A few months ago, I was generating cartoon images with ChatGPT for my daughter.
I'd create little stories based on experiences we'd had together and turn them into simple reading exercises and learning stories for her. At one point I told her, "You know, this technology didn't exist a few years ago."
Being that she's 6 years old, I didn't expect that to mean much to her. But I couldn't help carrying the train of thought through.
I tried to explain what it would have taken to do this when I was her age. If I wanted custom illustrations for a story, I would have needed to hire an artist or graphic designer. There would have been drafts, revisions, phone calls, meetings, and significant expenses. It could have taken weeks and cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. Now it takes a few moments. And that's how progress works. New things appear and quickly become normal.
What I've noticed, though, is that at the same time new things appear and seamlessly become part of our world, other things disappear just as seamlessly.
One of those things, for me, is the local live music scene.
When I was coming up as a musician, I played at local restaurants or bars for two or three sets from 8 or 9pm to 1am. There was plenty I didn't love about it. The money wasn't great. The hours were long. I had incoherent conversations with inebriated people. Most audiences weren't really listening. Every once in a while someone would genuinely connect with what we were doing, offer a compliment, hand us a tip, and a little bit of encouragement which provided a little boost. Mostly, though, we were playing for ourselves.
Looking back on those formative gigs, it strikes me that we were so “in the moment” just playing for the room. Focused on playing together, having fun, building skills, proving ourselves, and showing off. We weren't "creating content." We weren't competing against every musician on earth for attention or skill superiority. We were part of a small, local tribe.
A young musician could walk into a jam session and see their entire path laid out in front of them. There were beginners. There were working professionals. There were local legends. There were older mentors. You could see where your next step was because someone was already standing there.
The scene answered a foundational question:
"Where do I fit in?"
These gigs and jam sessions were not only performances; they were classrooms.
You learned repertoire, professionalism, how to recover from mistakes, how to communicate on stage, how to deal with difficult personalities, how to play to the room.
None of these lessons were taught formally - to succeed on the gig you had to absorb them by stepping up to the bandstand and reacting. The local scene was an informal graduate school for musicians. Every important musical opportunity in my career—whether playing on Broadway, television, or with musical icons like Stevie Wonder—can be traced back to that world. After paying my dues on the local circuit, one local musician recommended me to an established band when their keyboard player left. That band was made up of musicians from an older generation of Motown and R&B players. They had worked with artists like The Spinners, The Coasters, and Luther Vandross when those acts came through Connecticut.
While the bands I played in before this were often informal and loose, they taught me how to honor and emulate the original recordings of the songs that we played. I started spending hours listening to records and transcribing parts by hand onto manuscript paper. Keyboard parts. Horn lines. String arrangements. Organ parts. Synth parts. I was learning songs but also learning how songs worked. (The local music store where I bought that manuscript paper is gone now too.) Those years of listening, transcribing, performing, adapting, and learning prepared me for an opportunity that came much later.
One thing I've learned as a musician is that long-standing positions rarely open up. In the classically unstable music scene, when people find a stable musical home, they tend to stay as long as they can.
The opportunity at the Apollo Theater happened for me because a remarkable series of events unfolded. The Apollo Theater band led by Ray Chew for decades, was leaving to become the band for the popular television show American Idol. American Idol's bandleader, Ricky Minor, was leaving to become the bandleader for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno after Kevin Eubanks announced his departure following an eighteen-year run. Several major pieces had to move before a chair opened up for someone like me. When the Apollo Theater house band began looking for a musician who could play keyboards and guitar, learn music quickly, read charts, arrange on the fly, and help a small band sound like everything from an orchestra to a contemporary pop record, I got the audition. I was recommended for this audition by someone that I had played with in the local scene who ended up moving into a bigger, national circuit of musicians.
What strikes me now is that none of the qualifications for this position were learned in a classroom.
They were learned in bars, restaurants, jam sessions, rehearsals, and local gigs.
They were learned by spending years around other musicians.
That opportunity became a steady part of my livelihood and musical development for the next fourteen years. It led to experiences I never could have imagined when I was playing local restaurants for gas money. Looking back, none of that started with the Apollo audition. It started years earlier in a community of musicians learning from one another. The ecosystem that produced me and my contemporaries no longer exists. Today, just about all of those jam sessions are gone. The venues that hosted them are gone. The music stores are gone. Many of the gathering places where musicians learned from each other, met each other, and discovered opportunities have disappeared. The internet has created incredible new possibilities. Musicians can collaborate globally, learn from world-class teachers online, release music independently, and reach audiences without gatekeepers.
What we've gained in access, we may have lost in apprenticeship.
My daughter will grow up taking AI for granted the same way I took the local music scene for granted. She'll inherit opportunities that I never had. But her generation will likely never experience some of the ecosystems that shaped my life and career. Technology and change give us new possibilities while quietly dismantling some of the systems that came before.
I don't worry that future generations won't find their people. In many ways, it may be easier than ever to find like-minded communities. What I wonder is where they'll find the equivalent of those rooms where beginners stood next to professionals, professionals learned from veterans, and skills, opportunities, and traditions were passed from one generation to the next through shared experience. What forms of learning, growth, and opportunity can only happen when people gather in the same room, do difficult things together, and learn difficult lessons together?