Dennis Chambers: A Rhythmic Tour Guide Like No Other
Just a few bars, and I was hooked for life.
I’ve talked here on Substack at great length already about what, and more importantly who, inspired my move to the US to pursue a life as a professional musician.
You can read about the main cast of characters that make up that list here:
Today I want to focus on just on one of those people on the list that became so special to me, and share a performance from 7 years ago in Boston at the Berklee Performance Center.
Just four bars, if that’s all I’d ever been able to play with Dennis, would be enough motivation to keep doing the work for 5 lifetimes.
I had first heard Dennis on John McLaughlin’s “The Free Spirits - Tokyo Live” in the mid 90’s on Jazz FM in London. I’d turned the radio on mid-song and sat there until the end of the track praying they would announce the artist so I could get the CD and listen on repeat.
The track was Little Miss Valley, and I’m listening to it in my studio again as I write. There’s an incredible element of it being a live recording, but with a studio quality sound. Little did I know at the time but this would become something that has influenced my entire recording career as an artist. From the release of my first album Mystery To Me in 2004, I always strived for that energy dynamic that only exists at a live concert.
Mystery To Me was recorded in one take in front of a live studio audience at New York’s Manhattan Center Studios, and was followed by an actual live album “Live at the 55 Bar” in 2007. And throughout my career I’ve always traveled back to Dennis’ kick drum thumping through my tiny stereo speakers and knocking me across the room when I 15 years old.
I’ve told the story before of having to turn down a gig in 2007 with Mike and Dennis, and being destroyed that I had worked so hard to get where I wanted, just to have to wait many more years to make it happen. So to finally (In Albany NY in early 2015) step onstage with Dennis and have that sound inches from me in real life was a childhood dream realized.
We ended up doing a ton of gigs with Mike Stern that year, and the clip I have to share with you is from a Zildjian event at Berklee College of Music on October 7th 2015, where I believe Dennis had been asked to play this show and used Mike’s band with me and Bob Franceschini.
The hook-up with Dennis is probably the best thing about every minute I’ve had the pleasure of being onstage with him. The time and sound is everything I love about making live music, and with D it’s always a bit of an adventure. His control of elasticity is something I’d spent years being curious about from afar, going to as many shows as I could to get even the faintest understanding of what it might be like to be a part of.
But when it comes time to play with a major hero like this, to not be starstruck, and to get on with the reality of all the other things besides playing music that go into being on the road as a musician, there are very few people in the world that make it as easy as Dennis in the way he puts the music before everything.
I feel this overwhelming sense of respect for what we are all there to do when we walk out on stage, but it’s never at the expense of humor or fun. It’s the most serious thing I’ve ever done in my life, just from the magnitude of the players I’m surrounded by, and at the same time it’s the most fun and freeing thing I could ever hope to be a part of as a musician.
There aren’t enough posts to be able to truly convey what it means to work with someone like Dennis, and I hope you have one or more people you’ve looked up to your entire life that you end up being able to work with like this. Just four bars, if that’s all I’d ever been able to play with him, would be enough motivation to keep doing the work for 5 lifetimes.
Love you D,
Janek