Number one, Thank you for such a beautiful performance.

It was very poignant, Swung hard, took no prisoners, I mean, it just was the kind of the epitome of something that you would want to do to pay homage to Russell, who we los so tragically earlier this year.

How long did you guys know him?

You can say it individually.

Okay.

I'll start, I meant Russel must have been in the early 90s.

I can't really recall, I recall the firs that my my first memory of him is, him coming out to hear me play when he was in Chicago.

So he must have been travelin at that time with Harry Connick.

And the big band.

But I had a regular Sunday night, gig with the newly formed trio of mine, and and he found me and, you know.

How old are you again?

I said whatever it was, yo know, two years older than you.

And he.

Every time I would see him after that for years, he would ask me, how old are you, man?

I'm like, what?

This dude is competition.

I love it.

(Kim) He was quite the character.

Yeah.

And how about you?

Yeah, I met Russell about ten years ago.

I was, 19 years old.

I was playing at a jam session in New Jersey, and, I was playing with Winard Harper.

He ran a jam session every weekend.

Yeah it... Moore's lounge.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, yeah, Russell would always hang out like everybody.

You know, he was one of the few, older guys that came to all the jam sessions.

Always want to check out you know, the young musicians.

So yeah, I met him then and then you know he started calling me for some gigs after that.

And then the last five years I was in his band.

(Kim) That's a beautiful thing.

And you.

Yes, I first met Russell, I believe, at Bradley's in New York City.

When I first got to New York, I was hanging out.

This would be ‘96.

So Bradley's and Blue Note and Zinno, and all those places in the village, we were hanging out.

And that's when we first met each other.

And he hadn't even heard me play yet.

And he said, Rick Germanson we're going to play someday.

He kept saying this for like years and years, and I would see him.

And one time he came to Milwaukee and I was doing a gig there.

That's my hometown, and he had a big concert there and he came through afterward.

He said, Richard Branson, we're going to play one day.

And I'm like, yeah, right, you know?

But then it did happen.

And, I was with him for like 15 years.

That's a beautiful thing.

He's as good as his word.

You know, it's interesting.

He was before he, left us.

He at least half dozen musicians that I know said I just talked to him.

He called me.

So that's a beautiful thing, that he would stay in touch, number one, with everybod and him repeatedly telling you we're going to work togethe and to be as good as his word.

You know, that's a that's a beautiful thing.

I know, I know, all of you guys have performed with him.

Well, you didn't perform with him, did you?

Did you have a chance or you did perform with him?

Okay.

And, sorry about that.

How did he inspire you musically?

Personally?

You want to address that at all?

Yeah.

Everybody's looking at me.

You know, it's interestin because I got asked this before and, you know, and you told the story, about, fellow guitarists.

You know.

So we have a love, hate, love.

It's mostly love, but we can't pay.

Two.

Too much attention to each other.

We have to, you know, kind of keep our blinders up a little bit so that we can stay focused on ourselves.

And we will support each other to a certain degree.

But, so inspire?

I don' know if that's the right word.

It was a wonderful mutual respect that we both had for for each other.

And we, you know, all of us guitarists in particular, since thats his instrument we, we said, okay, okay, I hear you, I see, you know, and then we got it like focus on ourselves.

So yeah, I mean, I'd say, I've always, adored his solo guitar work now it was just like, floored me.

Like how you could do that So, inspired?

Yeah, inspired not to try it.

How about you, Vince?

Yeah, I mean, like I said before, he was so supportive of the music scene, for sure.

Like, no matter what age you were at, like, you know, people like, my age at the time, 19 and, I, you know, I even heard a story that he drove.

He would drive, like, an hour and a half to hear, like a you know, a young guitar players gig in, like, Connecticut or something.

And, and you wouldn't know he was showing up.

He just awesome.

You see him just hanging out?

Wow.

So, you know.

Yeah, you just, you know cared about the scene so much.

And then when it came to playing with him, you know, he never he just he took care of the music.

Like that was always the most important thing.

You know, every detail.

Something wasn't right.

You know, he let you know, so.

Yeah, He inspired me in a lot of ways.

Just because I got to know him very well over the years.

And he knew my family.

And, we became very close musically.

Definitely inspired me to think melodically.

He really got into just the melody of of your solos and your improvizations and connecting those melodies together and, like structuring a set and how to present yourself in your music.

So those are some of the things that really inspired me.

How did you, determin the song selection this evening?

It was just such a beautiful, beautiful, I had to say again.

Thank you.

Well, it was interesting for me coming into the situation, playing with his existing group, you know, so trying to wrap my brain around that and figure out, you know, just what to do.

I knew I wanted to do.

We didn't do this.

This is one of my favorite songs of his, which is Heart Strings.

It's a Milt Jackson song, but his version of that, the title cut on that record that he did for Verve, so I knew I wanted to do that, but I think I reached out to you, Rick.

Right?

And, and asked what we should, you know, what were some thing that he would play on his set?

I wanted to try to find 3 or 4 and, Rick suggested some gems, so I had to get with those, as it were.

Any particular favorite recordings of his or concerts performances you guys can think of?

Oh, wow.

I mean, I just remember like his, his early record the one that Look Who's Here is I think that' the name of the album on Verve.

And that was I was still in Milwaukee then and I'm, I'm like aiming at, I want to play with these guy and I would learn their tunes.

And that was one of the tunes I learned off the CD.

And then years later, I'm actually playing it with him.

So and then we didn't play it for a long time.

And then the last time we played Blues Alley.

Vince, I think you remember this.

We were in soundcheck and we started to play that song.

We haven't played in a long time.

And just like the feelin of full circle kind of hit me.

So that's one of my favorit tunes of his, Look Who's Here.

I think it should be a jazz standard and as far as favorite performances, we did so many, throughout the course of this many years, you know, we love we love going to Chicag and playing the jazz showcase, which is where Bobby would sometimes stop by, or we would come to see you perform.

And that's why I'm just so happy that Bobby is here with us.

It's a beautiful thing, you know?

What will you remember Russell most for, other than of course, his sense of humor?

That's the first.

It seems like that's the first thing that these people think about.

You know, when you mention Russell.

I mean, I feel like I keep going back to just his support for the scene, you know, just him alway showing up, always unexpected.

You know, just, you know, you'd be playing and you see him out there, you know, looking at you, making funny faces sometimes (Kim) That sounds like him Yeah.

You know, I almost remember now lookin back on this very short period since we've lost him.

But he's still here.

His music is here.

Just his humanity and how much he really cared about people like, once you got to know my family, every time we played Chicago, they would come down from Milwaukee.

He got to know them.

He would ask about them.

I know he'd always ask about your family.

You know, whenever we were together, when we were on the road, he would talk to cab drivers and Uber drivers and people at the hotel and ask him their story, like he really was concerned.

That is beautiful.

That really is.

Yeah.

That's what I would say is just the camaraderie.

And it's he seemed it seemed that he had that with everyone and with all musicians.

It seemed that way to me.

And especially after seeing the outpouring on Facebook.

Right.

And you realize that it wasn't just you who he was talking to last.

It was just about everybody.

Like I don't know how he had the time to be in touch with everybody like that.

He did do that.

And, that was, really, really a beautiful thing.

We, we got a chanc to, you know, we started talking pretty regularly, in more recent years.

And, at one point we said, man we got to do something together.

You know, we played once, togethe at, the Jazz at Lincoln Center, put together a tribute concer to Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt, and they asked, both of us to do it.

So we played together then.

But, that was years ago, early 2000.

So he said, yeah, we got to get together.

So I was going to New York and we happened to be talking on the phone.

He said, man let me try to hook something up.

So he put something together, just two guitars.

And so it's very intimate and kind of, you know, important in a way.

Everybody seemed to come, All the young guitar players seem to come out, you know, and it was a really a lovely thing.

Mark Whitfield was there and then we asked him to come up on the last tune so that, you know.

Yeah, it was it was special.

But his love of the scene and of people in it and seemingly all musicians and on seemingly al people was what Ill remember.

Yeah.

Thank you guys for being here.

This is very poignant.

Very it's very poignan for all of us, obviously for you and you guys.

And, thank you for coming i and doing this tribute to him.

Yeah.

No, I appreciate being able to being asked to do it, being able to do it.

And yeah.

That's a beautiful thing.

Thank you guys for being here tonight.

And thank you for your performance as well.

Look forward to seeing you all again.

Take care.