Kurt has survived some major league travail (advanced lymphoma), to my indescribable delight, and we been back to emailin' out the wazoo. Here's what he sent me today:
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Hey, here's a tribute to a good friend of mine and fellow musician, David Lanz.
This kid is reading one of Dave's songs that Dave and I recorded together (mp3) How cool is it to have your music being played by other people :-)
We played in a band together for 4 years traveling around the U.S. in a band called "The Seattle Allstars." Finally we realized that we had played the band out and we all went our separate ways.
I was in a bookstore one day and, low and behold, on the cover of BillBoard Magazine was a full cover shot of Dave with the caption "David Lanz - the Michael Jackson of New Age" What a shock!
Dave had become a huge success with his songs and was selling millions of records. A few weeks after I saw this Dave called me and said his world was rocking. Then he asked me if I wanted to record on his next CD. Duhh!!! So we did a CD called “Skyline Firedance.” It had the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra on it, and parts of it were recorded at Abby Road studios.
What a thrill that was. I went on to record on 3 more CDs of his. Just before I was sick we did a few live dates, in Colorado and up here. Then we did his CD release party up here at Jazz Alley in Seattle. Our band was called "The Heavy Mellow Allstars"
It was so good to watch someone finally make it all the way to the top from ground zero. Dreams do come true! Dave's sheet music makes nearly as much as his CD sales!
Here's a shot of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra while we were laying down Skyline Fire Dance. All 100 of them. The man who wrote the score was the same guy who wrote the score for “Beauty and the Beast,” Don Davis. Here's a page on the session.
Here's a site where somebody we don't even know does a tribute to Dave.
Bobby, it was so awesome to watch this all go down right to the point where Dave got nominated for a Grammy. He was seated at a table right next to Stevie Wonder on one side, and Quincy Jones on the other. Stevie told David his music is inspired by God!!! WOW!!! Dave is the nicest guy (Like Jerry Lopez) in the world.
He wrote one little song one called "Behind the Waterfall" and added it at the very last minute to his CD. He actually thought the song was kind of dump. That song stayed at number one for over 50 weeks! Dave told me it was 'now out of my hands.'
His hair went from brown to grey in one year as all of the sudden he was world famous. He told me it was so weird to get off the plane in Europe and have 100's of people waiting to see him there, when he's never been there in his life. Yes! It was so awesome to finally see what it looks like to go from just one of the band to a person the world now needs to help in healing. David is so similar to Jerry in so many ways. He one got a letter from a brain surgeon in N.Y who said he will not perform surgery unless David's music is playing.
Type in his name in your search engine and you will see people whose lives were literally changed by hearing Dave's music. One man was in the process of committing suicide when Dave’s song came on the radio and he stopped and broke down in tears. He wrote Dave to tell him "You saved my life"! Dave now has over 30 CD's and a bunch of videos. All of them have magic spirit hidden in them.
Just amazing!!!
Here's another one for our recording of Skyline Fire Dance. I was so honored to be a part of all this.
Peace,
Kurt
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That's all pretty cool, I think.Kurt, what can I say, dude? Thanks for sharing all that. Enjoy the Michael Ruff CD, bro'. Next, I gotta send ya Shem's CD. OMG!
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