Dad's Story

1 · Roots — Detroit & Greensboro

To start easy: what's the first piece of music you remember loving?

• You were born in Detroit. What do you actually remember of it, and what's just family lore?
• In 1965 the family moved to Greensboro when Grandpa Norman took the Bennett College job. What was that move like for a kid?
• Tell me about your father, Norman — 35 years teaching at Bennett, an HBCU, in the thick of the Civil Rights era. What was he like at home?
• Greensboro in the '60s — a Jewish family in the South, your dad teaching at a Black women's college with the Civil Rights movement all around you. What did you actually see, and what did it leave in you?
• And Grandma Sandra?
• Three brothers — Robert, Dennis, Ronald. What was the house like with four boys? Where did you fit?
• Dennis and Ronald are both gone now. Tell me who they were — the stories, the trouble you got into, what you want Bess and me to carry about them.
• How did you find the drums? A first kit, a first teacher, a moment it clicked?
• The early Greensboro bands — the Sentinel Boys, the jazz years, In-Time. How did all that start, and what did it teach you?
• Were your parents for it or against it? Did anyone think music was a real path?
• You've said it didn't really land for Grandpa Norman and Grandma Sandra until they came to see you play Carnegie Hall, years later. What was it like to look out and see them in that audience?
• What made you decide you had to leave Greensboro?

2 · Downtown New York

What did New York smell, sound, and look like the week you arrived?

• You came to NYC in 1985 to run Noise New York. What was that job, that whole world?
• Shockabilly — how did you meet Eugene Chadbourne, and Kramer? What were they each like to play with?
• Shockabilly was wild, confrontational music. Did it feel like that from behind the kit, or just like the job?
• 1987 — Bongwater starts, with Ann Magnuson. What's the story there?
• 1989, NBC's Night Music — Bongwater backing Screamin' Jay Hawkins, the band playing Led Zeppelin behind him. You've called him the nicest guy. What do you remember about that night?
• B.A.L.L. toured with Sonic Youth and Teenage Fanclub. What do you remember from the road?
• Bongwater, B.A.L.L., Shockabilly, and When People Were Shorter — all overlapping at once. How did you keep all of it going?
• The Shimmy-Disc / downtown scene — who were the people, what were the rooms? A real "scene," or only in hindsight?
• What did you think your life was going to be, around 1986?

3 · Craft, family & now

If you had to teach someone one thing about drumming, what is it?

• After all those bands — what do you actually believe about drumming? What's the job of a drummer in a room?
• How did you meet Mom — Karen? What was she like then?
• Mom's a choreographer. You composed for her dance work and played the 1989 Roulette show with her. What was making work together like?
• So much of Mom's dance work — the Roulette nights, the Merce Cunningham studio pieces — may only exist on old tapes now. What was she making in those years, and do you know where any of it still lives? I don't want it to disappear.
• What changed in you when you became a father?
• You put me on a Klezmatics record — "sticks" on Rise Up! when I was about six. Do you remember that day?
• You've run David B. Licht Painting & Plastering for about 37 years. How did it start, and how do you hold it next to the music?
• Is there a thread connecting the drumming, the painting, and the family — or are they just separate lives?
• What are you proudest of? What do you wish had gone differently?
• What do you want Bess and me — and anyone after us — to know about you?