Once, in a tiny jazz club in New York City, saxophonist Donny McCaslin had a brief, fortuitous encounter with pop music legend David Bowie.
"I saw them out of the corner of my eye, and then I just tried to think about the music, because for me, thinking about other stuff just kind of gets in the way. And then they were gone," he said.
At the time, McCaslin was a member of seven-time Grammy-winning composer and band leader Maria Schneider's Orchestra, and she brought Bowie into a the club that night to see if he might want to work with McCaslin.
Soon after, McCaslin and his band would be tapped to appear on Bowie's final album, Black Star, which released just two days before Bowie's death from cancer in 2016. A year later, McCaslin visited the KNKX studios for a special, intimate duo session with bassist Nate Wood.
When they first connected, McCaslin was as jittery as anyone would be to meet Ziggy Stardust in the flesh.
"I was a little nervous, because at that point I knew that Maria had recommended me to him on multiple occasions, and had said that he should do something with me and all that, and so I knew that something was in the air," McCaslin said.
Ten days later, Bowie hired him, and once they started working on his music, the collaboration was like making a jazz record, with just a few takes of each song. Bowie wanted McCaslin's quartet to keep doing what they'd been doing.
"We would come in and we would listen to the demo, and then we just go out and start playing. We'd rehearse it once, and then we'd start recording," McCaslin said. "And he was singing and playing guitar with us, and it was usually first or second take for the songs. It was really quick, actually."
McCaslin said Blackstar was made covertly to avoid the press, and he'd even signed a non-disclosure agreement. McCaslin couldn't tell anyone about the experience, and he still couldn't quite believe that he was really going to be on a David Bowie album.
"I mean, how many times do you hear about folks who've recorded on records and then the records never come out, you know? So I didn't really want to think about what could happen, or what would happen, or put my eggs in any basket," McCaslin said.
After Blackstar came out, McCaslin got a lot more work. He plays more than he ever has as a bandleader now, and the opportunities are a dream come true.
"This is the kind of thing that you dream about when you're young and you're practicing, and you read about how jazz was when Miles Davis' group would play a month in San Francisco, three weeks in Los Angeles, and just that the volume of their work, there's just no comparison today. There's nothing like it," he said.
McCaslin is still touring with Schneider's orchestra. His new album with Vancouver, B.C.-based singer Ryan Dahl, MXD, crosses into more progressive art rock inspired by Bowie.
Songs heard in this episode:
- "Shake Loose"
- "Lazarus"
- "Break the Bond"
