A Conversation with Erin Davis and Vince Wilburn – HuffPost 5.27.14

Mike Ragogna: Let’s start with the street. It’s about time that Miles Davis got a street named after him, but why now? What brought it on?

Vince Wilburn: What brought it on? There was a lady named Shirley Zafirau, she is a neighbor on West 77th street and she’s very politically driven. She thought it would be very honorable if the city would grant uncle Miles a street named in his honor. So one of Mayor Bloomberg’s last bills to be signed before he left office was to pass this ordinance to have the street named after uncle Miles. So Shirley Zafirau was the one who really spearheaded it. She’s going to be at the event, we were out hanging “No Parking” signs last night. I don’t want to tell her age, but she’s really spunky and feisty. The family applauds.

Erin Davis: We’re very grateful to her.

MR: Erin, the US postal service’s Miles Davis stamp is the biggest selling specialty stamp to date, right?

ED: I wouldn’t be surprised! I know it sold a ton of stamps and was joint released with the post in France, so it was a really big honor for us to have this joint release with the two nations, the US and France. That was a long time coming, too, a lot of work and a lot of red tape, but the post office had a great team of guys working on that and they pushed it through once they got the artwork sorted out and everything. It was a great, great thing for the family.

MR: Another major thing is the bio pic that’s happening with Don Cheadle, Ewan McGregor and Zoe Saldana.

ED: Yeah, we’re thrilled about that. That’s also a long time coming. Vince?

VW: It took seven years and we’re finally going to production in Cincinnati in June, it’s Don Cheadle’s directorial debut, and then we have Zoe Saldana and Ewan McGregor cast. The script was written by Steven Baigelman and Don Cheadle.

ED: Steven Baigelman just finished the James Brown movie, he’s a great writer.

MR: Cool. Miles Davis has his own brand, people know his sound the second they think of his name, even though he went through several distinct styles. What is it from your perspective that made this music iconic?

ED: It’s unique, and what’s unique about it is that it changes over the years, it’s not just a sound. The Rolling Stones you can identify pretty quickly, and they’re often copied but you can always go back to them and say, “Oh, that’s something that The Rolling Stones did.” With Miles I think you identify with periods of his career, the styles he’s played in. You know his horn playing, you can pick up his phrasing because it’s just so sweet and melodic. It’s just the choicest notes, it’s never as many notes as you can fit into a bar, it’s only the right ones. [laughs]

MR: Nice. And of course it’s emotional. Everything that came out of those lips came from the heart.

ED: Exactly.

MR: Vince, obviously you have a lot of stories about Miles, but do you have any that come to mind, something you watched him do or something about him?

VW: I always say this, but you’re talking about someone who was the first to wake up in the morning and last to go to sleep at night, driven by music. He would change close to five or six times a day, his mind just worked in very creative ways and he was always thinking about the music, advancing the music, exploring new horizons with the music, never looking back. We played together for four years and each night was different. We called it Miles Davis University, he was the captain. We called him “The Chief.”

MR: He was the kind of improv, wasn’t he?

VW: Yeah, you could say that. He had structure, but he used to say, “Set up things.” There was structure with the improv. He would say, “I’ll tell you to play, not to practice.” You had to be ready, spontaneity was the key.

MR: Erin, do you have any special stories with him?

ED: I’ve got a million of them. I think one story or one situation that kind of resonated for me often was that he wasn’t able to attend my high school graduation because he was on tour, but he called me up and he said, “You’re going to be in the band because John Bingham is leaving,” he was playing electronic percussion, and I didn’t really know anything about that, but I just kind of said, “Okay.” I was used to going on the road with him in the Summers, but on crew. I obviously always wanted to be in the band, but I thought more along the lines of I would play drums. But I said, “Okay,” and the day after I walked and got my diploma I was on a plane to meet up with them in New York. That whole tour when I played with him, the first and second tours I was just nervous the whole time because I wasn’t really comfortable with the electronic percussion, being complimentary to the drummer. I thought I was ruining the show for him. I had solos and I didn’t know what to play. He was very patient about it. I thought, “Man, he’s going to send me home after a week,” but he was very patient about it. One night I remember I was so tired of being stressed out that I just let loose and started hitting everything and playing and trying to remember all the chops I had and he was like, “You actually played pretty good today.” I think I just stopped being nervous and relaxed a little bit. Like Vince said, he never paid us to practice. It wasn’t about trying to be perfect, it was about taking yourself to a different place you haven’t been. Your highest form of expression. I wish I would have realized that earlier, I think I would’ve enjoyed it a lot more. But that’s probably one of the things I take away from him not being here, I wish I could talk to him about that experience.

MR: Can you remember if there’s any specific moment or event during your time with Miles that changed your outlook on music?

VW: Him being a leader, it teaches you how to interact with musicians. Both Erin and I are bandleaders and it taught us how to deal with our musicians on a certain level. Musicians are sensitive creatures, so to get what you want out of your musicians you have to treat them a certain way and then you can take them in your direction. That’s one of the things that I learned from him, the way you treat musicians to get the best out of them. That stuck in my mind when I played with him and now I apply that to my band.

ED: I echo fully what Vince said. I watch Vince with his guys and it reminds me of how Miles, “Chief,” used to handle his guys, how he would deal with them. Vince said musicians are sensitive, sometimes things happen and guys do things on stage or on the bandstand or off stage, but Vince deals with his guys in the same way Chief used to. I was always surprised when I thought Chief would get very upset with somebody but he wouldn’t. You’ve just got to know how to deal with people. There were things that would upset him, mostly about which guys were playing, not what they were saying. The other thing that I learned from him that kind of changed things for me is that he really knew how to pick guys for the band. He picked guys that he thought were good players in whatever band they were in before. It didn’t have to be jazz or anything, if a guy was a good player he would ask them to join the band. I think a lot of people didn’t understand that, including other members of the band that he was fronting at the time. He would just build these great bands that would come together over time that always had great drummers, horn players, bass players, guys would come and go and I would always think he’d be upset when a guy would have to leave to play with someone else, but he would always wish them well. It was kind of like a family, it was really cool.

MR: Was he a big mentor?

ED: I think he would really be concerned about what was happening with his band before helping somebody else with their thing, but if you were in his band he would help you with your career going forward anyway. I think he was just trying to help you with things you might not be aware of, just furthering your own development. So in a way, yeah. He definitely did mentor a lot of people in that way.

MR: What are you guys working on right now?

VW: I’ve got a couple of artists, a kid named Jesse Campbell who was on The Voice, I’m doing some music with him, I’ve got a kid named Niles Rivers, Erin and I both have studios respectively in California. We’re always putting tracks together and calling each other, I go over to Erin’s and Erin scores movies and it freaks me out. I’m so proud of him, listening to his music and his tracks, we inspire each other. I have artists that I’m producing, and Erin can speak on his productions.

ED: Well, last year I produced the score for this documentary about Richard Pryor called Omit The Logic. I’ve done a couple film scores in the years before that myself, being a composer. I dabbled in some management, I was working with an artist called Gabriel Johnson, we still work together, but I’m taking more time to write music myself and get back into my playing. I play drums and I play a little guitar and bass, too. I’m kind of just working on a new project and I’m hoping to collaborate with a friend of mine who’s also a composer. We’re hoping to get together in the next few months to see what happens, but other than that we work with the estate a lot, the movie’s coming up and once in a while I’ll get a nice internet commercial or something I can do. Right now I’m just working on new material, I write different styles of music, sometimes it’s acoustic blues, sometimes it’s hard rock, sometimes it’s more something you would hear in a film. I’m just kind of working through a lot of different things right now and I’m enjoying it.

MR: Nice. You also worked with Kyle Eastwood in that supergroup Bloodline.

VW: [laughs] Supergroup…I like that. It was a supergroup!

ED: Yeah, that was back about twenty years ago I was in Bloodline with Berry Oakley, Jr, Waylon Krieger, and Joe Bonamassa who’s now gone on to great success, I’m so happy for him. I love seeing him out there in all the guitar magazines and seeing him on DirecTV all the time. I go to the guitar shop and half the stuff is his personal model of guitar or pedal or amp or whatever. It’s great to see, because I know he worked really hard at it. I think when we started he was fourteen, and now I know twenty years later he’s worked through it all, I’m really happy with him. Kyle’s project, we recorded a record in Paris a couple years ago, and that was great fun to work on because he’s a great friend.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

ED: The advice I would have for new artists these days is try to write what you write, don’t try to write what everybody else does. Just explore playing live as much as you can, get your group together and get tight with rehearsals and go play live. I’ve seen a lot of bands that are able to get shows but aren’t good at playing live because they don’t know what to do, they don’t know how to listen to each other or how to work in a club environment or even a larger venue. The last thing would be to get your social media numbers up because that’s how it’s working these days.

MR: Yeah. Vince, what about you?

VW: Don’t go on American Idol. Don’t go on these TV shows. Like Erin says, man, you’ve got to play. You’ve got to go through the trenches. You don’t want to be a one-hit wonder. I’m so sick of these artists who are in it for the money and then they’re out. They’re in for one album and then you don’t hear from them anymore. Think about longevity, think about starting at the bars or the clubs or whatever and play music with people you like to play with. Don’t be with these f**king put together bands, I hate it. I hate it, hate it, hate it. Play. You’ve got to play. Don’t autotune, it’s horrible. It bastardizes the music and people who want to be creative. That’s a whole other topic, man. Erin and I have the Miles Davis House in Austin, and man the bands who come through there just kill it. They play and Erin and I just smile, man. We’re high-fiving each other. We had Lucinda Williams, it’s like, “S**t.” It doesn’t get much better than that. All these bands are killing. That’s where there’s a disconnect: There’s a disconnect between true artists and one-hit wonders. We love the true artists, the artists that are in the ditches, social media, grinding, playing, hitting all the clubs and the bars and paying their dues. Does that get my point across?

MR: I think so! [laughs] With American Idol and The Voice, sure, they’re fun to watch, but I think it also teaches generations of kids who are going to go into music into thinking that’s how you do it.

VW: Yeah, and they go in it for the money. Money is great, we love money, but love music first. If you kick ass on your instrument or you’re singing your ass off, the money will come. Shit, Bruno Mars was doing Elvis impersonations in Hawaii or something, but it prepared him for where he is now. I just used him as one example. He can share with you his struggles. His brother plays drums in the band, his brother was a police officer, he stopped playing drums to join the police force, and then when Bruno picked up he quit the police force to play with his brother. And he can play! I don’t consider Bruno Mars a one-hit wonder, but what do I know?

MR: I would never put him in that category.

VW: He kicked ass in the Super Bowl halftime, that’s enough for me. Dig this, Kanye West had to come up through the trenches, trying to get his demo played until Jay gave him a shot, and now look at Kanye West. He paid his dues. You’ve got to go through the trenches.

MR: I have to ask you, how did Kind Of Blue become one of the greatest albums of all time?

ED: I’m not sure! It’s one of those secret formulas. A lot of people I talk to, when my dad comes up they say, “Oh, I loved Kind Of Blue.” That’s not the only record they say, but that’s a lot of people’s introduction to jazz. It’s very easy on the ears without being easy-listening music. It’s nice to listen to. You don’t have to dig in right away to figure it out. Sometimes if you’re trying to listen to a bird solo and you haven’t really experienced a lot of jazz before you may not be sure what you’re listening to, but with Kind Of Blue I think you know what you’re hearing right away, you’re hearing something beautiful. You don’t need a degree to listen to it, you just need to be open-minded. Most people put it on and they’re just like, “Wow, this is great.” That’s the essence of that record.

VW: I agree with what Erin said, you don’t have to scratch your head to digest it. It’s modal music, and to me it’s haunting in a beautiful way. “Blue And Green” is my favorite song. It’s was Miles’ mother’s favorite song. I can never get tired of listening to Kind Of Blue. Bill Evans, Cannonball, I talked to Jimmy Cobb this morning.

Transcribed By Galen Hawthorne