“Cartwright’s songs tap into some quintessential American Soul …”
Boston Rock – Michael Bloom
Music
has always been a part of my life. Singing in church and learning songs
at my grandfather's knee are some of my earliest memories. Ball 'N The Jack that's what they call it, ball 'n the jack...
As a child,
I took piano lessons, and later learned to play the guitar by ear. I started
composing on the guitar, writing songs with words and creating instrumental
pieces a la Miss John Hurt and John Fahey. In high school, I was a big
fan of the British bands that played blues and was thrilled to discover
that they had found the blues literally in my own hometown in the Mississippi
Delta. I bought my first sax on my 21st birthday with 65 dollars, a present
from my Grandmother. I studied jazz saxophone, being irreversibly drawn
to its beauty and passion. In college, after hearing Ornette Coleman's
"Dancing in Your Head" I started finding melodies and ideas
for songs and began seriously composing pieces. After a year and a half
at the Creative Music studio in Woodstock, New York, I moved to New York
City where I made a conscious decision to eschew journeyman positions
in music, learning a trade to pay the bills, passionate that I wanted
to compose and perform my music free of traditional restraints. Clarity
had always been important to me. I love counterpoint, things pulling in
different directions while respecting the others’ right and need
to exist - or, as Coleman describes his harmolodic philosophy, “communicating
the equal access of information for multiple expressions.”
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