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For Joey

May 23, 2013

This is about our dear friend and artist Joey Waldon.

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“I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning… Every day I find something creative to do with my life.” - Miles Davis

“My biggest education in music outside of school was making a living for well over a decade singing Jazz.

One hot, September, Dallas night, I attended the grand opening of a chic new Jazz club.  The owner heard about me and  asked  me to sit in with the band. I sang “Cry Me A River” in Dm, and after that moment, I was offered a residency at the finest supper club in town. “When can you start?” They asked, “umm, one month from today!” I said confidently. Fortunately, I was naive enough  not to know what a massive task I had cut out for myself. “Why not?” I thought. I had thirteen years of classical music study and ten years of live Rock n Roll performances. I thought “I’ll form a band and learn some standards.”  Yeah right, Jazz doesn’t really work like that.  It must consume you and your life on a cellular level. I had been performing professionally since I was fifteen.

I had the voice, the training, the live performance experience, the raw will and talent but did I have the Jazz chops? I don’t think so. I was SO green but determined to make my mark and reinvent myself as a Jazz musician.

I made certain that my first “straight ahead” band consisted of seasoned Jazz cats who were all the age of my father.  They were more than happy to play with me every Thursday night and school me in the ways of Jazz. I was insatiable and slightly terrified at the same time. I devoured albums of artists that at the time, I had no idea would become the biggest musical influences of my life. Ella, Sarah, Monk, Miles, Evans, Pass, Coltrane, Duke, Carmen & Billie could be heard in every hall of my house.  I was floating around on a cloud thinking to myself, “I can’t believe more people my age don’t know about this music! They are all missing out!” It was like I had discovered the missing wheel of music that made everything and nothing at all make sense. Anyone who knows anything about Jazz, knows this one thing; Jazz is about being in the moment.” - Joey Waldon

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My  dear friend and artist, Joey Waldon was one of my biggest teachers of what Jazz is. He was a poet, humorist, sculptor, painter, a father and a truly enlightened human being, who lived in the moment, every moment of his life. Many years later,  I came to name my music style “Organica.” “Organica” is my sound and my genre. It is based on living in the moment on stage. Allowing the music and improvisation to be a living breathing organism that is ever changing by the performance.  I literally saw it born one night on stage while performing one of my compositions with one of the many incarnations of Jazz bands I had assembled.  I created my sound which is an unorthodox hybrid of Pop music that is deeply rooted in Jazz, thick R&B grooves, ambient guitars and keys with lush vocal arrangements.  It is all created by humans not machines. My friend Joey did something similar  with his style of art. He called himself a “Surreal Estate Agent.” My favorite way to describe Joey’s art is “Dark & Fuzzy”.

Joey was diagnosed with inoperable, stage IV,  Pancreatic Cancer last summer. He wasa dear friend of my husband, Ron White, for over 20 years and I was truly blessed to call him my friend and one of my artistic heroes for almost a decade.  With such a bleak prognosis and a beautiful sixteen year old, “artist” daughter to live for, I have never quite seen one person suck the marrow of life like a “dead poet” the way Joey did.

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In April, his physicians took him off of all conventional treatments and told him to let his life take its course. A phrase that Ron and I always say is  “We are already dead.” It later became the title of one of Joey’s paintings that we commissioned him to do. This phrase is not used in a morbid or macabre way, but rather meant that it all goes by so fast, we must enjoy life and its moments in order to truly live. With this in mind, we proclaimed May 1st, 2013, Joey Waldon day in the State of Texas and we threw a big party for him at the House Of Blues in Dallas with Joey as the guest of honor. Ron spared no expense to show Joey an unforgettable night and I assembled the finest musicians so that I could sing Jazz standards and Rock n Roll to him all night.

The following Saturday, Joey started to let go. We all rushed back to Dallas to be by his side. There we all were in a room full of life long friends of Joey’s. We had all been greatly impacted by this magnificent creature. We surrounded him with love, songs and jokes on his last night he was held very tightly until he fell deep into his morphine twilight. Sunday morning, May 12, 2013, Joey Waldon passed away at 10:42 AM. Just before that moment, he actually lifted his right arm, and waived goodbye.  The hospice nurse said that in all of his years as a professional care giver, he has never seen anything more beautiful and peaceful.

A little later, my sister closed his eyes for him. Then, amazingly, about an hour after that, his face changed expression into a serene smile. I feel like it was Mother’s Day and his mom came and got him. He was extremely close with mother Ethel-May, and he lost her just a few months prior.

I am so lucky to have had the privilege to hold my friend on his last night and sing him to the other side. Now more than ever, Joey continues to teach me about creativity, art, Jazz and living in the moment on and off stage. There are so many us who will miss his presence in our lives. I am forever grateful.

Joey’s Artist Statement:

My work is personal, truthful and, despite some of it’s darkness, filled with love. Art is my Novocain, my inoculation, the vaccination, fuel for my imagination, a calming force in the chaos and lies. I consider myself to be a Pop Expressionist, a Primitive Contemporary, an outsider looking in, a Surreal Estate Agent. A lot of my favorite artists, have gone crazy, died penniless, commuted suicide, or all of the above. These are my role models.

For more information about Joey Waldon visit https://facebook.com/joey.waldon

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