The Problem with Phil

Phil Woods–a problem? Who could have any problem at all with Phil?

I can, and here it is: the guy is too good!

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he was blowing choruses on Donna Lee while still in his diapers. Of course, Woods paid some serious dues to play as beautifully as he does, but he seems to have been playing that way awfully early in the game. Here”s a black-and-white video clip of Phil from back in 1968.

He would have been…um, let’s see, born in 1931…okay, well, one can certainly be playing a lot of horn at age thirty-seven. I guess that much is obvious. And in Phil’s case, he evidently was playing outstandingly at least fourteen years earlier. His extensive discography goes back to 1954, two years before I was born. Phil had to have been darned good even then for a record company to pick him up at the tender age of twenty-three.

I guess that’s why he’s Phil Woods. Why he’s a jazz icon. Because he was a killer player back then and remains so today. He had the fire in him at an early age, he took it and ran with it, and he’s been running ever since.

And playing beautifully.

You got a problem with that?

January 24, 2008 by
Filed Under: Entertainment, Jazz, Life, Music, Recording, Saxophone, Video

Good Beer, Revisited

I never did make it to the Fletcher Street Brewery after my gig in Alpena last December. Not that I didn’t want to, not that I didn’t try, but I’m here to tell you that life has its ironies.

A few other band members seemed reasonably enthused about hitting the brewpub once we had packed up the equipment, so we wound up with a bit of an entourage cruising the streets of Alpena. Finding Fletcher Street Brewery was not much of a problem, but I had forgotten one small detail: the place doesn’t serve food.

No food!

What’s wit dat?

How can you serve beer without offering something in the way of edibles to take the edge off an appetite, not to mention off the alcohol?

Now, this lack of food didn”t bother me to the extent that I was prepared to give up on my prospects of a fine IPA. But everyone else was hungry. So off we went to a restaurant down the block for a meal, all ten or twelve of us.

The place we wound up at majored in high-decibel background noise and your usual American pilsners. Frankly, I would rather drink lizard pee than Miller’s, but at least Sam Adams was available in a bottle, and that”s what everyone ordered.

Everyone, that is, except me. Nothing against Sam Adams, mind you–it”s decent enough beer–but I was saving myself, you see. Fortified by visions of that mug of IPA at Fletcher’s, I wasn’t about to sacrifice either my stomach space or my sobriety on lesser brews. So I suffered beerlessly through my hamburger. It was hard. But my mind was focused on a higher cause.

An hour later, we headed back to our vehicles, spun down the side streets, and pulled into Fletcher’s parking lot.

The lot was empty.

Fletcher Street Brewery had closed five minutes before our arrival.

And that, my friend, is why my lip trembles and there is a tear in my eye as I write these words. If ever a man wanted a good beer that night, I was that man. If ever a man deserved a good beer that night, it was I. And yet, out of all our little coterie, I was the one–the only one–who didn”t get a beer. Not even a lousy Sam Adams. Still, tonight, nearly two months later, just thinking of this is causing me to relive the trauma.

Thankfully, I”ve got just the cure for the pain. There’s a sweet, fat growler of Hopnoxious IPA from the Walldorff sitting in the fridge. There’s a good, solid glass beer mug in my cupboard. As for the rest, well…you know the drill.

January 23, 2008 by
Filed Under: Humor, Jazz, Life, Music, Saxophone, Uncategorized

Storm Chasing in the Great Lakes

The snow has been flying today, as it has consistently for the past week, but at least the temperatures have risen into the balmy low twenties. For several days, they were down into the single digits, making for some bitterly cold days. And we had it good. Across the lake, in Wisconsin, I saw readings as low as -14 degrees Fahrenheit. Had it gotten that chilly here, I’d have been sorely tempted to put on a long-sleeve shirt before venturing outside.

Just kidding. This is has been some cold weather. January 2008 has proved to be a month of extremes. Two weeks ago, tornadic thunderstorms erupted as far north as Racine, Wisconsin, and I was chasing supercells in Missouri. Now, this. Such is life in Michigan, land of variety, contrast, and freezing your butt off.

It’s okay, though. March is only five weeks away, and for me, that marks the arrival of storm chasing season. Of course, I’m being optimistic here–Michigan winters have that effect on me. Wanting to push the envelope comes naturally this time of year. But I”m not being unrealistic. March produces some toothsome chase scenarios, as blobs of juicy Gulf of Mexico moisture begin to push northward into regions of radical lapse rates, wild helicities, and screaming jets.rnrnIf I sound a little overeager for severe weather right now, blame it on cabin fever. I’ve been cooped up in this icebox far too long. But the truth is, while I’ll chase the big storms when they visit my area, I have no desire for them to do so. The southern half of Michigan”s lower peninsula is simply too populous. Sure, a lot of it is still rural, but you can’t travel far without encountering a town, often a good-sized one. This is not the Great Plains. It’s Michigan, a state checkered with population centers–not a good place to have some mile-wide Oklahoma-style wedge carve a twenty-mile path.rnrnMichigan is also heavily forested, which doesn’t make storm chasing easy. It”s not as bad as chasing in the Ozarks, where one’s view of an approaching storm can be blocked by mountainous terrain, but it’s also not as good as those wide, gracious, open stretches of Kansas grassland.

Frankly, the most chaser-friendly territory I’ve seen so far has been central Illinois. It’s not only incredibly, breathtakingly flat, but it also has a beautiful gridwork of nice, straight roads, roads that behave themselves and rarely offer you unpleasant surprises. No clay that turns into chocolate pudding when wet and tries its damndest to slurp your vehicle into a ditch. No miles and miles of driving like a maniac to the nearest river crossing twenty miles away while the big storm of the day moves off to the east. Just, for the most part, a nice setup of very gentlemanly north-south/east-west roads spaced at regular intervals.

That’s Illinois: you not only can see the storms as far as forever, but you can also get to them without breaking a sweat.

It’s nice.

To all you Great Lakes chasers–I hope to bump into you out there sometime this spring.

January 22, 2008 by
Filed Under: Life, Storm Chasing

Must-See Storm Chasing Videos

The old adage, “One picture is worth a thousand words,” is quadruply true when it comes to video. So if you wonder why I work up such a lather over storm chasing, just check out the clips on Robert Prentice”s Atmospheric Images on YouTube.

In particular, you definitely want to watch Prentice”s video segment on the history-making 1999 Moore-Bridge Creek, Oklahoma, tornado. This was the last tornado to be rated an F-5 under the old Fujita Scale (updated last February and renamed the Enhanced Fujita Scale), and it sent that rating system out with the highest winds ever recorded–over 300 miles per hour.

My own videos are not, to date, of a quality I care to make public, though they are improving. Thankfully, seasoned chasers such as Prentice have produced a huge volume of top-quality storm videos, and Prentice has very generously made much of his material public. If you’re at all interested in storm chasing or severe weather, Prentice”s clips are a must-see.

January 16, 2008 by
Filed Under: Entertainment, Life, Music, Recording, Storm Chasing, Video, Weather

Storm Season 2008: Priming the Pump

After all those ruminations about Sonny Stitt and bebop, it’s high time for another storm chasing post. Got just the thing for you: education. That’s right, education. After all, you can’t intercept storms successfully without knowing a thing or two about them.

Last year was the year when I felt I finally had learned a few things about severe weather. Not that I was clueless before–2006 was a great chase year for me, and 2005 wasn’t too shabby, either–but last year I racked up a good 14,000 miles or more chasing storms everywhere from the Texas/Oklahoma panhandles, to South Dakota, to Wisconsin, to Indiana, to–dare I say it?–Michigan, and a few other states in between. Saw a few tornadoes for the trouble, too, not to mention some great storm structure. I witnessed my first tornado last year in late February just east of Kansas City, Missouri, and I bagged my last supercell in Indiana during a regional outbreak on October 18. That event produced a number of tornadoes, a couple of which did EF-3 damage.

This year has gotten off to an even earlier start with the big January 7 Midwest tornado outbreak. So I’m hoping this will be my best chase year yet. My buddies and I are bulking up for it with a forecasting inservice tomorrow at the National Weather Service office out by the airport. I’m really excited about this–it’ll be a great way to prime the pump for 2008.

The guy who will be conducting the inservice is quite enthused about it, too. John is a young fella who has immersed himself in studying severe weather, particularly tornado climatology and tornadogenesis (i.e. how tornadoes form). He’s passionate about his topic and eager to share his knowledge. Tomorrow evening, he will be giving me and my chase buddies, Bill Oosterbaan, Tom Oosterbaan, and Kurt Hulst, his presentation on synoptic (large-scale) setups that are responsible for the bulk of significant tornadoes in our area. This will include his analysis of the 1980 Kalamazoo tornado. From there, we’ll get John’s input on how to make maximum use of the SPC’s mesoanalysis tools, and how to use other forecast models and parameters that are available on the Internet.

It’s amazing just how many weather tools you can access for absolutely free these days on the Web. We’re talking about some truly superb tools, too–professional-quality stuff designed by and used daily by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the SPC (Storm Prediction Center). This is one area where you can get real bang for your tax bucks. From Doppler radar, to satellite images, to soundings, to numerical models, the challenge is no longer finding powerful resources for storm chasing; it’s sifting through the bewildering array of options to find the right tools, and learning how to use them effectively.

There’s no end to the learning. That is one of the daunting things about storm chasing–and one of the wonderful things. Whether you”re sitting in front of a computer pondering a 500 millibar vorticity chart, or watching a dry slot wrap around a mesocyclone two miles away, there is always, always, always something new to discover. I can”t wait to see what this year has in store!

January 16, 2008 by
Filed Under: Life, Storm Chasing

Church Music

I’ve been a follower of Jesus for nearly thirty years now, and from day one, I”ve played my saxophone as one of the means God has given me to worship him. I love doing so. However, I”m afraid the word worship is fraught with preconceptions and bad theology among Christians, and over the years, I’ve concluded I can’t live up to some of the expectations that arise as a result.

What do I mean? The best way I can explain myself is to consider a common saying among Christians in regard to the role of church musicians. To hear it told, my job is to “usher people into the presence of God.” I used to believe that, but today, I don’t think it’s possible. I can”t conjure up God’s presence, and I can’t cause people to experience it. The best I can do is simply worship God myself with earnestness and passion, whether with my instrument, or my voice, or simply in listening and silence. The rest is up to God and individual hearts.

Worship is an organic, intimate experience, and it deviates from person to person. One person may be filled with joy, and exuberant praise comes naturally to him; another may be struggling with a broken heart, and tears are the truest expression of her connection with God. A few seats down sits a couple who got into a nasty argument before church, and who are too pissed off at each other to feel very good about being in church at all right now. And those examples are just for starters.

In the midst of all the variables in even a small gathering, I’m supposed to “usher people into God”s presence”? Sorry, but I”m a musician, not a magician. I can”t usher anyone anywhere. Worship is part heart attitude and part divine action. It isn”t about selecting the right tunes, or about getting everyone to clap, or raise their hands, or dance, or any of that. Worship is a condition of the heart, and nothing I do can produce it in others. The best I can do is cultivate it in myself, and express it in ways that hopefully will free up others to follow me. Beyond that, I enter into spiritual manipulation, and I”m not willing to go there. I”ve seen too much of it, and it never bears good fruit.

Do I believe the Holy Spirit shows up in the midst of worship? Absolutely. But I can’t make him do so, nor can I determine how he will do so. I do think too many churches are so preoccupied with seamless musical productions they call “praise and worship” that they don’t give the Lord much opportunity to get a word in edgewise. I wonder how differently we would approach the act of corporate worship if we actually expected God to show up–if we really believed that he might have something to communicate or accomplish that placed the focus on his performance, not ours. Perhaps we”d be less concerned with smooth segues from one tune to the next, and more concerned with listening for his voice.

On the day of Pentecost, no mention is made of a well-rehearsed praise band facilitating the event which transpired in that upper room. As a church musician, I find this thought humbling, reassuring, and freeing. It allows me to keep things simple, and not make more of myself than I am. Because it’s not about me, it’s about Jesus. I’m just a man who plays the saxophone, and who loves God, and who has been given the gift of music as a language to express my love to my Lord. Hopefully, in what I and my fellow praise team members play, you will find something that frees and inspires you to find your own voice, be it song, or laughter, or tears, or whatever it is that most genuinely expresses your connection with God in the moment.

If you’ve prepared your heart through prayer, you’ll encounter God on your own, and if not, God may choose to initiate contact anyway, just because he loves you. Worship musicians can enhance an atmosphere for such a connection, but that’s about it. The rest is up to you and God.

It’s a matter of the heart.

January 13, 2008 by
Filed Under: Band, Christian Music, Church Worship, Entertainment, Jazz, Life, Music, Saxophone, Uncategorized

Of Jazz and Whirlwinds

Last Saturday I played a big band gig in Bay City, Michigan.

Monday I intercepted a tornadic thunderstorm in Columbia, Missouri.

Those two pursuits–jazz music and storm chasing–may seem miles apart, but the passion that drives them is the same. And I have to think, as a person in whom both interests dwell with equal intensity, that they are related in other ways as well.

Each is, at heart, a search for beauty.

Each is a compelling and richly satisfying adventure, one that revels in exploration, challenge, intensity, wildness, and something within me that is bigger than myself.

Each unites knowledge and an endless thirst to learn with intuition and an unquenchable desire to experience something sublime.

In jazz, I prepare myself through countless practice sessions that culminate in the joy of a well-crafted improvisation. In storm chasing, my preparation lies in honing my forecasting skills, and the payoff is standing on a Kansas roadside, watching a tornado dance across the prairie a mile away.

In both pursuits, the discipline required is rewarding in its own right. Yet that adult quality of discipline leads ultimately to being caught up in the moment in a way that lets the child in me run wild and free.

In a jazz, solo, I’m swept up in the swirl of the music, the rush of ideas that tumble from my imagination into my fingers and out the bell of my horn. At the edge of a storm, I”m caught up in the environment; I feel the inbounds racing around me toward the updraft base, watch twirling filaments reach earthward from a rapidly morphing wall cloud, and yell in exuberance at the wildness of it all.

Both in playing jazz and chasing storms, in different ways, I encounter my heavenly Father. I experience his magnificent creativity, his awesome power, his childlike playfulness, and his tremendous worth. In jazz, I participate in God’s creative nature, and in so doing, I reflect it back to him as worship. In storm chasing, I stand apart from an act of creativity far too immense and uncontrollable for me to ever participate in. I can only admire it “in awesome wonder”–and see in it the face of the great Creator, and feel his extravagant, untamed pleasure.

One of my life goals is to get a decent video clip of myself playing my saxophone out on the Great Plains as a huge honking wedge tornado churns in the background a mile away. Crazy? Damn right. I like being crazy that way. It’s how God wired me. It’s a part of who I am–and the reason why this website is named Stormhorn.com.

January 10, 2008 by
Filed Under: Church Worship, Entertainment, Jazz, Life, Music, Storm Chasing

Storm Chase Dreaming

The latest storm system has moved through Michigan, leaving behind it a couple inches of fresh snow here in Caledonia. The National Weather Service office in Grand Rapids is calling for lake effect snow this afternoon, but the bulk of that should be off to my west. Right now, as the clock approaches noon this New Year”s Day, the sun is filtering through a high cirrus film, casting a creamy light onto trees frosted with a confectionery coating. Snow is drifting out of the sky in particles almost too fine to even be considered a proper snowfall: more like a snow drizzle–the kind that turns so easily from a gentle precipitate into a wind-driven spray that plasters your face and kicks up off the fields into wind-driven whiteouts. Right now it appears to be behaving itself–but whoops! there goes a gust kicking an eddy of white off the side of my balcony. The forecast calls for blustery conditions as the day progresses. This is a good day to stay inside, as are most January days, unless you”re a winter outdoors buff, which I am not.

What we have here is a classic Michigan winter scene. Yet, strange to say, I”m contemplating the possibility of a storm chase early next week. Oh, believe me, I know I”m dreaming, but one does that this time of year. And the GFS (Global Forecasting System) has been pretty consistent these past few days I”ve followed it in predicting a vigorous low drawing sixty to sixty-five degree dewpoints and around fifteen-hundred j/kg CAPE up into south central and eastern Oklahoma and northeast Texas.

Next Monday”s BUFKIT reading for Fort Worth indicates a long, skinny CAPE–not terribly impressive, and taken with other borderline severe weather parameters, it”s nothing to die for. But it”s not bad, either, and as I said, I”m dreaming. This many days out from the event, that”s all I can do, and it”s particularly nice to be doing it in January. Besides, I”ve gotta love that tight dewpoint spread, suggestive of nice, low cloud bases.

Hey, it could happen. It probably won”t, but it could. I could actually wind up heading out next week on my first storm chase of the year. Call me mad, say that Supercell Deficiency Syndrome has robbed me of my grip on reality–but keep in mind that I saw my first tornado last year in late February just east of Kansas City. Anything is possible.

My chase buddies, Bill and Tom, are game to go. They”re blocking out time, just in case. That”s the storm chaser”s mantra when you live in Michigan: “Just in case.” You live with a perennial combination of low expectations and high hopes. So, as I kick back here in my La-Z-Boy sofa watching the snow drizzle down out of the New Year”s Day grayness, I”ll sum up my outlook by saying that it”s never too early to dream. That”s not a bad principle to apply any time of year to anything you please.

January 1, 2008 by
Filed Under: Life, Storm Chasing

Happy New Year!

Had an early evening gig in Kalamazoo, but I”m at home for the turn of the clock at midnight, and glad not to be out and about. A winter storm is covering the roads with snow and ice, and driving–which wasn”t fun on the way home earlier–can only be getting more treacherous.

I”m keeping this post short. Ten minutes left of 2007; six hundred seconds till 2008.

Have a happy and blessed New Year!

–Storm

December 31, 2007 by
Filed Under: Entertainment, Event, Jazz, Life, Music, Saxophone, Storm Chasing, Weddings

Santa Baby

Christmas has come and gone, and some time has elapsed since my last post. I spent most of last week in Washington, D.C., visiting my friend Kathy. It was a great time–fun, relaxing, interesting, invigorating, and best of all, shared with someone close to me. Kathy teaches voice at Levine School of Music and has an extensive background as a vocalist and actress. She”s smart, talented, interesting, beautiful, classy, down to earth, wise, generous, tenderhearted, and overall, simply a flat-out wonderful person and dear friend. What a treat to get a taste of D.C. with her as my guide and companion! We took in a terrific production of Fiddler on the Roof, enjoyed dinner and a world-class Cuban jazz band at the Smithsonian, strolled through Annapolis, and spent plenty of time just chilling out, watching DVDs and talking. We both needed that down-time, time to simply be.

Around half a year ago, Kathy got into swing dancing, and it has really lit her fuse. If there”s one thing I love, it”s seeing another person discover something that makes her come alive, and dancing has done that for Kathy. I mean, the woman is into it. Besides being a whole lot of fun, dancing has provided Kathy with a safe, wholesome social outlet as a single woman. Being gregarious by nature, she meets plenty of people.

Recently, at the request of the host, Kathy sang “Santa Baby” at a dance party. A gentleman named Darrel, who plays keyboards for Chuck Berry, enjoyed her performance and invited her to sing at the blues club where he plays and where a lot of the folks in Kathy”s dance crowd like to do blues dancing. When Kathy mentioned I”d be visiting, Darrel said, “Tell him to bring his horn to the club.” So of course I did.

The thing about the blues is, it”s universal and crosses all genres. It”s the one thing all musicians who play in a popular vein understand. Jazz, country, folk, rock, R&B…it doesn”t matter what your bag is, blues is still blues. It may get dressed up in different stylistic and harmonic attire, but strip it down to the foundation and you”ve still got twelve bars, a I-IV-V chord progression, and the blues scale.

I had a blast sitting in with Darrel and his band, particularly since he played in jazz-friendly keys. We started off with “Night Train,” then kicked up the tempo with the next tune and kept things moving for the rest of the set. It”s so nice to be able to go to another city, sit in with a band, and immediately get on the same page with the other musicians. What a great feeling!

But the best part was when Darrel called Kathy to the microphone to sing “Santa Baby,” to the cheers of her dance crowd. Mind you, now, for all her flamboyance, Kathy is a modest lass–but she can do “sultry” in a way that left me envying old Saint Nick. What a shining star! And what was particularly nice was that, after knowing each other for a year, she and I finally got to make music together. For me, that was hands-down the highlight of the evening.

Playing music is a pleasure almost anytime. But when you can share the experience with a close friend, it becomes a form of communication, an added form of connection, a special link of mutual joy and satisfaction. It just doesn”t get much better than that.

December 28, 2007 by
Filed Under: Entertainment, Event, Jazz, Life, Music, Saxophone, Weddings
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