Kelvin was a drummer in the East Bay. He played a lot with Steve Gannon (RIP) and Willie Riser (RIP). I met him and his wife Julie when we took a class together at CSM on composing for visual media in 2002 or so. He inspired me to get back to playing live again after many years of being almost entirely a bedroom musician.

There was a jam at Larry Blake’s that he encouraged me to check out that he did with Gannon and Riser. I think I went twice, and about all I remember was Miz Dee was there, and once Joe Louis Walker showed up. I think this might have been when I was mostly out of work between 2003 and 2005, and after I started working full time again, I never returned. But doing that began a process that led to me stepping out more and engaging with the local blues scene and meeting people like Stan Erhart and Vince Caminiti.

After the class we tried a couple of collaborations. I played guitar on an instrumental tune he’d written – one of the few times I played any slide guitar – and I worked on one of Julie’s tunes a bit, but that one never went very far and we fell out of touch. 

I recent years I found them on Facebook and we had a couple of interactions, not much beyond “Happy Birthday.”

He passed away over the weekend. I regret not having made an effort to have stayed more connected.

I have had a rough couple of years health wise since I last posted anything here. It’s kind of scuttled my musical life a fair bit.

After No Static called it quits two years ago, I decided that rather than find another band to play in, I would focus my efforts on improving my playing and musical knowledge and on trying to write. I made a plan to spend a couple of hours two days a week and made a start on trying to compose.

Alas, it didn’t last long before I had a recurrence of Merkel cell cancer in my cheek and neck and required surgery. After that I underwent a month of radiation treatments. When that failed to do much against the spread of the cancer I started on immunotherapy with Keytruda. That, thankfully, seems to be making a big difference. But in the lead up to the treatments something suspicious showed my in my bladder. I had two procedures to deal with that and in a month or so will be starting another immunotherapy treatment for that cancer.

I’m kind of struggling a bit to find my way back to my regular practice and composing regimen. Hopefully I will get a grip on that soon.