Photo By Bobby Aazami of ourfavoriteday.com

I travel a lot and find myself playing in solo or duo formats much of the time, so it’s no surprise that the acoustic side of my material has plenty of chance to blossom over the last few years. A lot of people have asked me why I don’t have a recording of some of these songs, so as I make the transition from studio rat to performer, an EP of stripped-down acoustic tracks seemed to be a natural place to start. I’m proud to give you my first recording as an artist – ‘Sparks.‘

The EP consists of three songs of my own and three covers, performed with acoustic guitar, vocals, bass and drums – and a few other subtle elements thrown in. The musicians were members of my longtime band that gigged around LA for years as Heliotrope, so the musical chemistry between us was as relaxed and intuitive as ever.

THE SONGS

‘Unseen Hand,’ (endearingly referred to as ‘Unsigned Band’ by a fellow band mate) is a song I wrote back in 1997 as I made the first steps to getting off the road as a sideman and focusing on my songwriting career. I’ve never gotten tired of this one, because it came from a real place in my life… I was going through a huge transition and the song seemed to help me through it. Whenever I sing it during my shows it seems to strike a similar chord with the audience.

‘One Of These Days’ is a song I wrote with KC Porter and Carlos Santana for the 2002 Santana album ‘Shaman.‘ It’s a cool story – I was in a deep Nigerian Afro-beat phase at the time, and I noticed Carlos had every Fela Kuti album on vinyl. So rather than try to write Carlos the proverbial pop hit, we went for something much more raw, political, and in line with the Afro-beat feel. We even had the guys from Ozomatli come down and lay down the bass, percussion and horn parts, which created a pretty monstrous sound. Our song was a bid for a large 6-minute chunk of real estate for a commercial Santana album… and the record company hated it! The only reason it made it onto Shaman was that Carlos loved it so much he went to bat for us, dug in his heels and insisted it stay on the album – with my vocals! So for this EP it only seemed fitting to re-imagine it and come up with an acoustic version which I could perform on my own (sans 12 Piece Afro-Latin Band). It definitely acquired a unique vibe through the process of acoustification… I hope Carlos digs it…

‘Here Comes The Rain Again’ is one of my favorite songs of the 1980′s, which while I admit to being my least favorite decade of all time musically and otherwise, still had some great songs. So when this bluesy groove came out of my guitar one night, I figured it was time to let the healing begin. Obviously nobody can mess with Annie Lennox, but I think I snuck through by being a guitar player… and a dude. Girl, you know it’s true.

‘May This Be Love,’ usually known as ‘Waterfall,’ is from the first Jimi Hendrix Experience album. There are a lot of versions out there, and as a HUGE Hendrix fan, I’m always glad to see Jimi get his due as a songwriter (in addition to being the Greatest Guitarist Ever). It’s a gorgeous song that is about daydreaming, or love, or spirituality or whatever that ‘waterfall’ may be. My version is inspired by Brazilian guitar music — through my Euro-Canadian hands, of course.

‘New Creation’ is a recent song that comes straight from the overwhelming feeling I get when I contemplate the Unknowable Creator of Everything Ever (including quasars, blue whales, the Grand Canyon etc.). I’ve always had a hard time imagining myself being transformed by Divine forces, but… that’s the whole point of life, right? Anyone who’s ever stopped to try and deal with that, especially as a flawed, floundering human being, might relate to this tune. (Anyone else can imagine it’s about cooking.)

Lastly, my take on the old Johnny Mercer tune made famous by Frank Sinatra: ‘Summer Wind.’ I first heard it as a teenager in the movie ‘The Pope Of Greenwich Village,’ and it’s been in my head ever since. I wanted my version to carry a sort of haunting feeling to it so I married the lyrics to these dark, romantic chords that remind me of a faraway place… it’s one of those songs I wish I’d written. So I did the next best thing!

Next Episode: The Sessions…

In the 1990s I was involved in several projects with Latin rock/pop producer KC Porter. He helped me get my start in LA, including my first recording session, playing guitar on one of the last tracks featuring Selena before she died. It was in KC’s studio that I got my first real taste of the record-making process… he used to leave me in there for days at a time, experimenting with different microphones, effects, samplers etc; and committing all my work to tape (yes… tape). We wrote quite a few songs together over the years as well.

But nothing could have prepared me for the phone call when KC said “Hey JB, I have some cool news. I’m going to be meeting with Carlos Santana and his manager about doing some tracks for an upcoming record, and I thought you might want to come along and check it out.”

The nonchalance of his tone was obviously tongue-in-cheek; KC knew that I lived and breathed Santana’s music since I was 16 years old, and we had spoken many times about Carlos’ influence on my artistic journey over the years and what it had meant to me to be onstage with him a few times with WAR. It was really Carlos who made me into the world rhythm junkie that I remain to this day… and as a guitarist, suffice it to say that I used to have to consciously try not to play like him every time I took a solo.

“Gee, let me think about it. Yeah, I think I’m free today.” I got to the studio in record time.

When I got to the meeting, the manager was ready to run interference, but Carlos recognized me from the WAR days and welcomed me in. KC let everyone know that I was there so we could collaborate on something true to the spirit of Santana’s music. Carlos proceeded to roll out a bunch of big paintings on the floor of the studio… paintings full of intense color and dancing shapes, somewhere between African folk art and ’60s psychedelia. He said to us, “Can you make music that sounds like this?”

This basically set the tone for every encounter we had with Carlos. Watching Baraka at his house, listening to Fela Kuti records and watching rare footage of Miles and Wayne Shorter, we spent as much time as we could submerged in Santana-land. KC and I went into the studio and created a huge variety of music for Carlos to play on, all the way from covers of Bob Marley and John Coltrane to some songs we wrote expressly for the project, particularly the very Santana-esque guajira/soul track Primavera. The lyric used metaphors from the Bahá’í Writings about a spiritual springtime transforming the world, and the groove was a half-time funk, nicely executed by drummer James Keegan and bassist Mike Porcaro. When Carlos came in to record on the track, he tore into it like it was the last solo he would ever play. He was a force of nature.

There were many other highlights from those days… Santana swept the Grammys and sold approximately a gazillion copies of Supernatural, KC and I sang Primavera with him at the Greek Theater, I got to play Carlos’ #1 guitar one time while he jammed along – on drums. But the big highlight for me was recording another song for his next record, an Afrobeat song called One Of These Days, with Ozomatli playing on it and little ol’ me on lead vocals. There were a lot of cool things about that song: it was a tribute to Fela Kuti, it had positive, politically charged lyrics during the post-9/11 madness, and Carlos played beautiful melodic themes all over it that echo in your head after the song is over. It was also the last collaboration I would have with my good friend and longtime engineer Jeff Poe, who died a few years later.

The cherry on top was performing the song live at the Hollywood Bowl, with Santana and Ozomatli onstage, and in the audience my whole family, many close friends and my ex-boss, Lonnie Jordan of WAR. That night, Carlos took me aside and told me it was time for me to step out and make my own music. That’s a whole other story, and a long one that’s still ongoing, but it really meant a lot coming from the man whose music had been the soundtrack to my life for over 20 years. He’s an amazing person; there’s no one else like him, and I look forward to more opportunities to experience music and life with him in the future. To this day, KC and I are constantly cooking up ways to offer him something musically that reflects the influence he’s had on us. We’ll nail it… ‘one of these days…’

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To read ‘part 1′ first… scroll down to ‘The Lotus Moment.’

One of the highlights of my tenure with WAR was the first time I met Carlos Santana backstage at the waterfront in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Our tour manager got me a backstage pass on the condition that I make it back in time for our own gig, and that turned out to be a tall order… I’d never seen Santana perform live, and I knew I was going to have to tear myself away in the middle of their set, fight the crowd and catch a taxi back to the venue before it was time for WAR to play. But it was worth a shot.

I met Carlos right before he was about to go on. He was kind of jogging on the spot, listening to Miles Davis’ Tutu really loud and burning incense. He had big sunglasses on, and a big smile when I told him I was playing with WAR. He said ‘That’s a good gig, man – did you know that in all these years, WAR and Santana have never played together?’

As it turns out, it wouldn’t be much longer. I was more than happy just to meet the man, but later that year we wound up playing with Santana for two huge arena shows in Annaheim and San Francisco, and he invited us on stage in the middle of their set to play ‘Exodus’ with them and jam a little. I thought it couldn’t get any better after that – singing a Bob Marley tune with Santana and WAR, I all but expected Stevie Wonder to walk on stage – but when we were finished, Carlos kept me on to play ‘dueling’ lead guitars on the Funkadelic classic ‘Maggot Brain.’ For those of you who don’t know, the original ‘Maggot Brain’ was considered a high point of post-Hendrix fuzz guitar, and Eddie Hazel’s performance on the track was legendary. That would have been intimidating enough I guess, but to play it with Santana was… Funkadelic.

He proceeded to handily mop the stage with me, but it was the best whooping I’ve ever received because about halfway through I managed to stop thinking and just ‘play crazy,’ a strategy that served well in many other Santana stage situations down the line. Carlos commented that Miles would have described the moment as a ‘musical orgasm.’ Not too far from the truth. The next gig was even better, because I was a little more mentally prepared to go toe-to-toe with my hero, plus it was New Year’s and the whole atmosphere was much more of a party than a ‘show.’ In photos of the gig, my hair looks like it’s exploding.

I spent a few days walking around San Fran in a strange electrified state. It was dawning on me that anything is possible in this life. I had proof: a guitar-obsessed kid from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan was rocking out with Carlos Santana on New Year’s Eve in San Francisco. Only a few years earlier I was listening to his records and imagining what it might be like to hang with him and get some of his mojo.

I had no idea – we were just getting started.

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I was on a bus from Saskatchewan to Belize one time – don’t ask – and somewhere in the middle of the journey I looked out the window and said: ‘This is it: the perfect time to break out the Lotus tape.”

In addition to packing a few extra bottles of Pepto, I had prepared as well as possible for this trip by bringing a ton of music I hadn’t heard before, partially to break up the monotony of endless bus travel, but also to partner each moment with its ultimate soundtrack on my Walkman (remember those?). And this moment was, without question, the Lotus moment.

Outside the bus, it was night time in Mexico City. Mexico City will blow almost anyone’s mind; the sheer density and size of it, the endless layers of humanity, life and death, construction and decay, are striking even from inside a jumbo jet flying over it at hundreds of miles per hour… never mind from a groaning bus as it lurches its way through the smallest side streets at what seemed like several hours per mile. And the amount of street life so late at night! I was transfixed. The driver’s area of the bus, a veritable shrine to the Virgín de Guadalupe, was blinking with random colored lights like a Christmas tree. Ahead, people – so many people – would step out of the bus’ path mere inches from being hit, and the driver’s foot wouldn’t even graze the brake pedal. A yellow-haired, blue-eyed image of Jesus looked on.

My relationship with Carlos Santana’s music was already intense. Having heard some of it in childhood, I rediscovered it upon falling in love with the electric guitar, and for several years had been immersing myself in it like a type of meditation. The first time I had lived in Mexico as a teenager, there was no other music that spoke to both the rock & roll of my Canadian background and things I was experiencing around me in this foreign place. I couldn’t imagine understanding a song like ‘Europa’ until I heard it pouring out of the doorway of an all-night cantina as I stumbled through San Miguel’s cobblestone streets at night, high on youth and romance. But as I grew into a more spiritual curiosity about life, Santana’s music grew with me. I was now graduating from the acid-addled abandon of his Woodstock freak-out days to the introspective, earnest Coltrane-isms of the man who wore a white suit and called himself Devadip.

For whatever reason, the albums Caravanserai and Lotus had escaped me up to this point, and they represented the peak of this crucial part of Carlos’ journey as a person and a musician. I bought fresh copies of both before my trip and vowed to wait until the right time. Because of this, for the rest of my life I will associate the sound of these two records with the sights and smells that washed over that smoke-spewing bus to Belize. I felt like I was the sound of that electric guitar, piercing through the heavy night air as a battery of percussionists throbbed in time with the crazy Christmas lights and the pulse of an impossibly huge city.

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