Max Light’s New Record
My label, AGS Recordings, is releasing 4 records this year, and I'm already laying in plans for the next batch in 2025. I'm learning an awful lot, all useful information, though some of it I wish I didn't know. At this point I can safely say that most musicians have little idea how the music business works. I thought I did…there have been plenty of moments of dark humor.
The good news is that we’re releasing records by amazingly talented guitar players. It may be very challenging to actually sell their music—but you can be hopeful about the world just knowing this type of creativity still exists. And it exists in abundance.
Our first release of 2024 is “Pathos” by Max Light. This young man comes from my hometown, Washington DC. It's hard to imagine a player like this existing when I was growing up. There wasn't much of a jazz scene, and the places where a student could learn to play like Max were few and far between. Now great teachers and schools are everywhere. Washington DC has been responsible for quite a few great players, Roy Buchanan, Danny Gatton, Anthony Pirog, Wendy Eisenberg, Mike Stern, Tosin Abasi, and more that I am forgetting—but Max bears little similarity to these folks. His influences lean towards the more adventurous metal, Ben Monder, Alan Holdsworth and Kurt Rosenwinkel. His compositions are built on unusual sets of intervals and time signatures, and he executes these tricky pieces with a dexterity that's quite alarming! No matter how complex the music gets there remains an underlying lyricism to it.
The colleagues he’s chosen for his record are remarkably gifted as well—Julian Shore on piano, Steve Crammer on drums, and Walter Stinson on bass. This is part of the crop of younger players who are bringing jazz music forward. If you have not yet heard of them, I suspect you will. There is a great spread on Max in the recent guitar player magazine by Bill Milkowski. If you happen to be a subscriber it's well worth a read.
It's worth noting that the landscape in NYC for a brilliant young jazz guitarist is pretty bleak, at least as a leader. I think it says something that one of the most talented young guitar players in New York ended up having his CD release show in a small bar in Brooklyn with no cover charge. It fits about 45 people. It’s a welcoming, fun place to hear music. But you wonder what it tells you about the state of live jazz in New York that no other more high- profile options were available.
This is how it is. Dozens of great players battling to play once or twice a year in a bar in Brooklyn for the door. That's New York City for you. That doesn't mean they aren't playing as side people around the country or in Europe. But has often been stated, dear New York can be a heartbreaker. Somehow it seems to still be a place where most jazz musicians make their bones, though. It survives as a cauldron of creativity. But if you ask anyone how it survives, they'll shake their head and say I have no idea.
It's not as if it was ever easy for jazz musicians even in its golden era, though. The venues that Charlie Parker often played in were exactly like this bar in Brooklyn. Small, crowded, a place for drinking, where there just happens to be music. In the end there's some comfort in the predictability of it all. Ever since I became aware of the allure of great music I was cognizant of the fact that I had to search to find it. It wasn’t something obvious, ever present, popping up in all the headlines, headlining on a bright marquee. It has occurred in out of the way places, it's written about in hard -to- find publications, virtually cut off from the world at large and it's addiction to the shallows of celebrity culture.
In order to find out what's interesting you have to be a detective. There's a certain satisfaction in that. In the end I feel like I’m part of a club with no walls whose membership depends on being a “little off.” The membership is worldwide. It’s important to remember that. So now that I run a small label (very small…) I suppose I’m one of those secret operations that only good detectives can find. If I step aside from any tendency towards cynicism, or any eye-rolling while dealing with the minutiae of the digital abyss—well, I’m pretty proud of that.
Please check out Max’s work—and buy the CD on bandcamp, because bandcamp has by far the most fair deal to the artist.
And hey, if you want to see Max and I on stage together please attend (or live stream!) the guitar festival we’re doing Friday, April 26. 2 sets… https://guitarmastersfestival.com/event/guitar-masters-festival-steve-cardenas-joel-harrison-brad-shepik-max-light-pete-mccann-and-grant-gordy/