In the live music experience the most important aspects that can be conveyed to the audience are authenticity and individuality. True nature and differentiation.
Not being a good rock star helps. You wear any old clothes and grab a hot meal not leaving on a jet plane but taking a bus.
The conundrum comes into play when a non-conformist becomes part of a mainstream sensation. Then the planes are waiting at SF International as my guest is ready to board to Japan because the trio is in high demand.
My guest today has lived as authentic a life as possible in both music and education. He grew up in Manhattan and spent summers in Woodstock before it was overrun with kids at the greyhound bus station with a guitar in one had and a painting cap in another. The seasons of Woodstock encompass the moods of any real human. These moods have all poured out of my guest....the raw winter wind off the Catskills, the burning embers of summer into fall as Puff the Magic Dragon floats in from the Hudson.
My guest is a master performer and an individual with a deep commitment to history and the ties that bind. Film canisters filled his house when John Simon was living in a land of Sunshine. It was not just Pontification it was the inquisition. The capturing of major events before interconnection. The music mixed with messages of social justice, racial equality and humanity.
It does not surprise me that my guest has devoted a large portion of his recent years to education. The idea that the non-perfect girl like Janis Joplin can come along and stamp out the material world. Don't get limited by choice. Seek and Discover and stand up for yourself as long as your visiting this planet.