My life is a congeries of implausibly cool things, some large and some small, and one of the coolest of them is the fact that I meet the most interesting people. On Thursday, for example, I got to share a studio at WNYC-FM with Dan Hicks, whose music I’ve loved for thirty years. I’m pleased to report that he is–as I expected and hoped–the very soul of unflappability.
If you weren’t listening live to yesterday’s Soundcheck, on which I talked about Pat Metheny, go here to download the archived version. It’s not that I said anything stupefyingly brilliant in the first half of the show (though I had great fun as usual batting the conversational ball back and forth with host John Schaefer). No, the news of the day was that Hicks had everybody in the control room rolling on the floor as he chatted amiably about his new Hot Licks album, Selected Shorts. I plan to buy a copy the next time I get within five blocks of a record store. (O.K., ten.)
You’ll also hear Hicks trot out a brand-new word, equivalate:
I was more acoustic…but I was able to play right along in rock contexts, and it was talked about in Rolling Stone right away, which I liked–which I equivalate to maybe pop.
That’s an excellent word. Don’t go looking for it in the dictionary–yet–but I certainly plan to work it into my pieces as often as possible from now on.
How lucky am I? So way.