D C DowDell

Play what you feel, feel what you play.

The jazziest American contribution to the vocabulary of English is Jazz itself.

Jazz improvisation is the art of collective negotiated expression.

Jazz goes into my coffee in the morning, in my wine at night.

Play the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you play.

Ideologies separate us. Art brings us together.

Let me whisper it. Let me sigh it. Let me sing it, my dear or I will cry it.

A Les Paul, which is kind of a sissy guitar compared to a Strat anyway. The Les Paul is heavier, but because of that bulk you can do bends on it more easily. Also, the Les Paul’s lack of a vibrato arm means you’re not wrestling against the spring-loaded bridge all the time. The Strat is the ultimate because it’s like having a miniature pedal steel within it. Once you get familiar with it where the bends are and where they meld down into a fourth or whatever, you can do all kinds of pedal-steel-like things, which I think are cool..

Sounds of daily life are musical. I try to absorb the intricacies of sounds as if I were listening to music.

The music field was the first to break down racial barriers, because in order to play together, you have to love the people you are playing with, and if you have any racial inhibitions, you wouldn’t be able to do that.

Rather than say I play Jazz, I simply say I play music.

In order to complete your cycle, a musician needs to write; document what is going through your mind and where you are harmonically, theoretically, historically.

I want to keep redefining my work and trying new things. I want my music to be able to fit into any category. I want it to float wherever my heart goes. My music is heart music; giving it any other description is dangerous.

I always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I ‘d shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can’t pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that’s how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.

How do you explain what it feels like to get on the stage and make poetry that you know sinks into the hearts and souls of people who are unable to express it.

Too many young musicians today want to win polls before they learn their instruments.

The way I think about the practicing, it is my undercover work.

It’s important to reflect on what made Jazz so special.

Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

You’ve got to learn your instrument.

You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That’s jazz.