Listening—let me describe the moment. Come with me. Maybe you’ll create one for yourself. I trust you’ll understand.
I was listening at sunset, staring out from my apartment at the New York skyline—the “I made it” city. We have arrived. Fully present. Fully aware that there’s still a riot going on—within and without.
The only thing I truly love about nostalgia—or foreshadowing, for that matter—is the tingling of time travel. It’s the best that it carries. It preserves the vital movements of an instrument, a period, a person. It shares, subsumes the legacy of the player and their styles. It’s not unlike painting—how one shade touches five. And we honor both the work and the moment without returning to, or over, them.
I am a guitar lover, and admirer. They’re weapons—tools for liberation, for freeing the heart and the body from tyranny. Lead, rhythm—guitars kill fascists who are incapable of feeling anything. Yes, feeling.
I’ve been told that some feelings come and go, that they’re fleeting, that they get in the way. But the feel of a musician? That’s the wind in the sail. It’s the pocket they live in. And we sit alone wondering, does this feel bear fruit?
Feel, for the poet. It ebbs, it flows.
I believe love is best expressed through action. Ella and Charlie have made audible their love letters to Sly and Freddie Stone, Jimmy Nolen, Chalmers “Spanky” Alford, Bootsy and Catfish Collins—allowing us, the listener, to time travel while remaining firmly rooted in now.
Ella and Charlie, like these fine souls, were contributors to some of the most iconic artists in music. But this recording—it’s different. And rare.
Charlie loves to say, “Don’t seek them. Seek what they sought.”
Paraphrasing Maya Angelou, Ella says, “People will never remember what you said to them, but they’ll always remember how you made them feel, and I hope that this record will continue to make them feel good.”
Ella and Charlie didn’t just study the virtuosos and legends who haunt the guitar’s sacred geography—they sought them out. Face to face, they absorbed their deepened energy and ideas, respect and deference, joy and loss. They fostered and deepened the lineage and vocabulary passed down through the air-bending, gut-bucket elders of the sacred sound.
Following in the footsteps of their predecessors, Ella and Charlie have contributed to genre-defining recordings through their compositional, sonic, and sophisticated arrangements. Their affection for classic rhythmic interplay, and tonal precision reveal a deep understanding of musical architecture—yet it’s their unwavering reverence for emotional resonance that sets their work apart. With acute ears and masterful hands, they channel a love for music that is both intentional and deeply connective.
I learned bass guitar by sitting and playing songs with my brother—just the two of us. We believed in each other, and we were determined to become the tightest guitar and bass section in our hometown. It’s a time I look back on with deep affection. Listening to Different Strokes for Different Folks, this recording brought me back to that feeling—it helped me mine that memory, and reminded me that true listening is sacred.
Ella and Charlie are in a beautiful conversation—one I hope they continue. I’m so grateful they chose to share it with us.
— Meshell Ndegeocello
Spring 2025