Earthworks II
By now Bill is manager, road manager, booking agent, composer, drummer, producer, publicist, husband and father, and the workload, increasing alarmingly with the arrival of computers is, just about, getting done.
Somewhere, as the New Millennium dawns, he is dimly aware that his days of hammering out the big beat are gone, and jazz, whatever that might be, will be his home for the foreseeable future.
The year starts slowly with weeks of composition for a new CD, but begins to boil when Larry Coryell is called in on guitar for some Pizza Express dates, and becomes the front of the band when Clahar has to cancel a Spanish tour due to illness.
The band’s most ambitious UK tour yet, of 19 cities in October, is followed, as before, with an immediate visit to the studio to record “The Sound of Surprise”. In a world of home recording and Pro-Tools, this is an antediluvian way of making music reserved only for those with supreme confidence in their abilities. Not for the faint-hearted; nowhere to hide, and no-one can help. Bill, producing, declares it the best music he has been responsible for.