Doug Wamble via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other...
- Steps from Doug Wamble:
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
- Steps forward by: The Matrix via ↴
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: Doug Wamble
- City: New York City
- Country: United States
- Hometown: Memphis, Tennessee
My Life & Work
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Bio:
As a child of Memphis, Tennessee, Doug Wamble has always been surrounded by a vast musical and cultural landscape. From listening to his mother play piano in their Baptist church to his grandfather singing cowboy songs, murder ballads and old time gospel favorites while strumming his guitar, Doug has been immersed in music for his entire life.
After completing two music degrees, Doug decided to head to New York to seek a career as a guitarist and composer. Appearing on bandstands and recordings with such artists as Wynton Marsalis, Norah Jones, Steven Bernstein, Courtney Love, Madeleine Peyroux, and Cassandra Wilson, Doug was making a name for himself in the jazz world and beyond when he was signed to Branford Marsalis’ label, Marsalis Music/Rounder Records. Doug released two critically acclaimed records Country Libations and Bluestate, and decided a change was in order.
Focusing on being a singer/songwriter was never something Wamble had considered, but upon delving into this new direction, he found that something resonated with him. “I had self-identified as a jazz musician for so long that it was strange at first to put that aesthetic aside and refocus my energies into the craft of songwriting. And I also had been developing the skills needed to get into pop production as well as film-scoring. So I was able to pivot and find new avenues to keep me feeling that spark I felt when I first got into jazz.”
In 2009, Doug released his self-titled album on Koch/E1 records, and followed up in 2013 with another singer/songwriter album on his own Halcyonic Records imprint entitled Fast as Years, Slow as Days which was funded by a wildly successful PledgeMusic drive. “I never thought I was a good candidate for crowd funding, but I was humbled by the amount of people out there who wanted to help get the record made,” Wamble says. And in 2014 came Doug’s first all-instrumental recording, Rednecktelectual, which features his original compositions all performed on a single guitar, using non-traditional recording techniques and treating the resophonic guitar like a bass, a drum and a piano all at once. Two albums are completed and awaiting release in 2014 and 2015 in the form of an all-acoustic vocal and guitar record of new songs called For Anew, as well as an acoustic jazz record called The Traveler, which is a song cycle commissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Building on his history with Wynton Marsalis, which led to guitar contributions to several Ken Burns documentaries for PBS such as Prohibition and Unforgivable Blackness, Doug began working as a composer for Burns’ Florentine Films, collaborating with Ken, his daughter Sarah, and David McMahon for the tragic film The Central Park Five. Wamble is currently at work on upcoming Florentine productions on Vietnam and Jackie Robinson.
Producing is another job Doug relishes, and it can be heard and felt by listening to the debut recording by Epic recording artist Morgan James on her album, Hunter. Doug co-wrote many of the songs, which feature an exciting mix of modern pop and classic soul, bound by Morgan James’ stunning vocals. “I never thought I’d produce a major label pop record, but I love the process, from writing that first note to listening on mastering day. It’s such a joy to make a real record from start to finish.”
The future holds a full plate with a full spectrum of projects for Doug this year. A new duo project with acclaimed percussionist Mino Cinelu, performances at Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis, in Europe with New Orleans piano master Henry Butler, and all over the globe with Morgan James to promote Hunter.
Contact Information
- Email: info@dougwamble.com
- Management/Booking: booking@dougwamble.com
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Twitter: dougwamblemusic
- ▶ Instagram: dougwamble
- ▶ Website: http://www.dougwamble.com
- ▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/dougwamble
- ▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UC_nhLSQ6MuxpOTJmFFW0LzQ
- ▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/6YuOUNij8Coq1pZT8EdGJV
- ▶ Spotify 2: http://open.spotify.com/album/0BqJDVetdilkZ9kHg4NI2h
- ▶ Spotify 3: http://open.spotify.com/album/12q46PjTP9u7MyR8xL1rjZ
- ▶ Spotify 4: http://open.spotify.com/album/3FbCmbp71pz75LNTfByTBb
- ▶ Spotify 5: http://open.spotify.com/album/50d7o7meXguwc1yy0WeRRZ
- ▶ Spotify 6: http://open.spotify.com/album/5UbkZliOdYOHp94VuRmTGx
Clips (more may be added)
The world's artistry via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other ...
... a project conceived and built in the fertile, fecund and atavistic ground zero of Bahia, Brazil initially for the discoverability of this singular region's dispossessed genius.
All explained in the window immediately below. Followed — beneath this window — by scores of magnificent artists, each leading to myriads more artists/categories. Inside this window also may be found our Brazilian record store radio, named by British journal The Guardian as one of 10 of the Best Radio Stations Around the World!
IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles -- jungle and desert and dense urban centers -- both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. It absorbed over ten times the number of African slaves taken to the United States of America, and much of its aboriginal population was absorbed into the general population-at-large. Its people have lived under oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption, with elements of these still strongly entrenched today.
But!
Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.
For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...
Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.
Raimundo Sodré, in a conversation ranging through New Orleans and Harlem and the South Side of Chicago ... and Appalachia and Irish villages and Russian shtetls and the unofficial symbol of Brazil's Bahian-born national music (the pandeiro) almost certainly having arrived in Brazil in the hands of Sephardic Jews (including conversos) fleeing the Inquisition, once remarked: "Where there's misery, there's music!"
A pandeirista on the roof. And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.
