#11: David Gans - Instrumental Breakthroughs by Tam Integration

Psychedelics, Music & Art go hand in hand. So many of us are moved to express our insights and visions through our creativity. Join Daniel of Tam Integration as he talks to a wide variety of masterful creatives about how their magical flights of fancy have inspired their art. If you feel moved, please support the show: http://patreon.com/tamintegration http://instrumentalbreakdowns.com Co-produced by http://Deadheadland.tv     Arriving in 1966 in time to catch the initial wave of psychedelia and the birth of the counterculture, the LA-born Gans settled as a teenager in the San Francisco Bay Area amidst the full flowering of a music scene burgeoning with bohemianism and creativity. A childhood playing the clarinet in school orchestras gave Gans a basic music education and an ear for melody. Things started togetinteresting in 1969.“My brother playedguitar, and he set a couple of my tortured teenage poems to music and taught me thechords,” Gans recalls.Thus, “I became a songwriter at the exact same moment I became a guitarist.I think that’s significant: even as I was filling my head with the music that was all around us at the time, I was focusing primarily on developing my own style.”Gansconsiders himself a musical child of, first among many, the Grateful Dead. “To me, that means drawing from a great variety of sources but telling the story in my own unique voice.” After several decades of composing, recording, and performing, he’s become a master at delivering musical moments straight from the heart, soul, and fingertips. “What we make is not just rock & roll,” he sings in “Life is a Jam,” Drop the Bone’s anthemic leadoff track and statement of artistic intent. “We’re teaming up for spiritual entrainment.”Onstage, he conjures a special brand of magic that draws upon the symbiotic relationship between singer and listener. “The best performances,” he asserts, “happen in front of the best audiences.”