Creative Legends of the DMV

The legendary poet and singer Jim Morrison from the seminal 60s rock group The Doors is on the table to discuss.  Centered around the poetry of James Douglas Morrison rather than his superstardom and rebellious ways, Evan reveals various tidbits of the young Morrison's time as a teenager in Alexandria, VA sowing his roots to be a legend of the DMV. Born in Melbourne, Florida December 8th, 194...

Creative Legends of the DMV returns after a slight break with Episode 11 all about local DMV photographer Chip Py! Chip grew up in Bethesda where he shadowed his dad who was a news reporter.  It led to a love of photography that soon crossed with an equal love of music.  Chip garnered more and more experience as he grew up in the area composing all kinds of pictures in all kinds of environments.  ...

The undisputed creator and godfather of Go Go music AND an instrumental force in the music behind some legendary old school hip hop, Chuck Brown (1936-2012) was a kind soul who left us with some great music. He started in the 1960s playing in local groups before landing on a talented array of musicians that would become The Soul Searchers.  The Soul Searchers were behind some charting hits of the...

Tim Buckley (1947-1975)  was a folk singer and avant-garde musician.  Born in Washington, D.C. and then uprooted to New York and then finally southern California where by the time he was a teenager, he was already involved in the music scene there creating bands and meeting people that would give him career opportunities.  Opportunities he used to explore his multi octave voice against acoustic ba...

Roberta Flack is a tour de force singer, musician and composer best known for her hits "Killing Me Softly With His Song", "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", and her soulful duets with Donny Hathaway (The Closer I Get To You, Where is The Love?) and others.  Quiet Storm is the name of her third album but they are also two words that give a great introduction to the legend th...

Steve Jenkins is a professional bass player who has been playing bass and involved in music for over 25 years.  He started in Montgomery County, MD where he grew up affected by the sounds of Kiss, Gap Band, and Parliament Funkadelic.  Those grooves would start his journey into more progressive ones he found in jazz.  All of this led him to the famed Berklee College of Music where he formulated rel...

Don Zientera is a veteran, an artist, a musician and if that was not enough for one person and one life, that is not even the things he is known for. Don runs Inner Ear Studios in Arlington, VA and was an instrumental player in the DC punk scene in the late 1970s and all through the 80s when energy and message took the stage over just about everything else.  Don's talents in recording and sou...

Eva Cassidy (1963-1996) was an accomplished singer and musician who had a soprano unlike any other.  Beyond Billie Holiday, she could be the most unique female singer to ever have been born in and/or crossed through the area.  Eva had the voice of an angel but her career and trajectory was cut short due to a bout with cancer that took her life at the young age of 33.   In the five short years Eva...

The DMV has and continues to see a lot of creative wordsmiths and poets take their experiences and set them to rock or jazz influences beats and express themselves through rhyme.  In the 80s, the late Biz Markie put DMV in the hip hop spotlight playing lots of college bars in the areas with his late 80s gem "Just A Friend".  Since, hip culture has evolved into various forms within itself...

Both Roy Buchanan (1939-1988) and Danny Gatton (1945-1994) were masters of their instrument and stellar representatives of musical legends of the DMV.   Roy ended up in Reston, VA after being born in Arkansas and Gatton was a lifelong resident of Maryland.  They took their talent of guitar, particularly the Fender Telecaster,  and  love of music and fused it into something that was truly otherworl...

Edward "Duke" Ellington was a master of contemporary jazz and the piano.  His compositions, songs, and scores, cover 50 years of American music.  In this episode, Evan muses over Elington's influence over music and how his life played out guided by the muses.  In his usual wayward style, Evan uses Ellington's life to discuss how music has changed yet stayed the same with its ev...

Fat Nave is Evan Taff.  Evan Taff is Fat Nave.  The first episode of this podcast introduces Evan Taff, the host and moderator of Creative Legends of the DMV.  A brief framework is introduced for the scope of the podcast and its episodes and Taff's own background as a musician, currently branded as Fat Nave, and a writer and filmmaker growing up in Montgomery County, MD. You can hear the musi...