 Backroads is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008. What's it like performing live? I personally like performing live more than any other experience, say in a studio or any other kind of tape. I think there's a kind of intangible magic and connection. At least in my mind it feels like an energy that's created between the band and the audience. It's a dialogue of sorts and so I really feed off the energy of an audience and you wind up playing things that you might not have imagined otherwise because of that audience and because of that experience. My personal feeling is that you play with what you're feeling and what you're thinking within a given moment and the band will never play, even if it's the same song, they'll never play it exactly the same way twice, it just doesn't happen. And that's personally what I like. It feels like it's a living, breathing entity. Regardless of the style that you're playing, I see music as an abstract form of art because it is quite abstract, it's nothing you can touch. I always think about like if there's an alien that came down to earth and you tried to explain to him, what is it that you do? And the alien says, you know, what is it that you do down here on earth? Well I create vibrations through machines that we've created of wood and steel to alter the chemistry within the human mind for people to experience and feel something. We help them feel and we do this with these contraptions that we've created from elements of the earth. The truest form of what we're doing, that's essentially what we do and how exactly we affect those chemicals that create emotions. It's kind of a wild thing, but we're producing something and it's true and it's real and it's just an abstract form, you know. So this next piece is a composition that I wrote. Its title is Homesick and my great-grandmother on my father's side who was a Croatian immigrant, grew up on the Adriatic Sea on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia and when I wrote the tune I was trying to imagine the experience of being a woman from the Dalmatian coast living in Virginia, Minnesota. How do you approach songwriting? When I'm writing a tune I usually wind up playing it sort of a cord melody style which is where for me what it is is I grab a cord and the top note of the cord would indicate where the melody would lie and I kind of write the melody and the harmonies together but a lot of times it sort of it comes out of the harmonic structure of the thing but also sometimes I'll just be hearing a melody in my head it'll just be kind of rolling through my head and I'll try and capture that melody and then fleshing that out with rhythm and extricating the melody from the chords for you know a lead voice to play a lead guitar or violin or clarinet whatever it may be but then I also sometimes will sort of create a template for myself for you know I've played a number of different styles whether it's a musette, a French waltz that has an AA, BB, A, C-section, A I can start out with that sort of template of how many measures and to just give myself sort of a framework so it happens in a number of different ways it isn't one specific way I use different techniques at different times. What's it like to be a musician in northern Minnesota? For me I love it I love playing in northern Minnesota I'm not here by accident I've specifically chosen to be in northern Minnesota I've toured pretty extensively in my career and the quality of life here is just really magnificent we live in a great part of the world and I find for myself that sense of ease is conducive to the creative process for me it's where I create my best work and we're extremely lucky because it seems to me within the past 10 years and as time goes on northern Minnesota is becoming more and more welcoming and conducive to the creative process you know there's places like Rail River here and you know we have the Rife Center and them across the Art Center in Grand Rapids and we've put on Peasants with Torches and there just seems to be a really positive art scene that's existing here one of the things that I found playing northern Minnesota is people are extremely appreciative of the music because I don't think they're sort of constantly bombarded with actually opportunities which I think can sort of blunt the experience for people well why should we go out tonight because we can go out tomorrow I find that people are extremely appreciative and I find that people are extremely appreciative of jazz when we play it and all the different sub-genres of jazz that I play I've rarely found anyone who didn't appreciate it on some level so it's a great place to make art it's a great place to live it's a great place to be a musician I love it I wouldn't have it any other way here to Lakeland Public Television we'll see you next time well I don't think people need to intentionally be original I don't think you can get away from it you're just gonna play the way you play and I think ultimately you know I like what Charlie Parker said which was you have to play it the way you think it should go Backroads is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money by the vote of the people November 4th 2008