If you’ve been to our shows, you know I play trumpet in about half of our songs. And if you’ve been to enough of our shows, you know that I improvise most of the parts - not because I’m too lazy to perfect a specific solo - but because what first inspired me to play this type of music was real jazz. Even though Emersen’s songs are not at all jazz, I like to follow the jazz recipe on horn by improvising my solos. Problem is - I sometimes hit wrong notes. Well, today I decided enough is enough. No more bad notes. I was in charge of my baby girl, Neely, this afternoon, so she sat on the bed with me while I worked out a horn part for each of the songs. I listened to the sections I wanted to solo over, sang/scatted some solo ideas (it’s easier to hum your ideas than figure them out on the trumpet), then I played the ideas on my Wurly piano, wrote the parts on staff paper, and finally played along on my trumpet.
I’ll still improvise some of the time, but now I’ve got some solid parts. And what’s the harm in playing written parts? It’s not like it’s jazz…

(No child’s ears were harmed in this picture)