>>DWIGHT BAILEY: My name is Dwight Bailey. Dwight Edward Bailey to be exact. I was born in 1969 in Detroit, Michigan. I grew up in Michigan up until I was about 7 years old then my parents moved back here to Columbus, Ohio and that's where I've been ever since. Actually I was in preschool year so basically my mother was a stay-at-home mom. She taught us at home before we actually went to school – like how to read – because she would read a lot herself. The other interesting thing is that my father at the time was in college when we were small kids so we would always see him reading. That was I think earlier on we learned how to read so I'm not sure how it all worked out. It's just like when we got to school we could read and the other kids said okay, then we'll read together. That was one of those things. My mom was home with us and she taught us how to read. It was kind of natural I always saw my parents reading so its kind of like watching television or playing sports. It's one of those things but I was enjoying it. It was always... I enjoyed stories and I think that's what made reading exciting for us. There were always stories and types of stories. I used to like comic books so, you know, spider man and all that good stuff. So anything that was exciting if its too serious of course I wasn't interested. Sports and comics were like my favorite things. Of course there are little stories I do remember. Thy used to have this Curious George book that was kind of worn out. I think it was handed down like you know year after year so but nothing in particular I can think of other than that. Well actually the interesting story about reading music is when I initially learned how to play music I learned to play by ear cause I primarily grew up within the church and it was an apostolic church a pentecostal church whatever you want to call it. And most of the musicians at the church that I played at or learned how to play music they pretty much played naturally just natural talent. So that's kinda how I learned how to play. It wasn't until I came here to OSU in the late 80s, the first time as a student, that I actually began to get interested in learning how to read chord charts and things like that. But there was more of a demand to learn chord charts than actually how to read musical notation. So that carried me for a good 15, 16 years or so even on a professional circuit as a musician because the demand to actually have to know how to read I never really ran into until recently. I haven't taken many theory classes since then. >>INTERVIEWER: Haven't you? >>DWIGHT BAILEY: Yeah, I actually haven't. In fact the audition to actually get into the school of Music I studied the material and because of my performance ability I was able to ace that. [Laughs] >>INTERVIEWER: Nice. [Laughs] >>DWIGHT BAILEY: Most of my friends at the time when I was growing up even from early childhood most of my focus was on the sports and things like that so reading wasn't like a big deal. I mean I didn't sit with a bunch of buddies and just read books. Comic books. I read the book and they check out the pictures. I mean its got one of those things. But it was more like a supportive unit it was like more so something we all can enjoy that would be cool. As related to music I don't think there was ever from my peers I ever felt like guys were like hey, yeah you need to learn about how to read music. It was more like the feel of the music, the intent of how music would I mean people would react that was more important and, okay, do you have your theory and composition together. It was more about how does the music feel whether it was rock or gospel or jazz or funk or hip hop or whatever. It was more about the feel and the intent. And even today I think the decision to learn more and dig deeper into the theory of music really comes from a thirst that I have for more knowledge so that I can have the ability to do what I want and to do in the future. >>INTERVIEWER: Okay. >>DWIGHT BAILEY: Starting on drums. It's interesting because to play bass you know with jazz music it's more about rhythm than it is about harmony. Of course we learn harmony and the melodic structure of music from of course European influence, but rhythm is of course Afro-Cuban and African rhythms and things like that. So drums was where I started so that kind of sparked the interest, but the interesting thing as a kid growing up in the church playing drums is that all the kids would get drums and I was okay... [Laughs] >>INTERVIEWER: [Laughs] >>DWIGHT BAILEY: ...so I had to make a decision so what are you going to do? Because you're never going to play drums with all these great drummers. So the opportunity...I always liked the bass and my mother bought me a bass guitar and I remember tearing off the top two strings...well the higher two strings and it of course was tuned like a bass so that's where I learned to play the bass. I think what it is is that at some point musicians will come. Well I certainly came to a roadblock where I felt like I hit a plateau. You can't go any further because you're just not, you need to get more, you need to get deeper. I figured out that what I was missing was the knowledge to be able to communicate. Of course music is a language, but if you can read anything musically or otherwise, I think it gives you an opportunity to be able to communicate with people at all different levels. It's kind of like a common ground. The sheet of music says this is a composition of George Benson or whatever -- we're going to do this George Benson song. You take four musicians who have never met each other before. If they can read the music they can speak that one language which is what George Benson intended in that particular song. If you can't read that music then of course you can't communicate with those musicians to create what the writer or composer intended. I was actually in the situation where I was given some music that had a lot of notation on it and it didn't have the chord charts that I was used to being able to communicate by and I couldn't do it. There was a sense of helplessness – there was a sense of insecurity that I felt at that time. I said you know what? that's a boundary. So my goal from that point was to never be in a situation where I would be denied the opportunity to make music which is something I had a compassion for when its something that I can actually control. So I didn't say well, you know, its not important to learn how to read music. I took the responsibility and said okay, you can do this but you have to make the sacrifices in order to get to the level where you need to be. I came here. I was a student at OSU back in 1988 to about 1993. I studied criminology. During that time, I did not graduate because I got a job offer. I took a test with the city of Columbus. I scored high on this test. They offered me a job and at the time I needed money, so I took the job and dropped out of school. I worked the job for 15 years and beginning of 2009 I was actually laid off from that job. As a result of that layoff, it just kind of reminded me that, you know what? You need to find what your passion is or rekindle what your passion is. Pick up the pieces and kind of go with that because you know I took a city job thinking I was going to be secure. I have 15 years of retirement there just waiting for me to just pick something up and go with it. So that was an inspiration but I also looked at it as an opportunity to come back and to actually do something that I would have compassion for and passion about and that's what this was at 40 years old. Interesting. Well the chord chart kind of gives you the chord symbols from bar to bar, correct? Because I played at church and played with keyboard players primarily understand how to do harmony and melodies. I always watched the way they play chords. So that's what I learned first. So to be able to read chords going first from a C major to an F sharp or B flat or whatever, I can follow that with no problem. Fast slow, it doesn't matter the tempo. The notation actually deals with the individual notes on there and for me. It kind of hurts your head because that's like, wow, a lot of stuff and you are reading rhythms and time signatures and it can be a little overwhelming if you're not trained to do that. For me that is a challenge so that's one of the primary reasons I'm here. I know the staff here and I think that based on my goals and their expertise I think we can get the job done. >>INTERVIEWER: How did you learn to read rhythm? Was it when you were playing drums or was it later on? >>DWIGHT BAILEY: That's when I learned how to understand rhythm. To actually read it, I'm still working on that. To be honest with you right now that's one of my hardest challenges because the notation, the notes are fine, but to read the rhythm and understand now why would this happen here or to actually see it on paper rather than just hearing it is two different things. I mean to hear a piece of music and say closing my eyes and memorize it, I can do that with no problem. But to actually read the rhythm and feel the way I think it should feel based on what I see is kind of like two different things. That's one of the things I'm working on now. Actually the big band has really kind of beaten me up on that because I don't read those rhythms. Everything is syncopation of rhythm. John Masters wants to strangle me half the time. >>INTERVIEWER: Did a lot of your playing by ear come from watching people perform and then joining in after you watch them or do you do you do it from the radio too? >>DWIGHT BAILEY: Both. >>INTERVIEWER: Everything? >>DWIGHT BAILEY: Actually that's a very good question. Actually it was both and I think I was a better bass player when I was 18 years old because I practiced all the time. I learned everything by ear but I could just retain the information. I could play fast or slow and all these different things. It seemed like the more I learned about what I was doing, the less musical I became. For some reason that was a fear on my part and I think that's one of the reasons back to your question about my peers I think musically a lot of the musicians I grew up with, the guys or gals that played that could read were not as musical. So its kind of like if you read all this stuff its going to somehow deplete you from your true musical identity. What I'm learning now as I'm an older who has played on the road and with traveling artists, it's kind of like I get the understanding, how we use it. You can be in the area of being naturally gifted. You can be talented in the area of being able to pick up and understanding reading. >>INTERVIEWER: I'm very good at clunking the notes out but my piano teacher's always saying can't you make it more musical? There's more that goes into it. So that's what I was going to ask you about that when you were talking about it. When you say your musicality, do you mean your creativity like being able to play a piece with feeling? >>DWIGHT BAILEY: Absolutely >>INTERVIEWER: Or do you mean, I guess that is more technical proficiency. I don't know. >>DWIGHT BAILEY: Actually it's a combination of the two. I'll give you an example. I have two kids aged 8 and 9 and they both take piano lessons for the last 2 or 3 years. My daughter is more naturally musically talented. The reason I said that is she'll take her lesson plan and she'll play it but she'll do stuff or she'll kick the piano. I say, what are you doing, Morgan? She's kicking the piano but she's feeling the rhythm of the music while she's playing and then she'll sing along with it and kind of create. She goes beyond because she feels it here. My son, very intelligent boy and his name is Myles with a y, not after Myles Davis. He's very studious and intellectual with his music approach. He says I'm going to do it because I just want to get it done and I want it to be perfect. The difference in the musically is that she feels it. The more musical side is where I've relied on my talent a lot. This is more challenging to be able … to come back and learn some things that I didn't learn. I was in the choir and I wasn't a base player. I wasn't in the choir because of all the girls or anything. All the good looking girls were in the choir. The choir teacher said look, I want a good rhythm section if I can get you guys to sing, then I'll do R&B stuff or pop stuff I'll have the rhythm section in the choir. So that's good and I had a chance to talk to pretty girls and sing in the choir. So that was the extent of it. I will say this though: had there been a really good band teacher I probably would have stayed in the jazz band as well. But he didn't seem like he was very interested in teaching us music so most kids can kind of sense that because we were pretty serious about trying to learn so that we can be good and I didn't get that feeling from him so I didn't. I didn't actually, I took pride in lessons for a while with a string bass teacher and then I took a few lessons here and there on electric bass, but not much at all. Most of it was from the road. I went to high school in Columbus at Lyndon McKinley High School. I'm more of an electric bass player trying to get more into stand up. Right now I play at a Nazarene Church and they do more of Contemporary Christian and it's not the type of music that I originally started playing the more traditional gospel. I do some of that but not as much. It's more Contemporary Christian. I've done a lot of blues and a lot of jazz, smooth jazz, some contemporary jazz, a little bit of straight ed jazz and a lot of gospel. In fact I did a lot of stuff in Bobby Jones' Gospel. >>INTERVIEWER: Really? >>DWIGHT BAILEY: Yeah when I was 19 years old I did a lot of stuff for them. A group called Anointed which they are out of Columbus. They went to Capital University. They actually sing with Joe Wohlstein in Houston. I did some stuff with them. Dawkins and Dawkins. A lot of blues stuff, especially in the last couple of years with the blues tours so that was good. Poconos Blues Festival. Monterey Bay Blues Festival. A lot of really, really good blues festivals. I've been a full-time musician on and off for the last 15 years in addition to having a day job. [Laughs] I've never done much classical at all. Now I've played with orchestras but I've played gospel or hip hop or R&B with a rhythm section with classical you know with strings and things like that. And that's always kind of neat. I've done stuff like that where I've played in rhythm sections like that because I've played hip hop I mean you know there's no better rest than that. There are a lot of love songs I'm still from high school. I do write it a lot and actually that's another motivation to put that language to use very well so I can actually get some of those things out as well. I know the theory and composition stuff as well. But I do realize its a time process. I write for smaller groups – quartets, quintets and things like that – more string jazz, more R&B, gospel type things. Orchestrations, I'm not sure I understand how to do it. I'm sure it takes a lot of time and preparation and expertise. I may do that eventually. I hear there's decent money in that. [laughs] All it takes is one good song. There's a composer in Bexley that I did a gig with and he would write for these Broadway shows, so he has a beautiful house in Bexley and he did something. I said, oh man, your home is beautiful. He said oh, all it took was one song I wrote for Bret Mittler like 25 years ago. He said the royalties from that song have pretty much paid for this house. I said, oh my gosh, that's great! We could start there with teachers who have a passion for it. I think that when you have a passion for doing anything whether its sports, music, medicine – I think that's important and I think it's contagious with kids. They can smell pure spirits. I believe they can sense things that are true. They are naive to a degree but I think to a great degree when there's good information and people have passion for things it makes it so much better. I think the other thing too is creativity is allowing kids to have an opportunity to actually play. I don't correct my kids a lot when they are playing. I hear them. I know a piece is playing. If I hear them make a mistake or something I try not to always correct them right away because I want them to work it out and be creative and figure out what's wrong or what needs to be fixed. That gives them more confidence, I believe, to actually want to do it or desire to do it. I think if we have more of that in the educational process it's going to be so much better. Music is one thing that no matter what we go through in the world, no matter what differences we have in the world, all people have some sense of awareness about it, whether its the melody, whether its rhythm or movement or something that moves us. I think if we can continue to tap into those things with our children I think we'll have a better world and a better future. It sounds like I'm running for president. [Laughs]