and there were no stations working except Channel 2. I was glued to the TV for a good half an hour, hour or so, but I called my friend back. Other people were calling. By then I was online for a little while, to watch the video feed comin’ over the ‘net. I could smell, or start to smell, a burning rubber smell. I lived in Sheepshead Bay, quite a ways out there, but, apparently, the debris had blown straight across Brooklyn all the way out to Sheepshead Bay.

Anita: There was the other plane, so, of course, now we know. The immediate response is, complete numbness, complete utter numbness. The gentleman I worked with had a background in preparedness. He says, ‘Do this, do this, do this.’ Phones are ringing, and everybody’s talking. There was chaos, but, no one was thinking they were going to be eyewitnesses to what we were going to be eyewitnesses to. Now, the wind, that day, was blowing toward Brooklyn. We had no smoke. We heard nothing. It was almost abstract, and chilling at the same time, because everybody knows somebody there. Then they had us evacuate. The building, security, everything was very organized. You were out and that’s all there was to it. Now we’re getting phone calls from Washington, the same thing is happening there, so now your mind is completely joggled, you know, what are you thinking? And, I must say, in this wonderful age of technology that we live in, nobody has a radio, or, very few people have radios because we have everything in our office, the internet, but, radio was the only means of communication. Cell phones weren’t working. Everything was jammed and nothing was working. This gentleman that I worked with, when we got downstairs, the first building was halfway down. We had walked down a flight of stairs, out the building, so, now you’re seeing this, so, I thought I was actually almost hallucinating, seein’ somethin’ that wasn’t happening, in dead silence. Dead silence now, in hundreds, thousands of people, standing there. Dead silence. The only thing you could hear were the ferries that immediately were going back and forth, back and forth, to get as many people off as possible. I can’t tell you how long this took because there is absolutely no time frame for me. For the next three or four days there was absolutely no time frame, whatsoever.

Dan Walsh: The subways started running at a certain point, but the Q train running from Sheepshead Bay straight to Manhattan over the Manhattan Bridge was only running up to Prospect Park. You had to go take the Franklin Avenue shuttle, which runs above ground, in Brooklyn, kinda parallel to Lower Manhattan, to then take the A train, and that goes underground in and out of Manhattan. As the Franklin Avenue shuttle rose up above ground I had my first look at the cloud of smoke across the East River, almost like peekin’ out over the buildings. You could hear the response from everybody on the train, and, you could tell, for some people, it was the first of the cloud they had seen. The shuttle went above ground; everybody was, like, ‘Wuuuuuuh.’ It was really stunning. Everybody, there on the subway, was talking to each other. People were trying to find their way to work, and I remember, there was this one woman trying to figure out how to get into Lower Manhattan, where a hotel was converted into a rest stop for firemen. She was trying to figure out how to get into the zone, to get to her job at the hotel. I made it to my friend’s place in Brooklyn Heights, which is right across the East River from the lower east side of Manhattan. We went up to the roof of his building. We were standing at the edge of his roof, when, the winds became much stronger. The cloud of smoke, lowered, so we were actually standing in the cloud of smoke breathing the stuff in. We stayed out there for a couple of minutes kind of in shock with a bunch of people from the building.

Anita: So, the man I worked with, when we got downstairs he says, Look, we need water. We’re cut off here. You know that? We’ll need water and we’d better go eat, anywhere. See if we can get a room someplace, because we’re gonna be here a while. We did that, we had with us, maybe, a small group, of ten people. Everybody was, kind of, gravitating to each other, knowing them or not. It was, like, we really, we knew each other at that moment, being in the same exact experience at that same exact time. We came out again because the hotel’s staff said, ‘We’re going to give away as much food as you guys can have, but we want to turn it over, just get as many people in as possible.’ Then the ferries started to come back. We ate, we left, we got water, we’re trying to call people, and that’s all everyone was tryin’ to do, call people, call people. I finally got through to Arizona, gave them messages to relay back here, and for the wife of the man I work with, everybody else, we’re fortunate, because some people didn’t have any contact for days. We were lucky in that respect. I remember walking out of the hotel, we walked around a curve, the ferry landing was right there and the people looked almost like ghosts because they were all covered in so much ash. That’s when it hit me, the reality of it, in their demeanor, in the expression on their faces. It was, there was nothing there, so we helped get people into the hotel, and, by that time, it was getting incredibly crowded. We found a little spot, and luckily, it was a beautiful day. We waited and waited and then we watched TV. It was like it was happening but it wasn’t happening. There we’re no thoughts of going home, or of what had happened home, because now we’re hearing unbelievable stories. People are running in, with unbelievable stories. We just waited. Finally, it had to be ten, maybe, at night, they opened the PATH trains and we went home. We got on the PATH train together, and, it was really weird to leave each other at different stops. It was just a weird feeling. I got home, I laid on the couch fully dressed, and I stayed there, the whole rest of the night and day, couldn’t sleep, wasn’t freaked out. I never freaked out, physically, internally. When the second building went down, from the top of my head, right into the ground, something went out. Then, like everybody else, we waited… To see what happened, to try to comfort each other. In the financial industry there’s not anybody that doesn’t know several people. This was something that anybody watching on TV couldn’t relate to and that we couldn’t really relate to people who were right there.

Dan Walsh: We ended up goin’ downstairs, closin’ the windows. People were in the apartment, writing e-mails to describe what was going on, my friend was writing poetry, I remember it being a really heavy experience. After the sun went down we went outside. There were cops, everywhere. They had trucks filled with sand, they had floodlights, and you also happen to be right near the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge. It was a pretty chaotic scene by the time we got there, late on the night of 9/11, the cops, I remember, a couple of them, sittin’ on the steps of an apartment building, down the street from where we’d been. We walked past them, and, one cop was, there were, ten, fifteen of them standing around and one in particular was totally passed out, asleep on the steps. They got a call, they had to run somewhere. I remember one of them turning to the guy who was sleepin’ and, like, wakin’ him up, shaking him awake. He was totally out of it. He just threw his cap on, and started runnin’ down the street.

Frank Stokes lived through the years I knew him cherishing the ability to provide for his daughter the childhood denied to him, the cheerful good mornings, the warm breakfast, the walk to school, joking back and forth, laughing, and skipping along. Frank would remain friendly with his daughter’s teacher’s years after she had been in their classrooms. He would give them his records and invite them to see a show. Frank was one of the parents off taking field trips with his daughter’s grade school classes, going inside the Brooklyn Bridge, to a Broadway show, to the aquarium on Coney Island, to a planetarium and to Richmond Town on Staten Island. The trips on the school buses weren’t easy on his knees, but there was never a moment’s hesitation.

I never had any of that.

In the days after 9/11 people who knew each other stopped on the street to talk whereas in peacetime they would have greeted you and gone on their way. Frank and I were walking by the grade school his daughter attended when one of her teachers was walking to his car, a well-spoken, thoughtful, middle aged man who’d liked the album Frank gave him. Yes, he answered when I asked if his classroom faced Manhattan from the upper floors of the school, but, as he explained, looking out the window wasn’t any part of his routine. Wearing glasses and explaining the simple truth that his job was to focus on the blackboard and the children, he made it clear why he never really looked out those windows, why what he’d responded to was a child raising his hand to call his teacher’s name. The teacher told us it was as the boy said the World Trade Center was on fire that he first looked up at the sight of the North Tower burning.

All the children turned to the windows. All the children saw. As the teacher told the next part of the story my thoughts shifted to Frank standing beside me, as Frank had let me know that the day he was in a Catholic grade