Chapter 2: Past lives - Crossing the digital divide

Chico says ...

This blog post for me will be a video blog. I think it apropos because of the title "Crossing the Digital Divide.

Music transcends time, space and distance, it brings us closer and can define many aspects about us. It informs our lives and our lives informs our music and our musical choices, after all life is a series of choices.

Chico Freeman

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Jan writes ...
I have always been utterly fascinated with the world wide web - for me it's a grid connecting humanity.

Back in the 80s when the idea of home computers and music software was still finding it's digital feet I designed in my mind the kind of software I wanted to be developed. In 1990 I read a review in Keyboard magazine of Creator/Notator and there it was! I bought an Atari ST and began my love affair with computers as a way of translating my thoughts into music. It was like magic living in the midst of nature, feeling the vibrations of the earth and the pull of the moon running parallel with the hum of the electricity and being at one with technology - I was well and truly grounded!

There was only one thing missing - communication across the wires and so began a journey through Cups and Modems, IDSN and then at last Cable. The 90s was a heady time as the world gradually got opened up with the web. HTML became a second language and as various formats were developed including the ubiquitous and, at the time, controversial MP3 compression it seemed like the punk revolution all over again but this time in a digital format.

By the time 2000 arrived I was in Midem getting chased around with offers of silly
money for my on line CD store platform 'Collecting Dust' whilst the major labels and publishers were trying to stamp out mp3 instead of embracing it. No wonder a computer company ended up effectively running the music business! Oh that my business acumen was as good as my creativity!

As my love affair with Ataris (can you imagine a computer with a midi port?) gave way to Apple Macs I started beta testing for the Logic Rocket network. I thought I was living on the Star Ship Enterprise . .  to be able to write with people all over the world with their input arriving directly into the programme you were working on was just so exciting. Opening the chat window to write lyrics and communicate at the same time - it sounds mundane today but back then it was just mind boggling and the closest to mind melding there is because there were no other distractions . . . no Skype in those days!

And so one evening I was on line visiting one of the Logic virtual studios and my online friend Hanno in Italy told me that Chico Freeman was in one of the studios. Never being one to miss a musical opportunity I went in and became part of the session, uploading a Rhodes solo and chordal idea. Chico complimented the Rhodes piano sound and we started chatting and kept in touch and eventually it turned into a full blown writing partnership.

Later we met off line, in New York. We had crossed the digital divide and begun the journey into exploring and mixing musical styles and words that beat from the musical heart.

Jan Pulsford

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Chapter 1: My Story - Meeting in a Strange Place

Jan writes ... My friend Aashid was convinced society was going to break down when 2000 arrived. He was stockpiling food - some were getting bunkers prepared - others were getting armed.

The fear factor spread like impending storm clouds with news of the Y2K bug getting ready to take out our society's digital infrastructure. It was a strange time in what felt like an increasingly strange place - The USA at the turn of the century.

I lived in the woods of Tennessee on ten acres of beautiful woodland named English Valley by the people who helped build it. I added 'Music' to the title because that is my life. They are one and the same.

As a child sitting in the back of the family car on our Sunday afternoon drives in the British countryside I would look out at the hills, fields and trees and dream of having a place in an isolated peaceful area where I could live and make music.

Now I was living the dream . . .

English Valley Music was a ramshackle collection of rooms and buildings held together by a tin roof, pressed wood walls, decks and sliding glass doors. Every time a sizeable amount of money came in I would build another room . . .

I lived there with Merlyn and his father. We were like a pioneer family in cowboy boots, living in a recording studio with lots of cats roaming outside - along with deer, possums and raccoons. Some people have a home studio we had a studio for a home.

There were some very happy times - Musicians would be in and out all day long. Virginia worked in the office doing the paperwork and manning the phones. The Audio Doctor Bill was repairing equipment, Rodney Lawson was downstairs producing music, Neal Merrick engineering and that's what we did, every day - it was a music production house -  the House of Groove headed by Madame la Pulse!

We worked on all kinds of music projects from Library music to Dance Remixes, Rap to Dulcimer, Song Demos to Indie Albums -  Craig Wiseman who went on to be one of the most successful Country Music songwriters in history, Felicia Collins who went via Al Jarreau to became the resident David Letterman guitarist, Garth Hewitt who continues to fight for injustice through his folk song ministry, Kat Dyson who went via Donny Osmond to Prince and Italian superstar Zucchero, David Schnaufer - the late great king of the Mountain Dulcimer, Sir Jam of the Prince crew, Nigel Pulsford and his band Bush, Julian Marsh and his grammy winning remixes, producer Roland Michael, Tim Hinkley and Dan Penn, Melanie, Leon Russell, drummers Ian Wallace from King Crimson and Dennis Bryon from the BeeGees along with virtual space artist Tony Gerber and many, many others all became part of the musical memories of English Valley Music.

And then one day Cyndi Lauper arrived! We travelled the world together making some of the best music of our lives. We were the 'Sisters of Avalon' ... Two warriors off to see the world! It was another dream come true and one of the most fantastic and intense periods of my life. We said "Merry Christmas ... have a nice life' and worked on songs for the 'Shine' album before saying goodbye.

It's hard to sustain what you've left behind when you're away from it so much. The reality of keeping the dream alive is often so different from the dream itself. I guess that's why so many people keep living in their personal fantasy world - It's easier to keep living above the clouds than fall out into the possible disappointment of reality.

I fell into reality and landed with a bump.

And so around 2000 it was time for a new start. A new millennium, a new century, a new beginning. The family drove to Kentucky to see the rework of Disney's Fantasia - it was the end of the beginning as we watched the unfolding of the newness of the old. Just like the Sorcerers Apprentice I was ready to conjure up something new ...

Jan Pulsford
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Chico says ... I was always used to working with musicians in the same room. This was how things were done from rehearsing to playing and even collaborating as composers or co-writers; warm bodies occupying the same space in close proximity. Meeting musicians at rehearsal studios, recording studios, or even at home to work was normal and part of a working musicians life. To find myself meeting online in a digital world at that time was a strange place indeed.

The Rocket Network; composing on a computer with Logic Audio, a new DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and Pro Tools software meeting with musicians all over the world and contributing to a musical end with musicians in London, Nashville, New York etc. was quite revolutionary at the time and I was excited to be a part of it.

When I first began working with computers, I never imagined how they would impact my musical life. Having been a computer programmer the two worlds were actually separate in my infancy as a computer geek. So, no surprise that when I was given the opportunity to work with various music software companies I jumped at the chance to be in the forefront of one of the future paths of music making.

It was here in the digital world that I first encountered Jan Pulsford and where one of my most fruitful collaborative experiences in my career would take shape. Suffice it to say that our meeting only in terms of 0’s and 1’s was as at once unpredictable and destined. Who could have imagined that we would be able to work together and not even have spoken a word in person or seen each other in the flesh yet be so prolifically compatible in our work ethic and creative essence.

What was to come would be the beginning of a joyous and creative ride that continues to this day. It would encompass my past, always my present and my future in a wondrous and harmonious sojourn of musical expressions of life, love, sadness, happiness and pain, culminating in a caldron of passionate and creative music.

- Chico Freeman
Photos by Hans Kumpf