We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful George Cartwright. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with George below.
George, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
I have a number that mean a alot to me.
Anne Elias and I made a piece called The Puppet https://georgecartwright.bandcamp.com/album/the-puppet
It’s about GM testimoney
From a deposition of Ghislaine Maxwell taken in April 2016 by attorneys for Virginia Giuffre, who alleges that Maxwell recruited her and other underage girls as part of a sex-trafficking operation she ran with the financier Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on multiple charges in July 2020. Her trial is set for later this year.
Mother Rapers #1Dedicated to Chester Himes and Meka Leka #1 Dedicated to Pee Wee Herman
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
In high school, I wanted to be a poet. Not that I has read any poetry unless the liner notes by Bob Dylan and written by hime on hie early ops count.
It was mostly the idea of it with all of it. Bob Dylan was my big hero along with the Rolling Stones. The first song Learned on the guitar was desolation, Row by Bob Dylan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
I loved singing in church. Those harmonious Methodist hymns were so comforting.
When I was in high school, I was ion a band that was similar to the New Christy Minstrels. When I went to college at Mississippi State University and studied sociology,
My first sax was purchased from a thrift store in downtown Starkville, Mississippi for $60. It was purchased as a birthday gift from my grandmother .
I was a conscientious Objector to the Vietnam War and performed Alternative Service. The first jazz record I was by and Lester Young. I found, to my surprise, that I could play along with it. It didn’t seem that hard. Hahaha…
I always wanted my music stand in a spot where no one else was using.
One of my fave quotes is:
“If you’re standing on the edge you’re standing in the way.”
I moved to Woodstock NY to study at the Creative Music Studio and on to NYC.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
It’s a beautiful and tough thing to be an improvising musician. Plus a bandleader, organizer, collaborator, producer, etc. and it was for me.
It all happened with the support and love of my family and the myriad wonder fun, kind and generous musicians who played and recorded with me. I did make the phone calls and people always said yes.
There are always difficulties. This story is about having support and encouragement when there was no place else to get the toughness to believe in myself and my music.
Story One:
In 1978, I was at the Creative Music Studio, Woodstock, NY run by the estimable Karl Berger and his esteemed spouse, Ingrid Sertso
“It’s not what you play, it’s how you play,” Karl Berger
I asked Oliver Lake about moving to NYC, me being a sax player and all and he said, “George, there’s always room for one more,” and that was all I needed.
Michael Lytle was a hugely significant influence on me . We had a clarinet and sax duet that just smoked and a trio with David Moss called Meltable Snaps It.
Karl Berger obituary – NYTimes – https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/26/arts/music/karl-berger-dead.html
Ingrid Sertso – (https://creativemusic.org/cms-artists/ingrid-sertso/
Oliver Lake – https://www.oliverlake.net
Michael Lytle – https://www.facebook.com/elewhale/
David Moss – https://www.davidmossmusic.com/
Meltable Snaps It – https://www.discogs.com/release/774955-Meltable-Snaps-It-Points-Blank
And things went on and on…
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
A few phrases, some a bit corny:
1. If you’re not standing on the edge you’re standing in the way.
2. Don’t let the song get in the way of the music.
3. You, really can do it. In your own very special and unique way.
4. You’re a good and talented person even if you don’t know it yet.
5. Practice, it will help immensely…
I took the liberty of inserting the above incomplete list into Google’s Bard AI and asked to have it as a paragraph. Got this which is pretty scary, but, that’s why I’m putting it here ‘cause the irony bites better than a snake”
‘The air crackles with nervous energy, a tightrope stretched before you. Fear nips at your heels, a siren song urging retreat, but a whisper stirs within, “If you’re not standing on the edge, you’re standing in the way.” Don’t let doubt drown out the symphony of possibility, the quiet hum of your own potential. This tightrope, it leads not to oblivion, but to a vista waiting to be unveiled.
Here, on the precipice, anxieties may try to conduct the orchestra of your life, but remember, “Don’t let the song get in the way of the music.” Breathe through the tremors, let the melody of your spirit rise above the cacophony of fear. You, yes you, with your stardust heart and unfurling wings, are capable of composing a masterpiece.
Believe in the quiet hum. “You, really can do it,” it murmurs, not a boast, but a gentle truth. You were born with a brush dipped in starlight, a voice meant to serenade the cosmos. Embrace your quirks, your stumbles, the messy, magnificent tapestry of your being. You are good, are talented, even if the world hasn’t yet learned to applaud your unique rhythm.’
– Bard
My liner notes (written solely by me) for the Mahakala records release Stick Insect ( https://mahakalamusic.bandcamp.com/album/stick-insect) is the antidote:
Recently, Davey Williams spoke up to me and he said:
“George that’s dang good band ys got there in the frozen zen like neither atmospheres three up way up there and:”
It was pretty good there down in Lower Alabama. The frog of time has hopped about on my memory of the show or even when the two of us got together. Two bedroom apt, Dave was working a country band playing drums and playing the immense and tremendous songs of the time. I worked part time as a bartender serving beer to anyone with a mouth to breath out of around that time.
Now, Josh, that’s a different but more confusing story.
There was much talk of art and music there in LA, ideas, theories, subjections, lager, fighting, like one million drumsticks flying into the sun , our sun that is, no Pall Malls were involved! I was mostly right but you’d have to ask Dave what he thought… LOTS OF trees there in Lower Alabam, green expansive expanse, oaks, further south there are masses, messes of tall pine trees (J. B. Lenoir). Made for music.
I forgot Dave’s favorite country song of the time. Give me a bit, I’ll see if i can come up with it.
The visit from author Barry Hannah was a godsend. He slammed and confused and (watched the OLe miss football game carried on his shoulder to the Mayflower in Jax, MS)and sorted us out fast. He strengthened us. Josh really said, if on a desert island, Barry’s books would be the ONLY ONES he would bring
NOW I of course question that wisdom and believe deeply that a few books of Calvin and Hobbs would be a great early morning hello. We did seriously consider changing our names to Facetto, Man Mortimer and Big Missy MarcineMentailaly but didn’t. I wish I could remember what it was he said about that.
Barry is funny though. We fell into a… (did I say I was learning the sax(ophone) at the time? Yeop, true, got a little better every day) (not much but a bit) (‘cumulates pal) ran into Josh Granowski at a huge and tremendously frothingingly sweeping and slappinginy battle of the bands at the MID South Coliseum in Memphis, TN. HOME to Jerry Lawler and Sputnik Monroe (It Came From Memphis). Josh was in a band that played 1900 staples, Dave still in a progresive country funk band that incorporated heavy metal singing and buck dancing, the REAL buck dancing where you can’t move your arms. At all. ME, PRE free jazz, and or not or nil at the time Anthony (braXTon) but heading sasheingly that way in that direction forward..
Anyway, JOsh lept in the air, viscously, quoting Sputnik Monroe : “?” Leaping into the surging screaming crown chucking crowd yelling “analog analog analog” and “’death to the fascists” which no one there understood but they kindly people tham being, helped him back on the massive stage in a country political daze with 43 bands! I mean, my goodness this was a big time, ba baa!!!
So we three got to talking, ho ho ha, right, i was in a salt and pepper soul band that had one singer like al green (mem) and the other like Otis Redding. One gig we did in south, Mississippi had a story of a customer who (male) (assuming that, naturally as I was not there) had a habit of peeing into the bell of the tenor sax player’s HORN. I kept both eyes out.
Gee, what were we talking about? Hell or heck, I don’t remember.
Our band was born THAT DAY out of lanky beats, sodden and stroked. Firely energy, smiling mighty hots of fire in the air the ground ground and all in betweens! MY MAN SAID!!!!!!, energy, and the calm and the carefully tattooedly intentions frothing to the unknown breaching of music simple, fat and, if it would it did take up. We padded fiercely about, to and also.
Dave said something interesting that was interesting. Josh, my g(G?)od that man, with 17 children, 4 dogs, uncountable cats and a metal upright bass also comments.
ME it was yes all the way ;especially since I fled the ancient volcano just in time for this one gig of a giant slant falling up . The rest is in the past and is the past and relegated to the misty and weaving (a bearly used musical term) Past. Love what Wm F said about that, Past.
I just woke up with a start in St Paul ,MN all on overcast late Of (fatty daddy little ((ONE)) fall) day. Ummmmm.
I hear from Dave that he is in Italy slurping up as much well water as he can. (don’t)(He will soon wake up in Robbinsdale. When he’s back. Josh just got in from an all night gig in a country band playing the questionable hits of the day.
Bary did say that OC changed his life.
Thanks Davey Williams
– Paris ,Oct 22, 2021, Daddylicious
credits
released December 14, 2021
George Cartwright – saxophones
Josh Granowski – bass
Dave King – drums
The title “Stick Insect’ is inspired by the novel “A Calculated Life” by British author Anne Charnock. www.annecharnock.com Publishers: 47North
license
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.georgecartwright.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/minksdream/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOfpIXvLXKsO1p7ULhQFrXw
- Other: https://www.georgecartwright.com/ https://georgecartwright.bandcamp.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cartwright_(musician) https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/george-cartwright/ http://cuneiformrecords.com/bandshtml/curlew.html http://www.cuneiformrecords.com/bandshtml/cartwright.html https://meltablesnapsit.bandcamp.com/track/quartet-w-polly https://meltablesnapsit.bandcamp.com/album/inroads-w-bradfield-lindsay
Image Credits
Michael Macioce Sarah Wells Monica Dee Anne Elias