Here it is, the long awaited video for ‘Free Your Mind.’:
The Book of Horace Chapter One
As I am on the cusp of quite possibly having a Top 40 Hit in several countries with the song ‘Free Your Mind’, I keep hearing the voice and sage advice of my greatest professor. Horace Alexander Young. He championed me when nobody else saw what he saw in me, beyond my unbreakable belief in myself.
He told me a lot of things. I want to write them all down and call it The Book of Horace. I wrote a pretty cool song by that name as well.
But ‘Free Your Mind’ exists because Horace looked at me at Rico’s Tavern as I sat at a table nursing a beer in the early 2000s grateful to be sitting there with the adults, including big band wizard Greg Yasinitsky, and he said this,
Horace Alexander Young “Davin you are good enough to make it. You’ll make it if you don’t give up. If you don’t give up, someone will give you a shot and you’ll be ready. The people that are good enough, that don’t make it are the ones that gave up.”
16 years later I maybe paraphrasing a word or two, but like so many things Horace cared to share with me like Obi Wan Kenobi, I made sure the recorder was on in my brain when he spoke, so I could hear his voice again when the chips are down.
Like…right now.
I am on this ship. I am not quite sure if I am Captain. I am not sure if I want to be Captain. But I am headed into the Great Storm I have been waiting for my whole life.
I have lost a couple ship mates on the way here, but they’re all alive and I hope I see them when I return from the other side as I sell these treasures I found in The Caribbean my grandparents left behind in poverty.
Regardless of what happens, you can be certain Horace Alexander Young, I didn’t give up.
Horace teaches today at Washington State University, and he is one of the greatest music educators that has ever lived. Because of men and women like Horace, I look at my student loans and take a deep breath, knowing it was worth it. Because of a couple good professors I can still tell young people straight in the eye, that despite of the rising costs of higher education, you still can’t find everything you are searching for on youtube.
You still have to go on The Odyssey. You still have meet the masters of their craft.
I hope someday Anthony Red Rose can come speak to Horace’s class when we’re on tour promoting a big time single like ‘Free Your Mind.’
The world needs educators like Horace more than ever. Someday I will be one. But right now I am on this ship trying to find safe harbors to make my name and secure this fortune.
☆Much love to Sick Donkey Records, Sly & Robbie, and everyone of you that bet on me, and are still betting on me. This is what you were waiting for.
– Musician and writer Davin Michael Stedman has many ventures, such as the AMAZING blog, 100milesofmusic.com, and is one of the driving forces behind the Staxx Brothers. He has just returned from weeks of networking and reporting from Kingston, Jamaica. Next stop, Lagos, Nigeria.
