10 minute read
WHEN WORK IS PLAYING
SLAY FOR
GREGG PRICKETT
SLAY FOR PAY MEET THESE THREE WORKING MUSICIANS FROM OAK CLIFF Story by RACHEL STONE Photography by KATHY TRAN
Avant-garde jazz came to Gregg Prickett later in life. An Oak Cliff resident since 1998, he grew up in Garland where a gradeschool friend who was from England introduced him to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.
By middle school he was playing rock ’n’ roll and classical guitar styles.
Prickett, 55, joined the Dallas surf band The Buena Vistas in 1984 and stayed with them for many years.
“Back then, you were in one band,” he says. “It was like a marriage or a family.”
He started playing upright bass and getting into Charles Mingus and John Coltrane. He played in a band called Mr. Pink, which although it didn’t represent his personal artistic point of view, the band gigged a lot. They often performed at places like Sambuca and Terilli’s, which allowed him to book his own music at those venues.
In the Dallas/Denton music scene, he started playing with drummer Earl Harvin, who is from Dallas and now lives in Berlin, and Dallas-based guitar genius Bill Longhorse.
In Oak Cliff, he met experimental musicians Aaron and Stefan González and their dad, Dennis, an acclaimed free jazz musician. Prickett used to see these goth or metal kids walking around all the time. The brothers noticed Prickett’s dark lawn ornaments. And one day they struck up a conversation. Prickett started playing with their family band, Yells at Eels. Unconscious Collective is a trio consisting of Prickett and the González brothers.
Over the last two decades, he’s always played in multiple bands at a time, but now “one or two is all I can get my head around.”
The Monks of Saturnalia is his main project now, although it’s a constant struggle to get band members to rehearsal, especially since there are fewer opportunities for shows nowadays.
When musicians play together for many years, “there’s a magic that can happen,” he says.
“If you think about Coltrane’s Classic Quartet, they played together every night for years,” he says. “You can’t go down to the 5 Spot or the Vanguard and play every night.”
He’s also currently working on jazz standards with vocalist Lily Taylor.
That’s a world away from his work in free jazz, an improvisational form that can go any direction but is sewn together by underlying threads of melody or rhythm.
“I’m learning all the time,” he says. “If you put a good band together, you’re learning from those people.”
Taylor says Prickett’s work in free jazz “is really special.”
“It’s designed to be a creative vehicle to take people places,” Prickett says. “My idea is for everyone to go someplace together that can only come from melody having some kind of agreement and then having a discussion phonically.”
He performed with free-jazz drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson about a year before Jackson’s death in 2013. Jackson gave him these words to live by:
“If you’re doing your job right, it makes people’s lives better.”
Prickett was laid off from his job as an art fabricator recently, when the company he was working for closed, and is looking for work.
A song that reminds him of
Oak Cliff
Albert Ayler’s “Ghosts” (both variations).
An unforgettable moment in his music career
Playing in Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society at The Kessler in 2012. Sadly, this turned out to be his last performance.
How his life in music changed since 2019
I have been obliged to pare down or tighten my focus on how many and which projects are possible realistically to develop and pursue.
An accomplishment he’s proud of
I’d rather say I’m grateful to have made a lot of music with more than my fair share of amazing musicians.
How you can support his work
Come see our performances! We are doing our best to play shows that are as safe as possible.
I have plans to release Monks of
Saturnalia’s work within the coming year. I also have vinyl copies of
Pleistocene Moon by Unconscious
Collective available. OCTOBER 2021 oakcliff.advocatemag.com 23
SUDIE
Sudie split from Oak Cliff in September and is now staying in a short-term rental in the Coyoacán neighborhood of Mexico City.
She and her “best friend/life partner/music collaborator” Teddy Georgia Waggy are finishing Sudie’s first full-length album there. They plan to be there for at least two months, but there’s a chance they could stay much longer.
The pop R&B singer/songwriter says she has moved around a lot — “I’m a creative nomad now” — but she considers Oak Cliff home.
If it’s surprising that this will be Sudie’s first album, that’s because she’s prolific, having released several EPs and many videos in recent years. She’s released seven singles since 2019. Her most recent EP, Better Off Alone, has eight tracks and has already received more than 50,000 plays on Spotify.
She says she has written most of the album, which she expects will have 12-15 songs, and recorded a few demos.
“I’ve got a strategy and a plan for finishing it and when I’d like to release singles next year,” she says.
Sudie had planned to go to Mexico before the pandemic hit. Instead she went to stay with her parents in Georgia for a while to work, save money and plan out her album. She has a day-by-day plan for working on the album in Mexico.
Born Sudie Abernathy into a musical family, she started playing music as a child and composed her “first silly song” at age 4. Voice lessons started at age 12, and she’s studied jazz, musicals and opera.
As a teenager, her family lived in Dubai, which introduced her to cultures and styles of music she hadn’t known before.
“I feel very lucky that I was able to experience that,” she says.
Musicians now can’t just play music. They also have to be entertaining on
social media, which is something Sudie is very good at.
She completed an online course in music production recently, and she wants to do it all — singing, songwriting, production, mixing.
But that’s where her relationship with Waggy comes in.
On recording at Elmwood Studios
I love (producer) Alex Bhore so much. He is so magnificent. He’s one of the few men in music that I would seriously trust my life with him. He’s so supportive, and he knows what he’s talking about.
A song that reminds her of Oak Cliff
I mean, as blatant as this is, it has to be “Oak Cliff” by Quint Black and Nino. Anytime I go to a party in Dallas, even outside of Oak Cliff, and that song plays, it pops OFF.
An unforgettable moment in her music career
When I came to Atlanta, and I was out at a party here, someone I didn’t know came up to me and recognized me and told me they loved my music. It was the last place I expected to be recognized for what I do. It was a really cool feeling.
How you can support her work
Stream my new EP on any and all streaming platforms! Follow me on the socials, and keep an eye out for new music and merch.
DONOVAN JONES
My parents made me do it,” Donovan Jones says.
Raised in Waxahachie by two Christian music ministers, he was required to play piano starting at age 7.
When he was about 15, they let him switch instruments. He joined the high school jazz band as a bass guitar player and found pathways to secular music.
“My parents had MTV blocked, but they didn’t have BET blocked, so I would listen to whatever was on there in the ’90s,” he says.
The Nickelodeon show All That had musical guests like TLC, Monica and Aaliyah.
“I would record those to VHS so I could watch them,” he says.
Dallas had a Christian hardcore scene at the time, and he could convince his parents to let him go to those shows, “because they were technically Christians, but it was this really aggressive, heavy music.”
Certain elements of religious music remain embedded in his artistry.
“The repetitiveness and the strong chord changes, that’s all very much a part of me,” he says.
Jones, who lives in Oak Cliff, performs and has recorded two albums as Black Taffy. He’s signed with Los Angeles-based Leaving Records.
Heavy Blog Is Heavy described his 2020 album Opal Wand as blending “lo-fi hiphop, classical music, the occult and vaporwave.”
Ironically, he’s never worked with a rapper. He does a lot of collaborations with female vocalists such as Dallas’ own Mattie.
Before he was Black Taffy, Jones toured and recorded for eight years, from 2008-2016, with the Austin-based band This Will Destroy You.
That band played all over the world and at big festivals. They toured in Europe and Iceland many times, and they went to China and Australia twice.
He went from working at Urban Outfitters to seeing the world, but Jones says touring can be a grind and is not always fun.
Before This Will Destroy You, Jones was in a Dallas band called My Spacecoaster for two years, which he loved. They played all over Deep Ellum and had a weekly in Fort Worth.
He also took music composition and performance classes at Cedar Valley College but dropped out when he found out that a degree would require four semesters of recital classes.
Even at the height of This Will Destroy You, Jones says he had to have side hustles and a retail job back home. He receives royalty checks, and when they come, it’s nice, he says.
“I can pay some bills, but I’m not sustaining myself on those,” he says.
Paying rent requires him to hustle in retail and vintage resale, but that’s not the job.
Black Taffy is working night and day on sounds.
An unforgettable moment in his music career
The day I got signed to Leaving Records. They were a subsidiary of Stones Throw Records (J Dilla, Madlib, MF Doom) at the time. I was floored. It was a momentous day for my solo artistic endeavors. I was in disbelief. I remember the top of my head was tingling all day, and I would experience waves of nausea. I think that intense feeling lasted about a week.
How his life has changed in the past year and a half
I’ve played fewer than 10 live shows since April 2020. The two previous years, I was doing full U.S. tours and regional shows, making plans to tour Japan. But to be honest, I’m happy for a little down time. Music is still my primary focus, composition more than anything.
An accomplishment he’s proud of
I’m proud that I can sustain myself by creating art and having a couple of side hustles. I’m also consistently humbled that such a diverse group of artists and listeners appreciate my sonic palette and want to work with me.
What he’s excited about right now
I’m currently scoring music for Danielle Georgiou’s new dance/play theater piece “Stronger than Arms.” I’m excited to be working with her again. I think this is our 11th collaboration to date. I’m also pretty excited about this next album I’m in the middle of finishing.
How you can support his work
Come to shows when they happen, buy music online or in real life.
