to dig you and your record. They are the foot soldiers of your campaign to sell discs and maintain job security. After all, it's not just how well you play. It's also how well you play the game.

Field reps put up posters in stores and push you to the buyers ("no, really, you are going to love this"). They can talk up your concert and supply you with table tents and big posters when you go out on the road. They can take care of you when you are doing an instore or signing discs after a show. They represent for you and the label where the rubber meets the road, and they have the power to help make your career. Or they can ignore you, if you are a jerk.

But now let's recap: Last night I worked the party 'til eleven or so, then came home to pack. Up at 5:45 this morning to get to the plane (delayed 1 hr) to LaGuardia to drive the rental van through a storm for 5 hrs, doing two crackly phone interviews on the way while driving. On arrival, went straight to a 3 hr rehearsal (no warming up), checking into the hotel after & getting invited out to dinner at a high-class place (or so we all thought) by the promoter who ends up not springing for it - SURPRISE! And here we all are looking at each other wondering if we have the per diem bread between us to cover our costs. (Did I mention that I'm losing money on this whole weekend & that I took the gigs for their high-profile status? Not complaining - just reporting.) Back to the hotel after to steam my jacket (which is probably too bright for TV anyway) and give Jenny a call. It's now 12:45 am. Let's see, shall I practice now?

Shazam!

Up at 5:45 again. Shower & shave & down to the lobby by 6:15. Check out & drive out, with the horn cats in their own rental following ours. I'm driving again, 'cause I'm liable. It's another 4 1/2 hours up to Newport, RI through thick fog & rain, Sunday traffic of both super highway and old-fashioned east coast colonial pokey-road (25 mph, please). Cats pass out, or help me navigate. No good radio reception, though we do almost hear an interview of some cat who works as the archivist at Louis Armstrong's house & handles to all of Pop's old self-made conversation tapes.

When we get to Newport we wait at a Citgo for someone from the festival to lead us through the foggy town labyrinth & festival security to back stage parking inside the old fort where they keep the grand old festival going. Quick from parking the rig to the dressing rooms (in trailers) to eat a banana & warm up. Given the rain, we were lucky to have arrived at 11am. We're scheduled to hit at 11:30.

We can hear the foghorns in the harbor. I look out the trailer window one minute getting hot dog stands ready and thirty or forty mangy seagulls in a loose, meditative spread over an empty, greening lawn. A minute later and I can see they've opened the gates. Here come hundreds & hundreds of the brave ones storming the field in colored ponchos & rubber hats with chairs to snag the best spots. All right, people!

We do about a ten-minute line check on stage, I check the order of charts with everybody, they announce us, light come up & we're off. Now I can see the water. The richies park their water cruisers close enough to hear the music first-hand but still lose the crowded feeling on shore. I sing out to them but focus on the later-to-be-soaked-to-the- skin faithful on shore & the PBS cameras.

Voice feels good & does most of what I ask it. Cats are playing great, Rob and Frank really digging in on "Resolution". Solos are also cooking & by about halfway I can feel people warming onto us. What sells it, though, is "Home Cookin'", Jon Hendricks' swinging take on the great Horace Silver lick. God bless Jon Hendricks - again!

LH's new horn arrangement of "Nature Boy" really kicks it, though, & brings us all into the final length wit colors flying. But why does the stage manager, unable to intuit that we are in the process of wrapping things up, rudely gives me the international signal to "wrap it up"? I mean, we'd had the big drum solo. I was introducing the cats, for Pete's sake. Clearly we are in the home stretch. Stupid, useless, power signifier is what that is.

Bows. Then BAM. I'm off the stage and directly to a TV interview for 20 minutes. Then to a 30-minute signing at the JVC tent. A 10-minute radio interview follows. I chase down the money, this time in cash for expenses. Photo ops with fans and my agent & his kids (weekending at the festival). Quick say "Hi" to Patitucci on the way to change. Very sorry to miss Wayne's set - he'll be on in another half hour. Instead, I sign fifty festival posters for the promoters, grab a plate of food to eat while I drive. I gather the cats, who are getting anxious about the time - we've got a plane to catch. Last minute directions from a friendly trooper standing out in sad coastal mist ("Just keep the water on your left 'til you get to the bridge").

It's all a rush; a mostly friendly obstacle course of events for the strengthening of focus, a series of engagements for the creative spirit in quick succession. It's very difficult, this taking care of business thing. It can string you out pretty badly.

Driving all the way, through the six-hour drive back to the plane the cats and I debate whether we'll even get to the airport in time - the weather is becoming a mess. If we miss it, should we try to get a cheap hotel out here somewhere? Should we go into Manhattan, see who's playing, maybe go & sit in & just stay up all night to catch a morning flight? Either way, it's me who'll be paying the ticket changes.

Thankfully (?), the same weather which slows us down also slows down the air traffic & we end up instead waiting at the airport for a further three hours 'til the plane leaves.

I don't even remember what time I finally got home.

Hit at the Mill again last night with the cats. Our good friend Brad Wheeler sat in on tenor. He's just in from Paris where he's been living for the last ten years, and he sounds great. He plays all the real shit - angry, whole tone stuff & diminished ideas & moves them around by major thirds - really dark & cool sounding.

Also with us was Tom Garling on trombone, late of Maynard's band & a good friend of Rob's.

Two voiceover sessions today for Kenmore. That's three-and-a-half hours of, "This is not a refrigerator. This is a one-way ticket to Planet Fresh . . ." It's easy work, ultimately, but it can take up your whole day. Plus parking is always a challenge. But the real difference between session work and a regular gig is that there is no room for a timing error. Baby, you've got to make it on time or you're through. They're paying top dollar for you and the studio & engineer & they can't waste a minute.

In between sessions I race walk uptown, going to two wrong addresses first, for a meeting with John Iltis, a publicist I am hiring out-of-pocket to help Tony Karman and me manage the local record release details. I'll give him three specific assignments: whatever happens in the first week of the release, including the festival hit on the 31st, The Park West release concert on the 15th of September, and the suburban Borders tour.

I know what you're saying. You're saying, "why doesn't Kurt just let Blue Note handle the business?" Well, I'll tell you why. I do let and expect them to handle things in 99% of the world. And they do a great job, as a rule. However, I live in Chicago and I know what's possible here on a promotional front. There are 9 and 1/2 million people in the greater Chicagoland area to sell records to. I've got to use the hometown advantage as much as possible. You've got to have a home of operations & sales somewhere, something to build on for the rest of the country. And it's a flyover town for most of the record industry. Can you imagine?

Also, how is a lifetime of gigs just supposed to happen on its own? Well, it won't, that's how. What do you think is in store for me creatively and professionally thirty years from now if all I ever do are Mill dates and the occasional festival hit? My goals are simple: to play music and write as well as I can and to assure myself the best possible opportunities for creative work in the future. First, be an artist. But be a businessman, too. Unless you are Jarrett or Wayne you have to be. Even if you can become some tremendous sideman like Idris Mohammed or Billy Hart it will be hard enough. But how many singers get called up as regular sidemen? You can only be a leader, so you have to kick ass as a businessman. You can't get away from business, even if you hit like Diana Krall or Cassandra Wilson.

So, yeah, I've hired my own marketing guy & publicist just for Chicago. They'll help me coordinate the events in town which will propel the success of this record and my reputation and my creative horizon. I want more & better gigs to play. I want to never have to worry about having a record deal. I want always to have contact with the best players. I want more diverse artistic commissions. I want an interesting, surprising, creative path. I do these things now so that the others will eventually come to pass.

But let's be real. I am a young white male who lives in Chicago & is trying to make it singing jazz. I need to work the system. I need to be smarter and quicker than the system. I need to work harder and longer and more obsessively than the system wants me to if I am to get the kind of creative horizon expansion I'm thinking of. You want the gigs? You want to write tunes with Bob Mintzer or Dave Brubeck or even, in your wildest dreams, with Herbie or Wayne? You want to meet Ken Nordine & spend the day talking about art history & maybe start writing plays together? Have the chance to be flown to L.A. to create a new act for the clubs with Herb Graham, Jr. &, maybe, Macey Gray? Then get to work.