Quentin Moore: Young artist, old soul!

(Photo: Quentin Moore collection)

Quentin Moore is well-known. He plays all over Dallas and Texas and has a lot of fans. A lot of people know Quentin Moore, but few know the back-story. This is the back-story.

Quentin is originally from Austin from a relatively large family of five girls and two boys. They were church-going folks, but his parents were liberal enough to allow them to enjoy rap, rhythm and blues and the current music of the day. His dad, now 78, listened to music from the 1950s and ‘60s. So Quentin grew up in what he called ‘a melting pot of a whole lot of different things.’

He started singing in the church, but said he never seriously thought that he would do it as a career. He picked up the drums in middle school. By high school he was playing the keyboard and then began to think more and more that a music career might be a possibility.

He went on the University of North Texas in Denton, a school that has one of the country’s oldest and most respected jazz programs. While at UNT, the group Snarky Puppy was just being formed. Also around this time Kirk Franklin united with God’s Property; several members of God’s Property were at UNT.

Around this time R.C. Williams, Shaun Martin, Robert ‘Sput’ Searight, Braylon Lacy, Jason Bell, Gordon Pope, to name a few, were some of the musicians Quentin got to know around UNT. These guys would go on to win Grammy Awards in the respective groups including Snarky Puppy, Kirk Franklin’s God’s Property and Erykah Badu.

In his first year at UNT, Quentin wrote his first song Tell Me, a soulful ballad which showed promise, confidence, and sure-handedness in his burgeoning ability as an artist. At the time, he borrowed a friend’s keyboard to compose the song. He became so immersed in his craft that his friend hounded him and asked him to return the keyboard. But Quentin was determined to get that first song out of his head and onto paper.

Many people know Quentin as the fun-loving, easy-going and gregarious personality but behind that image, he is a shrewd businessman. While many of his contemporary musicians are content to work for a fee, Quentin is the rare musician who rents a venue and promotes his own events.

“When it is time for business, it’s time for business,” said Quentin the businessman, a side his fans do not always see. “Back in the day you could just focus on being an artist. Today labels don’t look at you unless you could generate numbers.”

He has to promote, he says, or he would become irrelevant. “And if I become irrelevant, I don’t eat.”

One would not know it, but this is the side of the business Quentin hates. “I can’t stand it,” he says. The promotion, the video editing, the business side, “I can’t stand it. It is very stressful. It is not natural and becomes a task.” But it is something that has to be done. He has to be the artist, the performer and entertainer; and in addition do the ‘dirty work’ and heavy lifting of the manager, promoter, etc. (And may be this explains why most other artists are just content to be the performer for a fee as a opposed to taking on the risks and potential benefits of hosting their own events.)

He is a busy man, playing acoustic shows at a coffee shop on a Thursday, backing another artist on a Friday, playing a wedding on a Saturday, and playing three church services on a Sunday. It is enough to make a singer tire and lose his voice, which is why he does nothing on Mondays.

There are many sides to thirty-two-year-old Quentin Moore. As he sat in the restaurant Odd Fellows in Oak Cliff with his girlfriend Chas, he said, that there is yet even another side of him: he pointed to his girlfriend and said he is going to be a father.

                                                 ********************

Related articles:

R.L. Griffin interviewed by Don O.  http://bluesdfw.com/sub1/rl.htm

Thaddeus Ford plays from the heart

Thaddeus Ford. (Photo: Joyce M. Sanders)

Thaddeus Ford is lucky to be alive. One year ago, he suffered a heart attack – at the young age of 34.

Now one year later, he has assembled his band and will play – at the Tuesday Nite Jazz series at the St. Paul United Methodist Church -- a set of original tunes that he himself wrote. He is proud of the fact that he will be playing his own songs. Ironically, that fateful night a year ago this was the concert he was preparing for. It was one night before the actual concert, three days before his 35th birthday; he was heading to a practice session.

He had just left his girlfriend’s house when he started having symptoms which he know now to be signs of a heart attack: tingling in the left arm, heavy sweating and nausea. Initially he thought he was having a bout of anxiety. The sweat and discomfort led him to tear off his shirt.

He managed to drive back to his girlfriend’s house. Although Thaddeus thought it would pass, she was convinced that something was wrong and drove him to the hospital. The doctor told him, Sir, you are having a heart attack.

“It is surreal talking about it,” he said in a conversation at Ascension Coffee in the Dallas Design District. “You have no idea what goes through your mind when a doctor says, you’re having a heart attack.”

He was dressed stylishly with denim pants and shirts, hat and sun glasses. He fit in nicely with the good-looking crowd of people at the coffee house. A full beard, he wore his sun glasses through the whole interview; it is a part of his New Orleans jazzman cool.

Thaddeus is from six generations of New Orleans musician. The first of these six generations was a bass player who migrated from the Dominican Republic in 1856. He learned this family history from an enterprising family member who wrote a book about his family.

Thaddeus went to the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, a school that has turned out famous musicians like the Marsalis brothers, Terence Blanchard, Harry Connick Jr. and Trombone Shorty. It was at this school – with Thaddeus and his dad, also a trumpet player, in the audience – that the famous alumnus trumpet player Wynton Marsalis played at assembly. It was after that performance that Thaddeus told his dad, that is what he wanted to do – become a trumpet player.

Thaddeus said attending the creative arts school was like going to college and with music all around New Orleans, it was not unusual that he got his first music gig at the age of 12. He went on to become a professional musician in the city where jazz itself was born, the home of the world’s most famous trumpet player, Louis Armstrong.

As fate would have it, his first wife got a job offer in Dallas. Thaddeus himself came to Dallas with no intention of staying, but he decided that in Dallas with his wife is where he needed to be. Not long after, there was the great hurricane in New Orleans so Dallas has been his home ever since.

It has been a long road in Dallas. At the time of his heart attack, Thaddeus said he was three years divorced and under a great deal of stress. He said it did not help that he had not visited a doctor in a long time and has a hereditary condition from his father who himself died of a heart attack.

All that behind him, Thaddeus said he wants people to hear his music and see his music in a new light. He has reassembled his band: Wes Stephenson bass, Adam Pickrell keyboard,  Hunter Hendrickson guitar and Lamont Taylor drums.

In life, one does not always get second chances. But on a Tuesday at St. Paul United Methodist Church, Thaddeus Ford got a second chance to play his very own original music. And the response from the audience was great.