How many drummers changed the whole conversation, just with their playing?  Like, to the point that they became the North Star for the next generation or two?  How many of those were also great bandleaders, and maybe even solid composers?  It’s a short list by anybody’s count but one name you are probably already thinking of is Jack DeJohnette.   

This Monday, Pheeroan akLaff joins Mitch Goldman to put DeJohnette in Deep Focus.  Mitch, of course, has some spectacular live music from the archives that you’ve never heard.

Throw guitarist Ben Tyree some meat.*  He wants to hear a band that will shred the genres and categories, explode expectations, have the spiritual force to avow its zeal and its fury.  Who is going to do that?  Are you going to do that?  Am I going to do that?

Harriet Tubman is going to do that.  Brandon Ross, Melvin Gibbs and JT Lewis have all been guests on Deep Focus but now its their band under the lens.

TURN IT UP!  STAND BACK!  

*(I said “meat,” not “flesh.”   You know Ben Tyree ain’t messing with none of that).