Imagine a Saturday morning with two small children and a wife hanging around, and a friend whose favorite sayings are Kapow!!! and ass-clown, and then try to imagine attempting to write a piece of music.
Chango was the result….
Brian Timpe, bassist and friend, came by the house on a Saturday morning so we could try our hand at writing a song or two, and laying down some bass tracks. We started fooling around with rhythms and we quickly came up with a groove, and overlayed a melody on top of it. By the time Brian left a few hours later, we had the song firmly
Over the next few days, I realized that there was something missing – it needed a bit more than the standard A/B song structure. After reading an article on the Montuno Cuban style, I started to play with the rhythms and came up with what became the bridge section.
Eventually it came time to add additional parts, including Allen Marshall’s guitar and a final bass part from Brian, and a drum part (originally recorded on V-Drums by Marty Supple, and later replaced a couple of times in the studio with other drummers). I added a synth solo, inspired by the style of Jeff Lorber, early one morning (it was about 4 am IIRC) and eventually we called the tune “Done”.
The title Chango comes from the name of a character in a book I was reading at the time. The book (the name escapes me nearly 20 years later) was based in Cuba.
Check out Chango.