Joe Westerlund (Big Ears Festival performer)

This track met me at a time when I was just starting to kind of open up

from a childhood of you know, listening to some punk music and, and arrowing into kind of a jam band territory.

And, um, this is a safe space.

So thank you.

Um, no, I was like deeply into, into fish and Medesky Martin and wood and, um, was just starting to discover things like John Zorn.

And, um, that actually, that was a world that kind of, uh, somehow was available to us in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Uh, and, um, I knew that there was more to discover behind that, behind the avant-garde, the current state of New York downtown avant-garde music.

And So fast forward to I'm in college at the University of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, doing the jazz program.

That was a part of the scene in Eau Claire, just like the education scene.

It had really strong jazz programs that were downbeat awarded and that whole thing.

but it was, you know, very straight world and, and, um, didn't have much room for things like downtown New York, downtown music scene was not included in that, you know, of course.

Uh, I started looking for alternate modes of education and a neighbor of mine went to Goddard college, uh, in like 2000, 2001, something like that as like an open program where you can like, you know, pick your own, um, classes kind of like make up your own it's almost it's almost more of like a phd but for like a bachelor's program so i started getting interested in this thing went and visited goddard college realized it wasn't really like the music the music department didn't really have like the resources that i was looking for i uh came back feeling a little bit okay maybe i'm not gonna do that and then somebody was like well another friend of ours is going to bennington college You should check that out.

And Milford Graves is there.

He's a drummer and he's got records on the Zodiac label.

So I applied to Bennington.

I visited it.

That was the place that I wanted to go.

I didn't meet Milford at the time, you know, at the time of like visiting the college.

But I was just kind of like, this seems like the place.

And they had a bunch of other faculty, too, that I was excited to work with.

I bought stories, this record, it was like the current record.

I think it had, it was maybe a year old or something like that when I bought it.

Um, And it was his second record on Zodic.

And I remember just being completely confused by it, but also just intrigued.

And definitely heard things in it that I'd never heard before.