In just over two weeks, I’ll be showing a 10-15 minute work-in-progress of the documentary as part of a 5-year anniversary celebration for the Musical Instruments Museum in Scottsdale, Arizona. The museum features a section for The Stick on permanent exhibition. Emmett will also be giving a lecture that afternoon.

The screening is part of a special event at the beautiful MIM Music Theater featuriing performances by Emmett Chapman and the brilliant NY jazz stickist, Steve Adelson. Steve is the one who made it happen. Many thanks Steve!

Read more about the details here:
http://mimmusictheater.themim.org/steve-adelson-emmett-chapman-music-chapman-stick

This is sure to be an amazing experience. I’m so grateful I’m able to tag along. It’s the first time Emmett has been there. Me too. I’ve been working to get all my other projects out of the way so I can concentrate on doing something special for this event. I’ll be doing some shooting while driving 6+ hours through the endless yucca trees with Em and Yuta from L.A. to Arizona, covering the experience and the show itself. It looks like fun. It’s always a challenge.

I better get back to editing.

A very satisfied feeling hangin’ with the best after the screening. Left to right Don Schiff, Greg Howard, me, Tony Levin and Gene Perry.

The big news this summer was a 42 minute work-in-progress screening to a receptive audience at the American Jewish University for Free Hands Academy.

The healthy community that has grown around this new way of playing music is the very definition of grassroots – growing from the root upwards. There is nowhere else where I’ve experienced this kind of community phenomenon more strongly than at the Free Hands Academy this August.

Ten years ago, I started making this documentary by just jumping in, with a simple faith in the project and its subject, but nearly no funding. Of course I do feel a lot of pressure to finish it now. Editing is in process on the twenty hours we shot at the AJU and some highlights will be posted as soon as possible, starting with The State Of The Stick conference that took place on Saturday 8/16 with eight great players – Gene Perry, Greg Howard, Gary Jibilian, Steve Adelson, Emmett Chapman, Don Schiff, Dale Ladoucear and Bob Culbertson.

Listen Up.

You can catch my interview on the audio web series, Beyond The Playlist with JHammondC

Beyond The Playlist with JHammonC interview with Dan Chapman

Terrific audio production quality, combined with stimulating questions makes JHammonC a super interviewer. We had lots to discuss, my background and the current status of my documentary, EMMETT. Plus all things music, love, work, art and commerce. Not necessarily in that order.

Here are a couple of corrections:

In describing The Railboard’s process, I misspoke and called it NCN processing. Whoops! What I meant to say was CNC machine process (on a milling machine).

Also when Hammond asks, “Had you made films before?”
I talked about my college days, studying photography and design. I said “My senior photography student told me to focus on directing, because I was making dramatic photo sequences with stills.” I meant to say, “my photography professor told me to focus on directing.”

cheers,

Dan

This audio file can also be downloaded here:

http://beyondtheplaylist.libsyn.com/beyond-the-playlist-with-jhammondc-dan-chapman

Free Hands Friday (FHF) is a weekly interview session started by Gene Perry. This 56:15 minute session streamed on 3/14/14, focuses on EMMETT – the documentary, featuring Dan Chapman interviewed by Jim Reilly.

If you watch this, it will explain a lot…

With Q & A, personal pix and clips, I share my thoughts on process, new directions and what it’s like making your first feature film during The Great Recession.

The Google Hangouts forum doesn’t exactly do justice to my clips or audio. This medium is so low rez that it makes that part a little hard to watch. I think the ideas come across anyway.

A couple clarifications:

I say “I dropped out of music school and became an artist.” What I meant to say is that I switched majors in college, from a music major to an art major. Coming from the pop/rock world, I didn’t sight read music, so I felt too far behind all those classically-trained students who could.

Describing the vintage accordion shot as “Emmett and three brothers,” I misspoke. It shows Em with two brothers Jerry and Ronny. I wasn’t born at the time that picture was taken.

Upon watching it again, I realize I didn’t fully answer Russell’s question. My goal for the end product is a full release which includes theatrical, broadcast, DVD and VOD/online sales.

The hour went by very fast. I had so much more to show that time didn’t allow. I didn’t get to play that segment entitled “To be or not to be.”

Thanks for the participation and heartfelt questions by Russell Keating, Matt Tate and Dean Pascarella. I’m so happy Jim Reilly could host.which he did excellently despite having broken his collarbone playing hockey a couple days earlier!!! Talk about pain. What a trouper! I’m very grateful.

Emmett Chapman has been making The Stick for 45 years, since 1969 at the time of Woodstock. In this picture from 10/17/10, Em is sets up one of his six thousand wood instruments in his upstairs office, taken from my photo session for Bob Culbertson’s book.