“I had an idea of where I thought Miles wanted to go, from listening to music,” Evans said to Musical Musings last week.
“I was in college just a few months before that, and also going to the clubs all the time, so I was very aware.
“I was sort of Miles’ liaison to the outside world.
“And to help him when he wanted to have recommendations for musicians.
“I wanted to get the right players, not just players that I thought friends of mine or whatever.
“I thought of the gig and his band and the future and of what he wanted to do.”
Evans’ time with the jazz master taught him some important lessons that have held him in good stead.
“He taught me a bunch of stuff, but it was not like he said, do this or do that,” Evans said.
“It was just from sort of being around him.
“One of the things he told me was that not everybody's going to like everybody’s stuff.
“So, it was important to believe in your own music, believe in what inspires you.
"I always call it the curse because it's not necessarily the safe road to take.
“It never is.”
After he exited Davis’ band, Evans went on to etch out a successful individual career, touring and recording with the likes of Herbie Hancock, Willie Nelson, Mick Jagger and The Allman Brothers Band.
Evans is also one of those musicians who isn’t afraid to play with musicians who are using non-traditional instruments, not normally found in the jazz sphere, such as the banjo and the fiddle.
“When I have all these different kinds of instruments, I’ll write differently, and I’ll play differently,” he said.
“I will play off a banjo and a fiddle differently than I will with a guitar and a keyboard.
“And so, to me, that’s fun.
“And I think for the audience, it’s fun too, because they get to hear something a little bit different.”
Evans, who has previously toured Australia more than 25 years ago, will finally be returning to Australia come this October, and is looking forward to performing to Australian audiences again.
“It’s going to be contemporary jazz at the highest level,” he said.
“And I’m even thinking about doing like maybe a 20-minute part of the show where I will do portions of songs I’ve done on some of the last 27 records I’ve done as a solo guy, just a melody here, and a melody there.
“And I will write a few new tunes for Australia too that I'm going to do, and debut when I am there.”
For touring info and tickets visit: https://gerrardallmanevents.com.au/
Music news
This weekend The Rolling Stones release their new album Foreign Tongues, the follow-up to their 2023 album, Hackney Diamonds.
For lovers of guitar music, Eric Clapton recently announced the Crossroads Guitar Festival will be returning this year in September and will be taking place in Austin, Texas.
The roster of guitar players for the two-day event includes Pete Townshend, Billy Gibbons, and blues great Buddy Guy.
In a new interview, Spice Girl Mel B has squashed rumours the girl power group were reforming.
“I can tell you it’s not happening,” she revealed to Hello! magazine.
“If it does, it’ll be a shock to me, let’s put it that way.”
Stay tuned for my next fortnightly edition of Musical Musings which will be coming to you from Stockholm, Sweden.
New York indie-rockers The Strokes have announced they have a new album coming soon titled, Reality Awaits.
The group was one of the leaders of the garage rock revival of the early 2000s.
Behind the album: Pink Moon (1972) by Nick Drake
Little did English singer/songwriter/guitarist Nick Drake know that in the wake of his tragic death in 1974, he would become music’s “mythical doomed romantic hero”.
His third and final studio album, 1972’s Pink Moon, would go on to become a hugely influential album on a generation of singer/songwriters that followed in his wake from R.E.M to Belle & Sebastian.
Pink Moon is Drake’s most intimate and sparsest outing of his brief career.
Featuring nothing more than Drake’s soulful voice and acoustic guitar bar for a single piano overdub on the title track, the album’s simplicity and Drake’s bleak yet beautiful evocative imagery is strikingly heartfelt and immediate.
The album was recorded with Drake playing each of the album’s tracks from start to finish in one sitting in the recording studio over two evening sessions in October 1971.
After he had finished the first session, he returned for another evening session and that was it.
It took hardly any time to mix the album since it was only Drake’s songs and guitar, and the sole piano overdub.
Fifty years on Pink Moon continues to have an enduring quality to it, and is a timeless document of both mind and heart, all of which permeates through each of the album’s 11 tracks. Check it out.
This week’s global music charts
US No.1: Swim by BTS
AUS No.1: Rein Me In by Sam Fender/Olivia Dean
UK No.1 - Rein Me In by Sam Fender/Olivia Dean
Fun fact
Within a span of seven years, The Beatles released 12 studio albums, though if you include the US LP release of Magical Mystery Tour, it would total 13, which was prolific considering these days artists tend to release an album every few years.
In some cases as exemplified by Guns N’ Roses whose Chinese Democracy album took 14 years to come to fruition, after it was started in 1994, and completed and released in 2008.
