I learned today that Solomon Burke died. I had the chance to meet him some years ago at a fes­ti­val I was play­ing. He was fun­ny, engag­ing, and in a lot of ways the char­ac­ter you’d expect to meet if you’d read about him or his amaz­ing life.

His 2002 record Don’t Give Up on Me changed the way I think of and approach music. A lot of that had to do with the beau­ti­ful pro­duc­tion by Joe Hen­ry, but Solomon took an idea that could have made any oth­er record inter­est­ing and made it mag­i­cal. He had some hilar­i­ous sto­ries about how he and Joe got togeth­er to make that record, and he put a real­ly human and approach­able touch to the mem­o­ries I have of that record and that time in general.

I’ve only met him once, but I’ll miss hav­ing the King of Soul around.

I came across this on kot​tke​.org the oth­er day:

As a cre­ative per­son, you’ve been giv­en the abil­i­ty to build things from noth­ing by way of hard work over long peri­ods of time. Cre­ation is a deeply per­son­al and reward­ing activ­i­ty, which means that your Work should also be deeply per­son­al and reward­ing. If it’s not, then some­thing is amiss.

Your muse can only be treat­ed as the sec­re­tary of a sub­com­mit­tee for so long before she decides to pack up and look for employ­ment else­where. If you aren’t able to own the prod­uct and be cre­ative, then you aren’t able to do your work, and if you’re not doing your work then you’re negat­ing a very real part of your per­son­al­i­ty, which is no good for any­one. No good for you and cer­tain­ly no good for your employer.

As a musi­cian — espe­cial­ly as a side­man — I think it’s an inter­est­ing and rel­e­vant point of view.

Speak­ing of records, my friend Erik Kosk­i­nen just released his lat­est, Keep it to Your­self. It’s got some great musi­cians on it, cool songs, and Erik’s total­ly unique, J.J. Cale-meets-Daniel Lanois gui­tar work. If you find your­self in Min­neapo­lis on a Wednes­day night, you should go check him out at Nye’s, where he plays week­ly with Mol­ly Maher.

Sum­mer is draw­ing to a close, I’ve worn a sweater for two days in a row, the leaves are pil­ing up and the ques­tion of whether I rake them or mow them looms — all the signs of autumn are show­ing up and this means it’s time I type some­thing into my lit­tle website.

There are a few great albums mak­ing their way into the world. My good friend Carl Broemel has just released All Birds Say, an album which is very spe­cial to me, not only for the music — which is spir­i­tu­al and mel­low, reflec­tive and excit­ing — but for peo­ple involved and the way the record was made. I met Carl about five years ago while liv­ing in Nashville; he, pro­duc­er (and equal­ly good friend) Ted­dy Mor­gan, and I start­ed work­ing on his record short­ly there­after and only fin­ished it up a few months ago. Not to say that I’ve been work­ing on it for five years, or that anyone’s been in the stu­dio for that long, but between everyone’s sched­ules and the gen­er­al intru­sions of life…well, some­times things take five years. I’m pret­ty proud of this one and excit­ed that these songs are final­ly see­ing the light of day.

On the oppo­site side of this sto­ry there’s Late­ly, a new record com­ing out soon from The Alter­nate Routes. A few months ago I did some record­ing with singer Tim War­ren, we hit it off, the chem­istry was great — the next thing you know we are back in Nashville work­ing on a record with the band. Tim and his co-con­spir­a­tor Eric Don­nel­ly locked them­selves upstairs writ­ing some­thing like 100 songs (give or take); we tracked drums and basic tracks over three days; six weeks lat­er the album was mixed, mas­tered, and going to print. I guess some­times things can also take six weeks. I had a lot of fun mak­ing this record and there might be a thing or two in the future…

In local news, I’ve spent most of my sum­mer tour­ing with the New Orleans-inspired, genre-redefin­ing Davina and the Vagabonds. I’ve had a real­ly good time play­ing with them — they (Zack Lozi­er, Dar­ren Sterud, Michael Car­avale, and Davina Sow­ers) are all crazy-tal­ent­ed and fun to be around — but like sum­mer clos­ing it’s time to move on. I wish them all the best, lord knows they’ve earned it.

The Min­neso­ta snow hits in a few months…time to get my drum igloo happening!

There is a very fine line sep­a­rat­ing the worlds of art and employ­ment. Do you want to say some­thing to the world, or do you want to help some­one say it?

While in Nashville last week I had a few friends play on Dave Olson’s upcom­ing record. Record­ed upstairs at Bar­rio East on my iPhone.

That sounds ter­ri­ble! I love it!

Ted­dy Mor­gan, about five sec­onds ago at a ses­sion I’m play­ing with Tim War­ren. Woo hoo!

Tomor­row is what feels like, and just might be, my fifth day on four hours of sleep. My brain is total­ly exhaust­ed, but is still churn­ing along with lists of things to do and choic­es to be made. I am com­plete­ly gid­dy and every five min­utes I gig­gle under my breath.

What the heck is going on, you ask, and the answer is I am pro­duc­ing a record for my friend Dave Olson, a sweet and gift­ed song­writer from Iowa City now liv­ing here in Min­neapo­lis. We’ve rent­ed a ren­o­vat­ed barn in Buf­fa­lo, MN, assem­bled gear and an amaz­ing crew, and have been liv­ing here for the last few days cram­ming as much music as we can fit into a hard dri­ve before the mon­ey and time dries up.

The longer sto­ries will prob­a­bly be typed here lat­er, when I have the lux­u­ry of time and sleep­ing in. For now, the short sto­ry is it’s been pret­ty incred­i­ble. The musi­cians (so far) — Dave, Ben Ram­sey, Chris Bates, Cody McK­in­ney, Ryan Young, Erik Kosk­i­nen — are play­ing real­ly well and are mak­ing these pret­ty songs of Dave’s come alive. Our engi­neer, Adam Krin­sky, is a fuck­ing super­star and if our ses­sion was the Tin Man, Adam would be Dorothy with a can of oil.

I’m sor­ry, but those are the metaphors you get out of me at three in the morning.

Any­way — the only time I’ve had to grab any pho­tos was tonight after every­one had either left or gone to bed, and this is what it looks like when that happens.

If a play­er is oper­at­ing at the far fron­tiers of his or her abil­i­ty, push­ing the enve­lope so to speak, it seems to me that a cer­tain amount of fail­ure is inevitable. Maybe even desirable.

– John McNeil

Back­stage at First Avenue in Minneapolis.