<![CDATA[Dave Williams II Music - Blog]]>Wed, 08 Jul 2026 20:48:19 -0500Weebly<![CDATA[Surprise Yourself]]>Tue, 07 Jul 2026 14:41:30 GMThttps://www.davewilliamsii.com/blog/surprise-yourselfI notice patterns. I find this true in my writing and in my playing. I don't go looking for them. They just show up, usually after the fact, once I've had a chance to sit with something for a day and reflect, and this past Friday night gave me one I can't stop thinking about.

It was my first Friday back in Pettaway Square in three weeks. We'd just gotten home from Kaua'i. It was good to watch my kids stand in the ocean instead of thinking about the next thing I need to write or teach, or plan. It was good for all of us. Necessary, even. But there's a specific feeling that comes from walking back into routine after time away. The square still smells the same. The sound of conversations all blending together triggers a familiar feeling of normalcy.

The owner of Moody Brews had also just come back from a two-week family vacation, which overlapped with mine for about a week. The Friday before I left for Kaua'i, he was already in Europe with his family, trying new foods and exploring Belgium. He trusted his staff to run the place as usual, and they did. Everything went smoothly. His team did exactly what he hoped they would, even with him a whole ocean away.

It's basically the same story that happened with the jam. When you build something the right way, it learns how to breathe on its own.

While we were gone, Chris held things down with our buddy Steve Hudelson filling in on guitar. That's part of what makes what we've built work. It doesn't need any one of us to survive a few weeks off. That's the kind of absence you can plan around, the kind that doesn't test anything because everybody already knows the shape of it.

Last night was a different kind of absence. Chris wasn't able to play. He's been dealing with some health issues lately, and I won't pretend that it isn't sitting heavily on the people who love him. Hopefully, he’ll be back on the stand with us soon, but for this one, it was Steve, Trey, and me carrying the night.

Steve is one of the first people I remember from jam sessions at the Afterthought, a club that's since closed. Looking back, I think I paid closer attention to him and Chris in those days than I did to the older musicians on the bandstand, since they fit right into that generational gap between us. Steve stood out to me because he never seemed to approach a song the same way twice. He was always finding something new to say, or some new texture to add that hadn't been there the time before. Chris and Steve were bandmates back in high school, and they've been playing together ever since, which probably explains why they complement each other so well. I remember one Afterthought jam in particular where Steve took a solo over a standard I'd heard hundreds of times, and he had this look on his face like he was watching his own fingers in disbelief. Almost like he was just trusting them to find the right thing and getting surprised by what came out, in the best possible way. Every new line inspired the next. When I noted that to the drummer, he told me to “always try to play something that surprises you every time you perform.”

On the drive to the square, Trey got quiet for a second and said something I wasn't expecting. He told me he'd never actually played the jam without Chris there. Not once, in all the times he's sat in on bass or piano. I understood exactly what he meant the second it left his mouth.

It's true. Chris has been there for nearly every hinge point in my son's jazz life so far. He was there at the summer jazz camp when Trey, barely more than a kid tagging along with his dad to a clinic he was teaching, sat down at the piano next to Chris and worked out Bill Evans' voicings on "So What" for the first time. Chris let him sit in on the jam more than once just to play that tune, long before Trey ever had the nerve to bring the bass out in front of a courtyard full of people. And Chris was there the night Trey finally brought the bass out for the first time. You never know who or what is going to tip a kid over the edge into trying something, but Chris had been building the runway underneath him for months.

So when Trey told me he'd never done this without him, I heard what he was really saying. Can I actually do this if the foundation isn't there next to me?

He found out he could, and he did more than hold his own.

Steve stepped in again and did what good musicians do. He listened first, made room, and let the tunes breathe instead of steering them. It's the same thing I used to notice at the Afterthought, that willingness to trust what shows up instead of forcing it. Watching him lend that same trust to Trey, instead of taking over, said a lot. Trey played like someone who's been absorbing more than any of us realized. He wasn't just walking quarter notes on the swing tunes, which would have been plenty fine for a musician holding down bass duties, let alone a fourteen-year-old. He was inserting idiomatic phrasing and rhythms into his lines, the kind of thing you don't teach directly so much as it seeps in after enough listening.

At one point, he rushed a chord change by a bar. I felt it happen. Instead of flinching or losing time, he just noticed it, adjusted, and kept the form moving. The motor never stopped. That's the difference between someone who's memorized a song and someone who actually understands where he is inside of it. I was a proud father watching that happen in real time.

It's summertime here in Arkansas, which means it's brutally hot and humid most days, and it also means isolated thunderstorms that show up without much warning. Moody Brews builds out what they lovingly call Tent City. Several event tents strung up in the square with fans running underneath to keep the air moving and cut back on the heat of the direct sun. Every single table and chair under those tents was full last night, despite the heat. People came anyway. That still gets me every time.
I saw friends and family out there, and a few of my mentors too, all of them showing up in support without me having to ask anybody. After we wrapped the last set, I went inside to grab a drink, and when I came back out, I saw Joe Vick standing there talking with Trey. Nobody had prompted it. Joe just walked over on his own.

Joe is a special individual to me and many others in this community. He was one of Chris's mentors back when Chris first started teaching. He played on the very first gig where I was the bandleader. He was in the house band at the Afterthought back when I cut my teeth as a young player trying to figure out who I was. His son and I started the Jam at Dave's Place together, years before any of this existed in its current form. Watching one of the best bassists, educators, and musicians I've ever shared a stage with strike up a conversation with my son, after a night when Trey wasn't even sure he could get through, is the kind of moment you don't plan for.

I kept glancing over at the two of them by the edge of Tent City. Joe gesturing with his hands, and my fourteen-year-old kid nodding along, Trey's bass case leaning against the brick wall behind them. I had every intention of going to say hi, but kept getting pulled into conversations, and I never did make it over before Joe headed out.

I still don't know what he said to Trey. Some of what gets passed down between musicians doesn't need a witness. It just needs to happen. I'll take that trade every time. Someday, he’ll think back to that night when he had to hold his own and remember something that was said, like when the drummer from the jam told me to always try to play something that surprises me every time I perform.
]]><![CDATA[Both Directions At Once]]>Sun, 14 Jun 2026 17:59:23 GMThttps://www.davewilliamsii.com/blog/both-directions-at-onceI come from a long line of storytellers. Anyone who has ever gotten to know us says the same. I've heard the phrase "gift of gab" more than a hundred times when describing my dad's side of the family. I didn't know anyone older than my grandma, so that's mostly my frame of reference, but I've heard stories about her parents and theirs.

Growing up, people would always tell me how great my dad was at storytelling. A seemingly 5-minute conversation would quickly turn into 45 minutes before you knew it. Same with his siblings, Aunt Ruth and Uncle Finley. Dad is the youngest of three, with five years between each of them, all having that same gift of gab. Their stories grab hold of you. Even something as mundane as going to check the mail can turn into the most immersive scene with main characters and origin stories, and tragedy.

I remember my uncle telling me about making oatmeal as a kid. Something to note, he's pretty particular about certain foods and how they're prepared, his oatmeal being one of them. But I remember being completely drawn into this story as a kid. I could see him there at the kitchen table getting the balance just right. I could smell the aromas in the kitchen and hear the conversations in each person's voice, even though I didn't know what they sounded like back then. I could actually feel the thud of the bowl as it was broken over his head and feel the warmth of the oatmeal pouring down his forehead. The descriptions were so poignant and clear. And I could taste that perfectly balanced buttery and sweet oatmeal when he tasted it, noting how it was quite possibly the best oatmeal he'd ever made.

My grandmother's friends often spoke of her storytelling. They would recall specific stories she would tell, like her taking train rides as a young girl down to El Dorado to visit her grandmother, or holding elevator buttons during crucial moments in treacherous political climates. One of my favorites was the opossum story. She would tickle herself as she retold it, and it never got old. No matter how many times I heard it, it felt fresh and exciting. Even if I knew how it ended, I would still get sucked into the description of the environment and what was running through her head in that moment. It was like she was reliving it every single time, and we were all there with her. As a proper southern lady who has called someone to come over and help her get an opossum out of her house, of course, the first thing she thinks of is, "Should I prepare some snacks to have ready for when they get here?" and "What do you serve at an opossum party, cheese and crackers?"

There was a last time she told that story. None of us knew it was the last time. That's how last times work. But the story didn't end with her. Her friends still tell it. And here I am telling a version of it right now, to people who never got to sit in that room with her. That's what a good story does. It keeps going without you.

Christy told me once that one of the things she fell in love with in high school was the way I told stories. The passion behind them. I didn't think much of it at the time. I was just talking.

That's the thing about inheriting something. You don't always know you're carrying it.

People have been telling me since I started blogging again that I need to write a book. That my stories make them feel something. I keep thinking about what that means. It's the same thing I've been chasing my whole life on the saxophone. Not to be understood, necessarily, but just to make someone feel something they didn't expect to feel.

John Coltrane said it better than I can. "The emotional reaction is all that matters. As long as there's some feeling of communication." That's the same thing I've been reaching for. He also said, "I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once."

Something feels urgent, and I start there. Then I find my way back to the beginning and forward to the end at the same time. I thought that was just how my mind worked. But thinking back on my uncle at that kitchen table, and my grandmother giggling through the opossum story for the hundredth time as if it had just happened that morning, they were doing the same thing.

Last night, my son Trey played his first official paid gig. He's earned tips sitting in with me at Moody Brews before, but this was different. Someone had hired him. As the bassist. For the night.

I've always been proud of my kids. But last night was something else.

The band was hitting hard, and Trey was there every step of the way. Never a question of whether he was in the right place or knew what was happening stylistically. He was right there with us. Inside the story we were telling, telling it with us.

We hit a lot of emotions throughout the night. Excitement, nostalgia, love, sadness, heartbreak, hope, curiosity. But it wasn't until the last song that it got everyone.

We ended with Rainbow Connection. Chris started in on the piano intro, and when I came in on the melody, Trey was there. Clear and confident. I could feel it. We were matching emotions. Christy cried. The entire room could feel it. In that moment, we disappeared into the story we were telling together, and nobody was performing anything. We were just inside it.

I've played that song countless times. It never gets old.

I think that's what we do. We start where the feeling is. And when we get there, we aren't performing a memory. We're back inside it, pulling you in with us. The same way my dad would watch people taste his food. Eyes on their face, waiting, like he was tasting it all over again right along with them.
]]><![CDATA[To Be a Kid]]>Sat, 13 Jun 2026 06:49:56 GMThttps://www.davewilliamsii.com/blog/to-be-a-kidIt rained tonight, but not before we got in our first set. By the time Chris and I set up at Moody Brews, the air had that thick, wet asphalt smell that only comes before a June rain in Arkansas. Heavy and humid, but still a good night for music. Trey was set up early and ready.

We played a tune I had never played before. It's called "To Be a Kid," and it's the second track on a suite Chris wrote with his wife, Kelley Hurt, a few years back. The No Tears Suite. They wrote it to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine, nine Black high school students who bravely walked through the doors of Little Rock Central High School in the fall of 1957 while the entire world watched and the Arkansas National Guard tried to stop them. Chris said they just wanted to put the spotlight on those kids. That's all.

I was in the audience the night the suite premiered at the historic grounds of Central High School in Little Rock, and I remember how the music felt in that space, like it was waiting to be played there. Kelley's voice over Chris's piano. It made you understand why people make music at all. The sheer talent level on that stage. The ensemble included GRAMMY-winning drummer Brian Blade, Rufus Reid on bass, Bobby LaVell on tenor saxophone, Marc Franklin on trumpet, and Chad Fowler on baritone and alto saxophone.

I didn't know then that I would be playing it myself one day on a Friday night at a brewery a few miles away. I didn't know my son would be learning it too.

My grandmother, Mamie Ruth, was there in 1957 with my uncle Finley and aunt Ruth. Uncle Finley and Trey share a birthday. August 28th. He was born in 1952, and my son was born in 2011. That would have made my uncle five at the time, with my aunt not even being one yet, still in a stroller. My grandmother was deeply involved in the civil rights movement, and that morning, she was outside that building in support of those nine kids. She graduated from that school herself, back before it was called Central, when it was still called Little Rock High. Most of my aunts and uncles on both sides went there. It was just what you did in this family, in this city.

I was supposed to go there too, back in 1998. But Rex Perry recruited me to Parkview instead, and that detour changed everything about who I became as a musician. I remember touring Central during my 9th-grade year. My mom and I walked the halls. You could feel the history. I’d heard stories my whole life about it. It felt like destiny. But when we made it to the band room, something felt off. Music was the most important thing to me at that point in my life, and Parkview felt like home to me. I've thought about that fork in the road more times than I can count.

My son Trey starts at Central High this fall.

The man who taught me to play saxophone was named Bob Fletcher. He gave me private lessons, not in a band room full of students, just the two of us, one on one. He taught my mom and dad as their band director at Central High. And before any of that, he sat in the same band room at Little Rock High and played clarinet next to my grandfather, who played trumpet. The same grandfather I only know from a memory of a hospital bed. Bob Fletcher had such an impact on my family's musical journey. My first band experience was at a Central High football game. My parents took me so that I could meet Mr. Fletcher. He held me in his arms while he conducted. It wasn’t until I was in college that he ever even mentioned to me that he knew my grandfather.

My junior high band director was also named Mr. Fletcher. That's not a typo. Two different men. The second, Danny Fletcher, gave me my first professional gig, subbing for him with the Four Tops. Yeah, the actual Four Tops. Around the same age as Trey is right now.

Little Rock may be the capital city of Arkansas, but it still feels like a small town. You turn over a pebble and find your whole history underneath it. The same buildings keep appearing. The same names. The bloodlines running through the music program and the civil rights movement, and a Friday night set at a brewery where the air still smells like rain.

Tonight we played "To Be a Kid." Trey is learning it, and it’s not lost on me that this fall, he walks into Central High School. The same building my grandmother stood outside in 1957 in support of nine brave kids. The same school I was supposed to attend, but didn't. The music Chris wrote to honor those nine kids turns out to have my family running all the way through it, in ways none of us planned.

We ended up opening the bay doors and playing in the room where we hid our gear from the rain. The crowd that filled the courtyard huddled together under the shelter of the back patio of the brewery. The rain was just enough to knock the temperature down a little, and there was a nice breeze. That's the thing about living in a place like Little Rock long enough. The ordinary just keeps turning into something else. Even if it smells like wet asphalt.
]]><![CDATA[Watch your tone...]]>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 16:59:27 GMThttps://www.davewilliamsii.com/blog/watch-your-toneI dropped my son off at his summer strings camp at the symphony space, then drove home. I made some coffee and picked up my alto sax to play for a few minutes. My daughter was still asleep, and my next student lesson wasn't for a couple of hours, so I went downstairs to keep the sound down for her.
Just me and the horn. No plan today.
I started with a low D and let the note open up. For the first time in a while, I realized how much my tone has improved.
When I first started working on my alto tone, I hated the way I sounded. I thought maybe I had too-stiff reeds or the wrong mouthpiece style. I thought it was just the way my mouth was shaped. I thought maybe some players just "had it" and I didn't.
I remember playing long tones as a young 7th grader and getting frustrated because the sound in my head and the sound coming out of the horn were miles apart. It felt like I was doing everything right, but still getting that thin, uncertain tone that didn't feel like me at all.
If I were going to teach students how to play the saxophone, I would need a way to explain how to produce a good tone. And it wasn't until I broke down how tone really works into smaller parts that things started to click.
Airflow. Breath support. Embouchure strength.
Once I understood those three things, the tone started changing. Not all at once. But gradually. Slowly. Almost without me noticing.
Until mornings like today. Moments where you stop and think, "I'm finally sounding like an alto player."
I know that feeling of being stuck with your tone. I know how discouraging it is when you hear other players with that full, rich, confident sound and you think, "Why can't I get that?"
You can. You absolutely can. You just need to take your time and focus.
Good tone on the saxophone comes down to three main things working together. Those three things are your air, your embouchure, and how you practice. None of them exists in isolation. When one is off, the others feel it, but when they are all working together, the horn stops fighting you.
The saxophone is a wind instrument. A tube you blow air through and make longer or shorter to change the pitch. It starts with the air column you're sending through it. Most players who struggle with tone are actually struggling with air.
There's a difference between airflow and breath support. Airflow is the amount and speed of air moving through the horn. Breath support is the sustained, controlled pressure behind it. The muscle engagement in your diaphragm and core that keeps the air column steady.
Think of it this way: airflow is the river, and breath support is the banks that keep it moving in one direction.
A common mistake is just blowing hard without supporting. That gives you a loud, unfocused sound. Another common mistake is supporting without enough airflow. That gives you a tight, pinched tone that feels like you’re fighting to get the sound out.
What you want is a warm, fast, steady stream of air. Not forced. Not timid. Directional.
A simple exercise to try before you even pick up the horn is to practice blowing a slow, steady stream of air at the back of your hand. Feel the warmth. Feel the consistency. Now speed it up without losing that steadiness. That's the air your saxophone wants.
Your embouchure is the way your mouth forms around the mouthpiece. It's one of the most personal things in saxophone playing. Two players can use the same setup and develop completely different tones based on embouchure alone.
But there are fundamentals.
The corners of your mouth should be firm, not tight. Think of the word "hmm." That slight firmness at the sides without clenching. Your bottom lip rests lightly over your bottom teeth, cushioning the reed. The top teeth rest on the mouthpiece, usually about a half inch to an inch from the tip. Your jaw should be relaxed and slightly forward, not pulled back. Notice I used the word “rest.”
What you're after is a seal that controls the reed without squeezing it to death. The reed needs to vibrate freely. If your embouchure is too tight, you kill the vibration and get that thin, strangled tone. If it's too loose, you lose focus and pitch control.
My favorite way to think of it is to imagine you're holding a potato chip in your lips without breaking it. Enough pressure to hold it, not enough to crush it. I do love potato chips.
When you first start developing your embouchure, your face will get tired fast. That's normal. It's a muscle. It needs time to build. I can’t stress this enough. Don't try to push through it with bad form. Stop, rest, come back.
All of this means nothing without consistent, intentional practice. One that actually builds tone
Long tones first. Every single day.
This is non-negotiable if you want to improve your sound. Long tones are the foundation. Start on a middle note like middle D or Eb, and hold it for as long as you can with a full, steady tone. Listen carefully. Is the pitch drifting? Is the tone thinning out as your air runs down? Is there a wobble? Don't just hold the note. Hear it. Feel it. Adjust.
Move chromatically down toward low Bb, then back up. Five to ten minutes of honest long tones will do more for your tone than an hour of running scales.
Overtone exercises.
This is the secret sauce. Overtones are the harmonics present in every note you play. They're what give great players that rich, full sound. You can develop them intentionally.
Start on low Bb. Without changing your fingering, use your air and embouchure to coax the next harmonic out of the horn, a middle Bb. Then the F above it. Then the next Bb. You may not get all of them at first. That's fine. The attempt is training your embouchure and air to work together in ways they won't get from just playing scales alone.
Slow, focused scales. Not fast ones.
Speed comes later. Right now, you're listening. Play your scales slowly enough that you can hear every note fully before you move to the next one. Is the tone consistent from note to note? Does the character of the sound change as you move into the upper register? These are the questions that build awareness, and awareness is what builds tone.
Record yourself.
I say this to every student, and most of them resist it. Do it anyway. The sound in your head is not the sound coming out of the horn. Recording is the only honest mirror you have. Listen back objectively. Note where the tone is strong and where it falls apart. Then go after those spots.
Be patient.
I want to say this simply because I wish someone had said it to me. Tone development is slow. It is genuinely, frustratingly slow. But it is also cumulative. Every long tone session, every overtone exercise, every careful, slow scale, is all going in. You may not notice it day to day. But one morning you'll sit down, play a low D, and something will have changed.
That's the morning you've been working toward.
There's a reason I still practice tone even after all these years of playing. The instrument always has more to give. There’s always something to work on. That's what keeps it interesting.
If you're a student working on your sound, keep going. If you're an educator looking for ways to frame this for your own students, I hope something here was useful.
And if you're a player who just sat down this morning with no warm-up and no plan, and you heard something in your tone that made you stop and smile?
That one's yours.
]]><![CDATA[Unprompted]]>Mon, 08 Jun 2026 17:23:51 GMThttps://www.davewilliamsii.com/blog/unpromptedThis morning, I made myself a cup of coffee while Trey got ready for strings camp.

That sentence sounds ordinary. It is ordinary. That’s exactly the point.

While I was still waking up in the kitchen, going through the usual ritual of mentally planning the day ahead, he was downstairs doing everything he needed to do. Showered. Dressed. He gathered his music, his cello, and his phone. He checked his messages from the night before. Brushed his teeth. Took his ADHD meds. Grabbed something to eat. All of it, in order, without anyone having to say a word. No reminder. No list.

Unprompted.

Parker is doing it too. Getting herself out of bed before I knock on the door. Making herself breakfast. Showering without the nudge. She starts a life skills camp today, run by one of her teachers. It’s just a week long, and she had herself ready well before the 1 o’clock drop-off. I didn’t have to orchestrate any of it. I just watched.

Parenting, like teaching, is a long project with a slow reveal. You pour things into people for years, and you can’t always tell what’s landing and what isn’t. You repeat yourself. You model things and hope they’re watching. You correct and encourage and back off and step back in, trying to find the right distance for whatever season you’re in. Somewhere in the middle of that repetition, something grabs.
I wasn’t prepared for how quietly it happens.

I expected milestones to feel like milestones. I thought there would be a moment I would recognize, like their first steps, something I could point to and say, “there it is.” Instead, it’s been more like I’m making coffee and he’s already handled it. I’m thinking about whether she needs a reminder, and she’s already dressed and by the door. The independence didn’t arrive with fanfare. It just settled in while I wasn’t looking.

My favorite musical experiences are those that don’t need to be conducted through every phrase. I notice it in smaller groups like combos or chamber orchestras a lot, but it hits even harder when it’s in a larger ensemble like a big band or the symphony. You play with someone long enough, and they start to anticipate. They hear where you’re going before you get there. The communication goes underground.It happens when the band director can count off a tune and get out of the way of the group, or when the conductor can walk away from the podium during a rehearsal to hear what the orchestra sounds like out in the front of house. That’s when it stops feeling like coordination and starts feeling like something closer to trust.

That’s what I felt this morning. Not pride exactly, though that was in there too. More like recognition. Like something I’d been working toward had quietly arrived.

Trey recently auditioned to move up to the next level of the youth symphony. Before he went in, he told me what he was feeling, and I love how comfortable my kids have become with that kind of open, honest communication. He wasn’t complaining. He just said, “I’m nervous about the prepared material, but I think I’ll be good.” And he was. He walked in, played, and came out with a smile on his face. “I did better than I expected,” he said. Afterward, one of the administrators asked if he’d consider playing bass with the group he was auditioning out of.

I ran it by him. He didn’t say yes right away, and he didn’t say no. He thought it through out loud. He looked at the logistics, the technique it would require, what he’d gain from it, and where it could take him in jazz settings down the line. He came back with a considered answer. Not a kid’s answer. A musician’s answer. “If I do this, what would my schedule look like?”

You can’t give someone that. You can put the conditions in place. You can model how to think through a decision, how to name what you’re feeling, and how to stay in the room when it’s uncomfortable. But the moment when they actually do it, when they reach for the tool on their own, and it’s there, that’s different.

I see them. Not just the accomplishments, but the process. The way Parker will sit with a book for hours because she found something worth disappearing into. The way Trey will work a problem until he has the language for it. The care they both bring to the people they love, including Christy and myself.
The whole point of being a parent, as near as I can tell, is to work yourself out of a job. Give them the tools. Teach them how to use the tools. And then step back and make coffee while they handle the rest. I will always be their parent. I will always be there for them unconditionally.

This morning, standing in the kitchen while Trey came up the stairs with everything he needed already in hand, I felt something I didn’t have a name for in the moment.

I stood there holding my warm mug. Outside the kitchen window, heavy grey clouds were rolling in. It was going to rain today. My mind started sketching out the sudden shift in logistics. Rain meant a messier drop-off, a slower pick-up, and a tighter window of coordination for what Trey would do while I was dropping Parker off at her camp before picking him up from his. It was the familiar, anxious feeling of a parent trying to make things work.

Then I looked back at Trey, already packed and ready by the door, completely unbothered by the weather.

I think it was something like, it’s working.
Picture
]]><![CDATA[All By Myself]]>Thu, 04 Jun 2026 07:04:28 GMThttps://www.davewilliamsii.com/blog/all-by-myselfThere’s a music stand next to the piano in our living room where we display the album jackets that are currently on the turntable. My home stereo setup isn’t quite as elaborate as my dad’s or father-in-law’s was, but the space it lives in is inviting. We used to have an old upright piano against the short wall that served as the focal piece of our music room. We took the front panel off so that the strings and inner workings were exposed. It looked so cool, but it was old and damaged, and there was no restoring it in our future, so we replaced it with a smaller digital console. It still has 88 weighted keys, so it still feels like a real piano, but you can use headphones or change the tones. The space on the wall the old upright piano once occupied is now covered with albums in frames and pictures of family and friends.
The wall next to it has a window with bamboo blinds and guitars displayed on either side. It felt like a natural choice to move the record player under the window on top of a six-cube storage shelf that fits our albums quite nicely alongside our bookshelf speakers. I love walking through the house and glancing over to see what album my kids were listening to last. My daughter has a particular fondness for Green Day. For her eleventh birthday, she asked for their album Dookie.
Every time I see it on that music stand, it takes me back to 1994 when I was an eleven-year-old unwrapping the CD case I’d just bought. My friends and I rode our bikes to the brand-new Barnes & Noble. It was the first one in the state, and it was built right in our neighborhood. We used to ride our bikes on the dirt mounds they used to level the lot while they were constructing it. So naturally, when they finally opened, our first order of business was to ride over and listen to the new CDs they had in their music section. I remember huddling around those clunky headphones and scanning the barcode on the back of the CD case to hear a sound clip. That was enough for me. I took the album up to the checker who was guarding the entrance of the music section and pulled out my Velcro wallet. A twenty-dollar bill that was once in a birthday card from my grandma was just enough to cover the $15.67 and still leave enough for a bottle of Fruitopia for the ride back home.
It’s one of the most iconic album covers in punk rock. The chaotic, colored-pencil scene captures the high-energy, explosive counterculture of the pop-punk scene in the nineties, featuring the “Bad Year” blimp, planes dropping “DOOKIE” bombs, and the band’s name, GREEN DAY, exploding in all caps out of a mushroom cloud with the album title in lowercase letters on the bottom: dookie. This album was the first one I can remember not getting permission from my parents for; I bought it with my own money. It was the first album that didn’t fit into my parents’ taste, and I was all about it. I learned every word.
My sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Whitman, was in disbelief that I knew the words I was singing. She looked like she could be my great aunt. Short, kind, always smiling, and always wearing a sweater buttoned up over her shirt. I remember her asking me if I even knew what “neurotic” or “melodramatic” meant.
My daughter, Parker, sings Green Day songs all the time, and I don’t have to question if she knows what the words mean. She’s a brilliant, voracious reader. The eleven-year-old inside me gets so excited when I hear “Basket Case” playing on the speakers in the music room from downstairs, because I know Parker is in her happy place and Green Day’s Dookie album is displayed on that music stand in the corner.
If you let the CD spin past the official tracklist in 1994, through minutes of empty silence, a hidden song called “All By Myself” eventually crawls out of the speakers. It’s unlisted, unpolished, and entirely unexpected. I left this album off my original list because it didn’t fit the pristine, curated aesthetic I thought that original post needed. But music is rarely pristine. It took my daughter spinning a thirty-two-year-old pop punk record to remind me that some of the most important tracks in our lives are often the ones we didn’t plan for. The beautiful, unlisted bonus tracks are the surprises that make life beautiful.

]]><![CDATA[The Family Table]]>Sun, 31 May 2026 23:58:54 GMThttps://www.davewilliamsii.com/blog/the-family-tableThere was a table at Dave's Place that belonged to us.

Not officially. There was no sign on it, no reservation card, no rope keeping anyone away, but the regulars knew. The staff knew. After a while, even the first-time customers seemed to know. That table was ours, and whoever was sitting at it was family.

My grandmother, Mamie Ruth, claimed it first.

We called her Memaw. She was quite the lady. A storyteller and an entertainer in the truest sense, the kind of person who could make a stranger feel like a long-lost relative before they'd finished reading the menu. She was educated and well-traveled and had more friends than most people could imagine. They came to visit her daily.

She had a gift for listening that I didn't fully understand until I got older. Not the polite kind of listening, where you nod and wait for your turn to speak. The real kind. She was genuinely interested in people. Where they were from. What they did. What mattered to them. A traveling businessman stopping in on a Tuesday afternoon could sit down near our table and within ten minutes find himself telling Memaw things he hadn't thought about in years, laughing at something she said, and leaving with the specific feeling that he had been seen by someone who meant it.

She always introduced us. Laura and me. Every time. She didn't let a single person walk through that room without knowing that her son was the owner and the chef, and that these were her grandchildren. She said it with a pride that wasn't boastful. It was just true, and she wanted you to know it. We were hers, and she wanted the world to be aware.

That table was where Laura and I grew up between school and bedtime. Homework spread out across the surface during the school year. Afternoon snacks appearing without asking. Memaw holding court, pulling everyone into whatever conversation was already happening.

When she passed, and Laura's kids came along, my mom was right there. Then Christy and I had Trey and Parker, and ours moved in right alongside them.

The same customers who watched my sister and me grow up watched our children grow up. They watched us become parents. They watched us become teachers, in our own ways. Laura went into early childhood education, pouring herself into the littlest learners. I went the music route. Different paths out of the same place.

On Friday nights, when Brandon and I would set up in the corner and the jam session would start pulling people in, the kids would disappear into the back office and come out with handfuls of printer paper to draw and color on. Nobody minded. That was just how it was.

I remember a baby walker that made its way through multiple kids and multiple years. Whoever was in it at the time would roll through the dining room with complete confidence, pulling up alongside customers' tables as if stopping by to check in. Not afraid. Not shy. Just present in the way children are when they've never been made to feel unwelcome anywhere.

Trey would walk up to my bassist and point at a string. Every time, they let him pluck it. Parker would drift toward my drummer, and he would pick her up and hand her the sticks and let her hit the cymbals. The musicians were patient and generous and completely unfazed, because that was the kind of room it was. Children were part of it. The music was part of it. The food and the laughter and the late conversations and Memaw introducing strangers to each other across tables were all part of the same thing.

Everybody was welcome at the family table because everyone was family.
]]><![CDATA[Bob Parlocha]]>Wed, 27 May 2026 21:46:35 GMThttps://www.davewilliamsii.com/blog/bob-parlocha
Open this webplayer in a seperate tab to have playing while you read this
Christy and I worried about how our kids would discover new music. Back in our day, if you were awake late enough, somewhere after midnight when the roads emptied out, and the house finally got quiet, there was a good chance you’d hear the voice of Bob Parlocha drifting through the speakers. Calm. Unhurried. Deep enough to sound like your grandfather telling you bedtime stories. Jazz with Bob Parlocha became part of life in a way that is hard to explain to people who grew up with streaming services and playlists. You didn’t choose the music. You followed someone else’s ear for a while. He had a way of making jazz feel welcoming without watering it down. He could move from something familiar into something strange and beautiful without ever sounding like he was lecturing you. He sounded like someone sitting across the room flipping through records he loved and saying, “Listen to this.”

The show reached people during hours when the radio felt most personal. Overnight workers. Musicians coming home from gigs. Students trying to stay awake. Young couples sitting together on a couch after everyone else had gone to sleep. He knew how to let a song breathe. He knew not to interrupt the mood just to remind listeners he was there. Sometimes the space between his voice and the next tune felt just as important as the music itself. The way Miles would leave space between ideas in his playing to let the listener sit with that thought for a moment.

What I remember most isn’t necessarily one specific song or interview. It's the feeling that somewhere out there, another person was awake, holding open this little doorway into music for me. That kind of companionship is rare. Radio used to create it all the time, and Bob Parlocha was one of the last people who truly mastered it.

He also carried none of the self-importance that sometimes surrounds jazz culture. The show never felt like homework. It never felt like a museum tour where you were expected to already understand everything. He approached the music with reverence and also warmth. You could hear Duke Ellington, Dexter Gordon, Bill Evans, or some younger player you had never encountered before, and it all felt connected. I discovered so much through his playlists.

Today, everything is personalized and on demand. Algorithms try to predict what you want before you even know it yourself. His show worked because it came from one human being with deep taste and patience. You surrendered to somebody else’s sensibility for a few hours. That surrender became part of the experience.

After his death in 2015, stations continued replaying old episodes because listeners were not ready to lose that voice. People don’t keep returning to archived radio broadcasts just for information. They return because certain voices become tied to memory itself. A certain song comes on, and suddenly you are back on a dark highway, or sitting in a college apartment at one in the morning, or driving home after a gig with the windows cracked just enough to let the night air in.

Bob Parlocha wasn't just a radio host. He was a huge part of my musical discovery.
]]><![CDATA[The Afterthought]]>Wed, 27 May 2026 18:20:09 GMThttps://www.davewilliamsii.com/blog/the-afterthoughtMusician friends mention it in passing, and suddenly an entire origin story unfolds. First gigs. First jam sessions. First time hearing somebody and realizing music could be a life. First dates. First nights that stretched too late and somehow changed everything.

Everyone seems to carry a different Afterthought.

I never told anyone I was working on this piece, but I felt pulled toward writing about the Afterthought and the giant hole it left in our musical community last week, while sitting at my son’s end-of-the-year party across the street from the shell of what was once the Afterthought.

People felt it immediately, but I don’t think we understood the gravity of it until years later.

When the mural panels ended up at Dave’s Place, I felt connected to that. There was something right about a physical piece of that room surviving. Music was still being made in front of it. New memories forming underneath old ones.

Then Dave’s Place followed the same inevitable path. Nobody wanted us to close. Everyone said the same thing people had said about the Afterthought: When are you going to reopen? Someone should bring it back. Maybe that’s because we misunderstand what made those places special.

The Afterthought wasn’t just a room. Dave’s Place wasn’t just a room. Those places existed exactly when they needed to exist. Recreating the furniture, the stage, the menu, the walls…that isn’t the same as recreating the people who found each other there.

Lately, I’ve caught myself wondering if that’s part of what we’re building at Moody Brews. Not another Dave’s Place. Not another Afterthought. But another place where community forms quietly. Where people become family. Where memories are being made, and origin stories are beginning. Most of us won’t hear those stories until long after we’ve moved on. Not because we wanted to move on. Just because that’s what life does.

The Afterthought was where everything started for me, but most of the kids coming to the jam at Moody Brews never even knew the Afterthought.

It’s where I cut my teeth in the jazz world. My first jam session. My first real combo experience. The first time I learned what it felt like to not just practice jazz, but to actually play jazz with people who knew what they were doing.

Looking back now, it’s hard to overstate how much that room shaped me as a musician. The room had history. Serious history. Looking back now, it’s astonishing how many players passed through that room before I even knew what a saxophone was. But it never felt exclusive to me.

On any given night, you might end up sitting next to a businessman relaxing after work, a local representative, a city board member, or somebody who had been coming there every Thursday for twenty years. People came to listen. People came to talk. People came because that room had become part of their routine. That mix always felt special to me. National-level players on the stand, regulars at the tables, and somehow it all felt completely normal.

From the outside, it didn’t announce itself. It just sat quietly on the corner of Beechwood and Kavanaugh in Hillcrest with nothing to prove.

Inside felt different.

Huge floor-to-ceiling glass windows lined the Kavanaugh side, and from the bandstand area, you could watch cars pass while you played. There wasn’t a proper stage. Just a section of parquet wood floor in front of five giant floor-to-ceiling panels painted with a mural depicting a busy New Orleans square full of life and music.

Off in the opposite corner sat an old black grand piano. Not polished. Not meant to impress anybody. Just there.

Across from it was a fireplace built into the middle of the dimly lit dining room. At the back of the room, opposite those big windows up front, was a full bar with every spirit you could imagine lining the walls.

It felt like one of those places that already had stories before you walked in and kept collecting them after you left because it was.

My dad actually took me there when I was in high school to hear a friend of his play. At some point during the night, he convinced them to let me sit in.

I was fifteen years old.

I don’t remember everything I played. I’m sure some of it was rough. But I remember the feeling of being in that room and realizing, maybe for the first time, that this was something I wanted to chase.
Over the years, The Afterthought became more than just a place I played. It became part of the rhythm of my life. I spent countless nights there listening, learning, sitting in, subbing with different groups, and eventually leading my own nights.

Some nights were quiet and conversational. Other nights felt electric from the first tune. Almost every night eventually turned into a jam session. You’d start the evening with one group on the schedule, but by the second set, there might be extra horn players standing around the bandstand, a singer getting talked into sitting in, or a musician visiting from out of town quietly unpacking a horn case near the bar. Nobody really thought twice about it. That was just what happened there. And when the music connected, the room changed.

You could feel conversations stop. Ice would stop clinking in glasses. The room would slowly lean in toward the bandstand until all that seemed to exist was the music itself.

And if one loud drunk at the bar missed the cue and kept talking over the band, they usually didn’t last long. Not because management stepped in, but because the audience cared enough to protect the room. People came there to listen.

That always meant something to me.

The musicians who played there pushed each other, too. Nobody had to say anything outright. You could just feel the standard in the room. And yet for all the talent that passed through there, what I remember most now is the feeling. The feeling of setting up a horn while hearing glasses and quiet conversation in the background. The sound of somebody counting off a tune while traffic rolled by outside those giant windows. The warmth of the fireplace in winter. The low light. The mural behind the band. The sense that something special might happen at any moment.

More nights than I can recall ended with that feeling that the band had somehow become bigger than the individual musicians on stage. Those were the nights that kept all of us coming back.

Places like that don’t really disappear. Even after the doors close, they keep showing up. The Afterthought may be gone now, but for those of us who spent part of our lives inside that little corner room in Hillcrest, it never really left us.
Picture
]]><![CDATA[PJ...I like that]]>Mon, 25 May 2026 15:07:51 GMThttps://www.davewilliamsii.com/blog/pji-like-that
Picture
Parker Jean

We were walking along the river on one of those perfect fall evenings. Cool air coming off the water. The light starting to flatten out and turn everything softer. Trees doing that thing they do in October when everything turns gold and rust, and you remember why you live somewhere like this.

Parker bent down and picked up a sweet-gum ball from the edge of the path and held it by the stem. Turned it slowly in the light. Not absentmindedly. Not the way kids sometimes pick things up just to have something in their hands. She studied it. She looked at it the way somebody looks at something they assume is worth noticing. I recognized the moment immediately. Not because of the sweet-gum ball. Because of her.

That’s Parker.

She notices things. Not in a dramatic way and not in a look-what-I-found kind of way. She just pays attention in a way that feels increasingly rare. She’ll stop for something most people step over without ever realizing it was there. A strange shadow across the floor. Light through a window at the right time of day. A sentence in a book that says exactly what it meant to say. She doesn’t seem especially interested in rushing past things, and because of that, she sees more.

She has tried many things throughout her young childhood, and was good at all of them. She started playing the cello because her brother, Trey, played cello, but eventually she realized she didn’t actually love it. Same with piano and dance.

I’ve always admired that about her.

When the kids joined the track team, I honestly didn’t know what to expect. Track wasn’t my thing growing up. I was a baseball, tennis, basketball kid. Running always felt more like something you did between the things I actually wanted to do.

Earlier in the year, Trey joined cross-country and really found something there. He loved seeing himself improve. He loved the challenge of it. So when his coach suggested track, it felt like the next right thing. Parker's joining was the surprise. She’s never really shown much interest in running, but if I’m being fair, I should know better by now than to be surprised by Parker. She has a way of quietly becoming interested in things you never saw coming.

This was Trey's last year at Anthony, and he was determined to squeeze every bit out of it. He kept encouraging Parker to try things. To sign up. To jump in. There’s something about siblings that’s hard to explain if you haven’t watched them up close. They know exactly how to push each other’s buttons and support each other at the same time.

Track practice was hard. Every practice. New workouts. Sprints. Long runs. Arkansas heat and humidity doing their thing, and Parker cried after more practices than I expected. More than once, I was ready to tell her she didn’t have to do this, but she never wanted to quit. She just wanted to keep going.

It finally clicked for me that she wasn’t measuring herself against the other runners. She wasn’t worried about who finished first. She was competing against herself. Could she finish? Could she do something today that she couldn’t do last week? Could she stay with something even when it was uncomfortable?
And every race she finished answered those questions. Smiling all the way around the track.

Those track meets ended up changing how I think about running sports. I thought it was going to be about times and places. Instead, I watched kids learn resilience. I watched them push themselves physically, but also mentally and emotionally. I watched teammates cheering for runners who weren’t even in their heat or on their team. I watched kids celebrate personal records with the same excitement as first place. It felt like a team sport in a way I’ve never really experienced before, and that’s when I realized Parker already understood something I was still learning.

Sometimes winning is just seeing something through.

She doesn’t stay in things out of obligation or because she’s good at it. She gives them a real chance. She shows up fully. And if something doesn’t connect with her in a way she recognizes, she moves on without making a big announcement about it. No drama. No identity crisis. Just honesty.

That feels harder than we make it sound.

She sings beautifully and can play the drums. Music is woven into our family in all the ways you’d expect, but she’s never seemed especially interested in standing in front of it. She’s done school plays and musicals, and what always stands out isn’t volume or trying to steal attention. She disappears into the character. The same way she disappears into books. The same way she disappeared into that sweet-gum ball. You watch and realize she isn’t performing for anyone. She’s inside the thing.

I think back to Trey at her age. With him, it felt like there was a stretch of middle school where things slowly started clicking into place. Seventh grade, especially. Then eighth grade came around, and suddenly you could see all this quiet confidence that had been building for years.

Parker is still in the middle of that becoming. She has years of middle school ahead of her, and I find myself genuinely excited to watch what those years will reveal. Not because I’m waiting for her to find her thing. I’m not. I think she already knows something that takes a lot of us much longer to learn. You don’t always find what matters by moving faster. Sometimes you find it because you stopped and paid attention to what others tend to overlook. Because you picked something up. Because you turned it slowly in the light long enough to see what was actually there.

When the thing that’s hers finally shows itself, she'll stop, pick it up, and turn it slowly in the light, and she'll already know exactly what to do with it.
Picture
]]>