Oak Cliff, 4.10.2022

Below is an approximation of what I said to open the "For Dennis" event at The Wild Detectives last night. Stephen Lucas filmed the whole night, and Jimi Bowman was recording, so it should be viewable and audible at some point. I wanted to do my friend justice. I hope I did. Ataraxia with Chris Curiel was transcendent, and I believe they will continue performing together. The quintet of Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez, Damon Smith, Ra Kalam Bob Moses, and Jawwaad Taylor performed a fiery exorcism. 

There were two moments when I felt Dennis's presence there: once in Ataraxia's last piece, when Chris blew a couple of long, pure notes, and once during the quintet's performance, when Stefan lay out and you could focus on just Damon, Ra Kalam, and Jawwaad (who was playing a cornet Dennis had gifted him). "This is what it might have sounded like if Dennis had been able to make the gig," I thought. Thank you, brother.

Good evening. Welcome to The Wild Detectives. Looking out at all of you, my heart is full with the knowledge that what my friend, Fort Worth pianist Johnny Case, calls Dennis Gonzalez's "lifetime project" is complete, and successful. The proof is all of you. Let me explain.

In the piece Preston Jones wrote for kxt.org, Damon Smith said -- and I agree -- that Dennis was "the most important jazz or free jazz musician from Texas who never left Texas." I'd like to add the caveat, "...as a base of operations." Unlike so many other greats from this part of the state who had to leave to make their major impact -- I'm thinking of Ornette Coleman, Julius Hemphill, Dewey Redman, and Ronald Shannon Jackson, to name but four -- Dennis took his visions to the world from right here...from a house on Clinton Avenue in Oak Cliff. 

That's important because as a result of his ADVOCACY, ENCOURAGEMENT, and MENTORSHIP, there is today a thriving creative music community and as importantly, an AUDIENCE for creative music in North Texas that would have been unimaginable when I first met Dennis 44 years ago, or even when we became close friends 20 years ago. Dennis took his music anywhere and everywhere there were ears to hear it: theaters and art galleries, rock clubs and punk squats, schools and libraries and house shows. He made what some folks call an esoteric art music easily and immediately accessible.

Listening to Dennis's younger brother Scott speaking at the Kessler last week, it struck me that the nut doesn't fall far from the tree in the Gonzalez family. I've said in the past that Dennis emerged fully formed from his own head, but that's not really true. He was the son of an educator (which he became for four decades plus) and a choir leader and visual artist. That spirituality remind part of his music and his being all the way through. I think about that now when I listen to The Hymn Project that he recorded with Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten.

There's a story Dennis told me about Stefan that illustrates another quality of all the Gonzalezes -- they are NOT SHY. There was a time when the famous cartoonist Dan Piraro lived down the street from the Gonzalez home during a time when Stefan was taking an interest in drawing. One day, Dennis told me, Stefan took his drawing materials down the street, knocked on Dan's door, and told Dan, "Hi! I heard that you're an artist TOO." It put me in mind of the heyday of Caravan of Dreams, when Dennis would introduce himself to the marquee artists from around the world -- from the AACM, from the ECM Records stable that he loved -- not as a fan, but as a fellow musician who wanted to collaborate. Dennis was NOT SHY.

Dennis was also the embodiment of the idea that living well is the best revenge. I was a fan of "Miles Out," the radio show he had on KERA-FM for 21 years. In 1992, when I was working overnights at St. Theresa's Boys Center in Fort Worth, his broadcasts were...sorry...an oasis for me -- not only the music he played, but the kind and friendly persona he projected. When they gave his show to a football player, he told me he stood in the station manager's office and told them "I hate you" -- a sentiment I can't imagine Dennis expressing to anyone. But instead of dwelling on the slight, he went back to playing music himself after several years of inactivity.

Yells At Eels, the band he formed with Aaron and Stefan, went on to tour the US and Europe for over two decades. I remember Dennis confiding in me more than once during the band's run, "These youngsters are kicking my ass!" And he loved that -- he loved pushing his sound into the air over their whirlwind energy, and he loved to see them going out on their own with Humanization 4tet, Unconscious Collective, and countless other musical endeavors.

Dennis also continued to collaborate with eminent creative musicians, bringing the bassist Henry Grimes back to a recording studio after 35 years, forging longtime relationships with the drummers Alvin Fielder and Louis Moholo-Moholo. It's a testament to Dennis's level of achievement that the musicians who'll be playing with Aaron and Stefan tonight -- the bassist Damon Smith, the drummer Ra Kalam Bob Moses, and the cornetist Jawwaad Taylor -- wanted to be here tonight to pay tribute to him.

Before that quintet takes the stage, you'll hear a band that was close to Dennis's heart, joined by the trumpeter Chris Curiel. Long before reaching out to bassist Drew Phelps and tablaist Jagath Lakpriya about forming the Ataraxia Trio, Dennis had harbored an interest in the music of the subcontinent. In the early '80s, he had discussed collaborating with Colin Walcott, who played sitar and tabla in the bands Oregon and Codona -- before Walcott died tragically in a car accident while on tour in Germany. 

I was fortunate to see some of the early Ataraxia gigs. I remember one night at Chateau Virago where it became apparent Dennis was beginning to struggle physically. Performing became an act of will for him. For Ataraxia's last recording, he augmented the trio with the electronic musician Derek Rogers, who served as the catalyst for Dennis's last great surge of creativity, and harpist Jess Garland, who'd taught at Dennis's free music school La Rondalla and added to the music a celestial quality he'd been seeking.

It's funny how, when you know someone for a time, you have conversations with them that go on, sometimes for years. Sometimes they're never finished. I remember in 2013, at Ronald Shannon Jackson's memorial service in Fort Worth, I was sitting with Dennis when he started a story, "Let me tell you about Charles Brackeen..." -- the saxophonist who'd played with Dennis in the '80s after playing with Shannon, Don Cherry, and others. But just at that moment, the service began, so the story had to wait.

That night at Chateau Virago, I remember asking him again, "So what about Charles Brackeen?" And just at that moment, Ataraxia was called to perform.

He never did get around to telling me that story. So when I saw the news that Dennis had passed, the first thing I thought was, "Well, I guess I'm not going to get to hear your Charles Brackeen story." 

The next thing I thought was:

May you and all your descendants know peace and the absence of pain.
May you and all your descendants know peace and the absence of pain.
May you and all your descendants know peace and the absence of pain.

A tall order for this life.
But whatever fortune has in store for Aaron and Stefan and Issy,
May they make of it something beautiful, as you did.
As you do.