Dennis Gonzalez, 1954-2022

The first time I laid eyes on Dennis Gonzalez, I didn't know he played trumpet. My friend Tim Flynn, the first person I ever saw play an 8-string guitar, had a restaurant gig and I was driving. But first, Tim said, we had to stop off in Oak Cliff and pick up this bass player.

It was 1978. Dennis had just started teaching in Dallas public schools (French and later, mariachi). He was just 24. I was 21, an age at which a three year difference in age still matters. Already, he had the mien of a sage: an old soul. There was an Old World courtliness about him, out of which a playful nature would occasionally emerge. 

(In his maturity, he had an owlish demeanor, like Don Quixote as played by Zero Mostel, and he regarded the world with puzzled amusement. Once filmmaker Jason Reimer tapped Dennis to play a post-apocalyptic wise man in a bumper for the Oak Cliff Film Festival. Dennis was perfect for the role.)

The home in Oak Cliff that he shared with his wife Carol, a nurse and St. Louis Cardinal fan, was already a creative's lair, filled with art objects and musical instruments, of which Dennis played a bunch. Their family grew with the birth of Aaron in 1981 and Stefan five years later. A lot of Fort Worth punk scene habitués of my acquaintance, now in their forties, can tell you stories of attending punk shows at the Gonzalez family home when Aaron and Stefan were teenagers. Some of them didn't know Aaron and Stefan's dad was a musician.

By the time I met Dennis, he was already broadcasting on KERA-FM: the late night jazz show Miles Out, which helped me maintain my tenuous grip on sanity when I was freshly out of the Air Force and working overnights for Catholic Charities at St. Theresa's Boys Center on East Lancaster. 

Dennis had founded daagnim (Dallas Association for Avant-garde and Neo-Impressionistic Music), a performance cooperative and record label. It was a time when Dallas jazz fans could still occasionally hear '50s eminences like James Clay and Red Garland on the evening stage, but Dennis and his daagnim cohort were playing free jazz, tapped into the same wellspring of creativity as Chicago's AACM, St. Louis's BAG, and Horace Tapscott's L.A. milieu.

The opening of Fort Worth's Caravan of Dreams in the early '80s brought Dennis in direct contact with like minded, world class musicians from all over. Dennis began traveling to Europe to perform, and formed creative partnerships with musicians like the multi-reedist John Purcell and the trumpeter Rob Blakeslee. On a 1987 visit to London, he recorded Catechism with Soft Machine saxophonist Elton Dean, pianist and King Crimson fellow traveler Keith Tippett, and South African drummer Louis Moholo (the latter an association that would continue for many years).

Between 1987 and 1989, Dennis made a series of exceptional recordings for the Swedish Silkheart label with groups built around himself and the saxophonist Charles Brackeen that included another longtime associate, the drummer and AACM founding member Alvin Fielder. In the '90s, Dennis recorded with the altoist Carlos Ward, tenorman Tim Green (another longtime collaborator), and the Canadian pianist Paul Plimley (Hymn for the Perfect Heart of a Pearl); the brothers Nels and Alex Cline (The Earth and the Heart); and the Norwegian pianist Nils Petter Molvaer (Welcome to Us). Then...he retired from music for awhile.

In 2002, I reconnected with Dennis when I was writing about music for the Fort Worth Weekly and a friend who was doing PR for the Wreck Room (my favorite rawk dump of all ti-i-ime; RIP) pulled my coat to "this guy who has a free jazz trio with his two punk rock sons." The guy in question was Dennis, of course, and Yells At Eels was the band Aaron and Stefan coaxed him out of retirement to form.

It was a pleasure watching YAE grow from somewhat tentative beginnings (with Dennis playing occasional standup bass; the first time I saw them was also the first time I heard Bill Pohl, sitting in that night, play guitar) to a powerful juggernaut, with Dennis by his own account holding on for dear life atop the relentless forward motion of Aaron and Stefan's propulsion -- kind of a free jazz simulacrum of the Wetton-Bruford "flying brick wall" in '70s King Crimson. 

As for Dennis, aside from occasional use of an octave splitter/harmonizer pedal, his playing became ever simpler, ever more spiritual and lyrical. One of my favorite ways to hear him is on the pair of duet CDs he recorded for Clean Feed with the Portuguese pianist Joao Paulo (Scapegrace and So Soft Yet). There's a video of the duo performing in the square of a Portuguese village that I love because it reminds me of the film Cinema Paradiso and I can hear my friend's breath in it.

Dennis continued making good records through the Aughts and Teens, most notably for the French label Ayler. In 2016, he formed another ensemble, Ataraxia Trio, with bassist Drew Phelps and tablaist Jagath Lakpriya, to explore quieter spaces than YAE. Their second album, Nights Enter, added synthesist Derek Rogers and harpist Jess Garland to the mix, and is a worthy epitaph.

Besides his musical endeavors, Dennis was also a prolific poet and visual artist. In his last years, when health concerns -- diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure -- filled his life with pain and worry, he undertook a series of collaborative works with his granddaughter, Isabella Anais Sisk-Gonzalez, which culminated in exhibits in Shreveport, Dallas, and Fort Worth.

Sometimes in those last years, I felt concern seeing Dennis go from a hospital stay directly to the road for a music gig or an art opening. But he was driven to create, the way the real ones are, and determined to leave a legacy for Issy. Fueled by love, he kept pushing himself to perform, even after the complete loss of hearing in his right ear (a possible Covid result). The last time I saw him, he looked drained but happy, surrounded by people who loved him. We should all do so well.

As a friend, Dennis was unremittingly steadfast, loyal, and generous. I wish we could have had more time together. In the wake of his passing, his absence is palpable. I send peace and comfort to Carol, Aaron, Stefan, Isabella, and all who loved him.