Message To A Friend

What can I say about "Message to a Friend. Wow I felt stringly about it. It was a message to my brother Lucas originally to give him some uplifting vibes when he needed it. Then I decided to make it a bit more universal and add images about walking on hot coals. I was inspired by some of the 1960's sound in the pan and wanted very bad to make some distortion to match the energy but could find no really good pedal to match the impedence on the steel drums at the time. (That has since changed). What can I say I wanted it to be raw and unteathered and I think this is what was attained.

RAJAH

RAJAH
SUN RA AND OTHER
Rather Funky Oddities
By Gregory Boyd


Around 1994 a very peculiar and fantastic thing happened that would change my musical out look forever. I met with a guy named Michael Ray. Talk about guys that one listened to he is definatly one of them. Basically everyone from Blue Magic, to Kool and Gang and Beyond he's played with. What was wierd was the guy is so chalant about performing with all of these people and at the time I was just inspired like a crazy man. I was invited to his house at the time which sat on the outside of what I used to call early uptown. "Early" because it was the area where the first americans moved after not being allowed to live in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The area was all industrial buildings and a few houses. We started working on this project called the "Neon Sound Performance" we would perform the music of Avant garde Jazz musician "Sun Ra". Michael performed in his band as a player then as music director for many years then decided to move to New Orleans and make a new band. I was curious and decided to make a leap of faith and try to perform some of the music. It was some of the most difficult and free music I have ever attempted. The music basically gave me chops I did not realize I had.
One Day I decided to write some kind of a funk Jazz song. It took me a minute but I came up with a bass line that I liked and decided to run with it and came up with this song that was aptly name by a friend "RAJAH" for the semi obvious Indian tones. My interpretation can be heard and is somewhat apparent in the melody being in 3 as the rhythm and beat is in 4. I started playing the song live and got a pretty good response as long as I did not play it too long. I've been guilty of this from time to time.

Peace GB

Is The Pan in the Mix?

I was sitting in my work room in New Orleans around 1998 and wondering what to write. I just played in Austin and moved recently from there back to New Orleans for some much needed regrouping. I was really in need of somekind of funk dance anthem at the time and was indeed onto an idea when suddenly I remembered a rather difficult exsperience I had with a sound man at one of my dates in New Orleans at the time. This sound guy for some reason had it out for Steel drums, steel drummers and just about anything or anybody that produced sound. I played and played during a sound check and could not hear anything in my monitor. I asked the guy who's name will be kept silent to protect the innocent "Is the Pan in MIX!!???" and he kept saying....NO!!! So I was like wait a minute everything is plugged in and I don't understand what the .....is going on. The unruly sound man who later became a good freind told me he wasn't hearing a thing and chatted to some friends without even as so much noticing what I was doing on stage. Sometimes being on stage in a position like that can do one of two things to a person; make one go peaceful and try to be a bit psyschoanylitical to a person or walk up and get real ghetto on a cat instead after rectifying the situation, I decided to go home and write this song to say basically that it is hard to do things differently many people seem to not want that to happen only because many do not want new things to happen on their "watch" at least that is what I felt at the time but you just have to wipe to the dust from your shoes and keep on truckin' as my father used to tell me as a child.

Sound wise the song was inspired by some of the greats of music that i heard constantly through my my life. James Brown, Little Richard to name several. I was most moved at the time to be able to actually exspress myself finally on my instrument and play the songs that I have always loved in another voice. That voice is of course is my own. I am so glad that I have no words for all of this. There are so many times in my life that make me realize that I was born to do this. I think part of it was being born in a time where music was king and the makers of music where like super men and woman. For example in my neighbohood in Milwaukee as a child the guys who were supermen were Quincy Jones, Muhammad Ali and Kareem Abdul Jabbar and of course Michael Jackson. These were the people that shaped not only musical sounds and the sounds of my life but also, a certain "never give up" kind of attitude. This is a hard business and even though I have had some absolutely brilliant times and great chances and chance encounters, one can say that I have not made the "big time". I keep striving and inviting my friends in on this love and asking for thier support in this endeavor and am lucky because many of my new freinds and fans must see something in my continued strivance because the support does continue. Feel free to download this song and comment it is one of my favorites due to the emergency of need with respect to writing it and what went into doing it. The instrumentation is just four instrumets which was my band at the time. It consists of Drums, Bass, Steel Drums/Vocals and Percussion. Keep buying it, keep in touch and keep the love warm and strong!



Peace



Greg

RICH IN A TROUBLED TIME - GREGORY BOYD

Gregory Boyd Rich In A Troubled Time

CD Review

February 2001

Jonathan Tabak

Off Beat Magazine

New Orleans, Louisiana

The Steel Pan drums of Trinidad Tobago have rarely, if ever, been associated with New Orleans music-until recently Steel Pan ... drummer vocalist Gregory Boyd, a hidden pearl in the Crescent City Scene, has devoted himself to this unique instrument with its sweet, resonate sound rich in percussive possibilities.With various groups including Charmaine Neville, Jon Cleary and the Absolute Monster Gentlemen. Chief Smiley Ricks and the Indians of the Nation and others, (Cyril Neville, Charles Neville, Michael Ray, Dr John) he’s gratifyingly integrated steel pan into Jazz, Soul and New Orleans funk and in the process he’s highlighted New Orleans’ own Afro Caribbean connections.He’s also emerged as a leader in the last few years and this CD is the first to showcase him as a front man playing pan singing and scatting on his own compositions. An intentionally raw low-fi session it was recorded live to two track at a gig in Austin, Texas creating an almost Garage Rock atmosphere in which Boyd and his cohorts bassist Edwin Livingston of Los Hombres Calientes, drummer Steve Schwelling and percussionist Heart Stearns-emphasize passion over precision. It is really more of a live demo than a complete album but the CD manages to cover a lot of ground with only six tracks. Primarily lyric driven rockers “Common Ground” and “Message To A Friend” and the high energy Caribbean Funk anthem “Is The Pan In The Mix?” are balanced with the more mellow soul excursion “Good Nature” (spiced with a fluid rap scat and a pan solo that would make Tito Puente envious) and “Rajah”, an adventurous jazz instrumental allowing the players to stretch out their chops over hip hop beats, Livingston’s hypnotic bass lines and eerie percussive moans. A surprisingly adept lyricist, Boyd crafts songs that are catchy while resisting clichés. He often sings with the torn and frayed urgency of a soul influenced modern rocker and occasionally this sounds strained, but on the poignant love ballad “Rich In A Troubled Time”-by far the most striking track, he sings with an understated, soul bearing immediacy, his lilt suggesting the more tender efforts of Peter Tosh and Ben Harper.Overall the disc serves as a glimpse albeit somewhat raw and incomplete, of a powerful emerging talent, promising good things to come from Boyd and his pans.

Jonathan Tabak

Offbeat Magazine

New Orleans, Louisiana

February 2001

Review

“Rich In A Troubled Time”

THE MAKING OF COMMON GROUND

COMMON GROUND

ALBUM: RICH IN A TROUBLED TIME

RECORDED 1997

RELEASED 1999

LABEL WORLD GROOVE RECORDS

One summer afternoon in June of 1993, I was in my apartment in New Orleans. I lived uptown on Perrier Street which is a nice place to live its rather quiet but has a funk that is different from the rest of the city. The area that I lived in was rather well to do kinda of a clean funk if you will but like most of New Orleans one does not have to go to far to find something more challenging to occupy ones creative and or wild urges. Such was this day. Some how I just felt that there was some real evil in the world and I thought if we could all just come together as one we could maybe be able to get along. Now this may sound like an old hippie gesture of some sort or even maybe a bit naive. But one has to set the scene: New Orleans until quite recently was a much different place.There was a lot of gang violence at the time and crack cocaine had just arrived which made people all the crazier. In fact there were many nights I could sit on my porch after practising or hanging with some friends after a gig and hear automatic weapon fire like it was the 4th of July or New Years as it is here in Europe. So this bothered me quite a bit. Coupled with the world situation at the time with Rwanda and various other places it was hard not to want to write songs about human kindness and us as a world trying some how to make a collective stand to rid ourselves of a certain degree of self hatred. Sounds kind of large I know but one has to live in a place where there are murders as common as everyday to have this kinda we got to do something attitude about life and there I was smack dab in the middle of this very profile. So I decided one day to write down some words.The first two where "I decide" then "We Decide" then "we are all the same" then "we are common" then "COMMON GROUND" I knew I had something strong when everytime I looked around in the months and years to come I could hear this word be used as buzz word and catch phrase (Clinton even used it quite a few times). So immediatly I set out to find a way to deal with the words in music. Because contrary to popular beliefs sometimes music and lyrics come at the same time. And this is what was happening with this song. When I first put the music down it was nice, a cool reggae sound played on my Ensonique keyboard with some lite pan in the verse and chorus. I showed the song a good friend of mine in LA and she commented that it was real good possibly the kind of stuff that could get on the radio. So naturally I was waaaay excited and continued to work on it. When I got to the point to where I thought the song was finished I decided to perform it. Which scared the crap out of me because I'm a confident person but sometimes there are certain messages that are kinda sacred in a ceratin way and I think this was one of them because it took me a very long time to feel comfortable about the song. Today I am fine with it, but it took a minute......

End of Part one...

Gregory Boyd

click on the picture if you wish to purchase the song

thanks for your support!

THE MAKING OF COMMON GROUND

I have had a few people ask about this song from time to time. It was really a work of ease. as i explained in some of my other posts. But to talk about it a minute is actually kind of refreshing because there was a lot going through my mind at the time. In the photo to the right this was sevreal years after I wrote this song and had written many more since that time but the thing about New Orleans is there is always a great air of 3rd world that goes on and if you want to be inspired inspiration is always there. This apartment for example was a place where I created quite a few songsyou can see my keyboard in the foreground. It was a great place because if you want to practise one can just do so and no one really complains. So it gives on a chance to think makes it so that ones mind can wander a bit.

"We are all the same people"

Tag line Common Ground

Gregory

THRASH STEEL DRUMS

I think that the most difficult part of being a singer song writer steel pannist is realizing that you meant to do what you did performance wise. All of this still seems like magic to me and I find it so exhilarating to go back and listen to work I did years earlier. I released a project in 1997 with six songs on it. The record was recorded in Austin Texas with some nice musicians on it. Very raw recording. I got some nice reviews on it. I felt the time of its release that was not endicative of my best work,   that it was too raw of a recording. But eventually decided that things happen for a reason and there was indeed something in the recording that screamed in my ears to be heard despite  in my ears its unfinished quality.  I have to explain a bit about this recording to some of my fans and interested people. So in this Blog basically I will talk a bit about how the idea came about and what was going on in my head at the time. In the meantime one can listen to or purchase the recording at Itunes and many places online.

Peace
B-Pan

www.gregoryboyd.dk