2018 should be remembered as the “Free Your Mind” year. We tend to take Davin Michael Stedman for granted, but 2018 was his year and we should look back and celebrate it. Very few people will ever have as fancy a trip around the sun as DMS had in 2018. He traveled to Jamaica and recorded with Dunbar and Shakespeare. That was a mountaintop experience for any musician. I would say it’s like meeting the Beatles, but it’s cooler than that. It is more like heading to Harlem for a great day in 1958, climbing up the ladder to the roof overlooking New York City seen for the first time by the best minds of my generation and recording a live set with Miles Davis and John Coltrane. (That’s called “Supercrunching Imagery for Social Media 101.”) Through it all DMS has remained humble and we love him for that. Success was not always assured. He writes as though every trip is a victory lap because he hides his concerns well. Nonetheless, he got on that plane, put all his worries to the back of his mind, and turned the Jamaica trip into legendary stuff. (There will be links below. My personal favorite is when he went with Earl “Chinna” Smith to to Bob Marley’s hometown at sunrise on Marley’s birthday and recorded the proceedings.) When DMS came back he continued to build on his good fortune, and it could easily have gone the other way, but Davin’s got it figured out. (DMS also lost a lot of weight in 2018, looks great and should be an inspiration to us all.) If you’re a praying person, pray that the evil angels of exploitation and fatigue will stay far away from DMS and that his better angels will journey with him at all times in 2019. DMS will soon be on KEXP‘s Audioasis with news that he has been eager to reveal for weeks. We must all tune in and listen.
https://youtu.be/hmywnG3nkJo
