We had some great writing days in Houston. Joe Sample and I are working on songs for a musical. Daunting? You betcha, but it's a great story, and a great honor to be working with such a genius.

I got to stay at his place in Houston. We call it the Ponderosa. There's a whole separate studio/space for his piano,

wurly,

rhodes

(these are incredible early models, and sound dreamy -- they are the ones on my last record too.) and I got to stay out there with all these storied beasts. There are gold records on the wall, and huge prints of some of Joe's most successful records with the Crusaders, and Randy Crawford.

There's a sweet picture, of Joe writing with Al Jarreau...

I woke up through the night every night with crazy ideas spinning through my head. And that piano? Off the hook. The second you sit down at that thing, it starts singing melodies to you!

It was hard to keep track of all the ideas. I had my little M-AUDIO that's now jam-packed with a gazillion snippets and crazy tales.

The second day, Joe got a strange package in the mail. Now if you're from Texas, apparently, you grow up around guns. Joe grew up during segregation so back in the day they were all carrying. But I've never even seen a gun up close, so when I went in for my coffee saturday morning and this rifle was on the couch...

whoa. Put the gun DOWN!!

The last afternoon was gorgeous, lovely glowing sky.

Joe and Yolanda cooked up some amazing creole pork chops, and the stories and the wine started flowing.

 Yolanda.

We jammed late the last night, Joe's wife Yolanda is an amazing and gracious host.A couple friends came over and we tried to sing/play/remember all our songs for them. Joe sure can tell a story, so he made the whole thing just come alive.

Joe even broke out his accordion at the end.

cynthia, strange Joe figure, (freaked me out in the middle of the night) JB

I think we have a pretty cool batch of songs to take to the next stage of musical land. Now I can't get them out of my head. That's usually a good sign.