Everyone wants to do what the great ones do; but very few are willing to do what they did to become great

When I was a kid, I always saw these pictures of a man called Bob Gordon with a baritone saxophone, who I understood was my father. Turns out he wasn't. He was my mother's first husband.

I think we're in a time and place, the last 20 plus years, and certainly now, it's only more so, where it's just about us creating a body of work. Creating hopefully our own scene.

I had played some festivals with people and met and been around some good people, for sure. But what I say to my friends and students, anything like that with a grant or a competition, it involves a great deal of luck.

I didn't have time to deal with practicing in a way that I would have liked to. I wish I could have just said, "I've got four to five hours every day that I'm going to go deal with music." I just didn't' have that. I missed a lot of lessons, but I think that maybe was frustrating to me in a big picture sense of, I need the time and energy to put into my instrument.

Phil [Wood] was known for having a little bit of a gruff manner, but he was all heart.

I left school December of 1988. I was 21 at the time. And I hadn't quite finished my degree because I had done eight semesters, not understanding that I was going to have to finish the degree without the TAPP and Pell grant money that I had been using towards paying for much of my college tuition. And I didn't have any money. So I said, "Alright." And circumstances there were such that I thought it was maybe time to move on anyway.