Stanley

I have my share of crazy stories. This one is pretty cool.

When I was still a teenager, I moved to a college town to join an eight-piece R&B band. I was never a very competitive person; I always just kept to myself and did my job. (At the time I floated between singing lead and background vocals, also playing keyboards, guitar, and bass as needed to supplement the primary rhythm section players.)

One night our lead guitar player was grabbing food in a fast food place when he overheard the girl behind the counter talking about me in an unflattering way, to a customer she apparently knew. The girl doing the talking fronted a different, smaller local band.

I never looked like most people’s image of a lead singer (especially in those days), and she was telling this customer that if I “couldn’t sing like that and play all those instruments”, that I “wouldn’t even have a gig”.

Well, um…okay. Can’t really argue with that. [LAUGHS]

It bugged me a little bit for a while. I was having difficulty understanding why this person cared what I was doing enough to talk about me at her KFC gig. And why was she threatened by me? We both already had jobs. (Well, she also worked for Colonel Sanders, so technically she had two.)

Until then, I hadn’t been thinking about her at all.

One day I was reading an interview in Downbeat; the bass player being interviewed (I’m told they’re friends now) was bitterly critical of the incredible bassist Stanley Clarke. I have always loved Stanley and I found the interview disturbing, so—as if he was going to write back—I wrote him a letter, explaining what had happened to my 18 year-old self and asking how he deals with people who criticize him, the way he’d been criticized in that interview.

Imagine my shock when I unlocked my mailbox to see his name printed in a calligraphic font in the return address on an envelope.

I hope I can do what he said justice by paraphrasing it here (and it’s been a long time—I don’t want to put words in his mouth), but his remarkably gracious advice to me actually changed my life, and has followed me professionally to this day:

He said his personal philosophy is that nothing is made better by fewer people being good or great musicians; that music is big enough to accommodate us all. There is no cost to recognizing someone else’s talent…it’s something to celebrate because it’s good for music.

A light went on for me. And it stayed on.

I sing. When someone else can sing, I like it. In fact, I love it.

I don’t get mad about it. I don’t gratuitously tear them down. If there’s something I can learn (and there’s almost always something), I try to learn it. I’ve worked with some great vocalists over the years and being on stage with every one of them has been a great source of joy for me.

Do I get my ass kicked? Yes. And that’s okay. It’s good when someone can kick my ass, and lots of people can. The more the better—for music.

Because this man answered me, when I was just starting out, I was liberated from the potential competitiveness and bitterness some people experience in this business.

And by none other than the great Stanley Clarke.

Some days I feel like the luckiest person in the world.

Thea