Year 2000. I used to wake up at 5 in the morning. I was living in downtown Los Angeles, 820 S Oxford Ave, in a Korean hostel near Union and Olympic — one of the most dangerous spots in the city, though I had no idea and nobody had ever warned me. I'd take the metro to Long Beach, where I was paid by the day at Alfredo's Beach Club. One day I ended up working right in the middle of a Formula 1 event. The Hollywood/Vine metro station had just opened. I'd ride my bike listening to music on my iPod — the MP3 era — still carrying cassette tapes in my bag. I'd ride to North Hollywood, lock the bike, and take the metro to Long Beach.
With that first money — besides buying food — I needed a book for the long commute, so I bought one based on the life of John Coltrane written by Lewin Porter. The English I had studied as a child, with a near-perfect accent, made it easy to work without giving away that I might be a foreigner.
One afternoon, arriving early in Long Beach, I decided to have a hot chocolate at a café across from the Convention Center at 455 E Ocean Blvd — it was freezing. I picked up a short newspaper from a table, the L.A. Jazz Scene, just 4 pages, and saw an ad for guitar lessons with someone named Rick. I took the paper and called him. Rick, with a rough voice, told me he was playing at a bar that very night a few blocks from where I worked. So without hesitating I went — but I didn't have money for the entrance yet, those being my first days of work — so I watched from outside, and I was stunned by the level he played at.
I had moved to the San Fernando Valley, specifically to Panorama City, on Woodman Avenue at 9800 — a distant but affordable place to live. I rented a room from a guy named Kerry Lynch, an extra actor in Hollywood action movies, and a very decent person.
The next day I called Rick about lessons, and without telling him I had stood outside the bar — too embarrassed to admit I couldn't afford to get in — I arranged to take a class. I went to the Tarzana neighborhood, an hour by bike, a dead-end street — I don't remember the name — a small guitar store in the middle of nowhere, and out comes the teacher, in shorts and a cap. It was a class on something essential I needed to know, and coming from him I absorbed it like a duty — it was new information. When I got back to my rented room, I looked him up online and realized he had been the guitarist on Stevie Wonder's biggest hits, among so many others. So I prepared a list of questions to cover all the ground I could in the next two months of lessons.
During those months I had started a friendship with Dan Diaz from Musicians Institute — a real big brother. Rick was looking for work, I mentioned it to Dan, and Rick ended up teaching jazz there. Rick told me he wanted us to play together, and with Dan — after some difficult negotiations — we managed to bring Rick to Argentina with the sponsorship of the Musicians Institute. For the first time in history, the school was sponsoring an artist outside the United States. Dan used to say to me: "we made history."
We ended up building a friendship that would bring us together years later on a tour in Argentina, and having dinner at my parents' house six years after we first met. I'd wake up for breakfast and find Rick in his pajamas at the kitchen table with my mom. Rick told me she reminded him of his mother. One day I found them both emotional, talking about life. My mom didn't speak English, but if you spoke slowly, she understood.
For the gigs I had brought in drummer Oscar Giunta, because I needed someone who could play at that level, laugh with us, and enjoy it. That same year I had won Mike Stern's guitar — one of those strange coincidences of life, since I had to translate his Buenos Aires tour, covering radio appearances and masterclasses across the city. That guitar had fallen from the sky.
During those Los Angeles nights I was constantly around musicians' bars, most of them on Ventura Boulevard — I'd go regularly to The Baked Potato, Spazios, La Vé Lee Jazz Club, and others, because the range of musical styles was enormous. One night the bassist Haslip was playing, Heredia on drums, Neto on keys, guitarist Michael O'Neill — the last two still friends from a distance. I couldn't stop watching the high level of musicianship. We shared a table with them since a friend knew them. Neto would later become Prince's keyboardist.
Once I walked all the way home from La Vé Lee after a Scott Henderson gig, back to Panorama City — crossing the entire San Fernando Valley, two hours or more on foot. Love of music. Was it worth it? Yes.
