 Eric Essix: At Home   Producer/director Dwight Cammeron won an Emmy for his documentary about Birmingham's own Dorothy Love Coates, a legend in the gospel music industry. But what's important to Cammeron is that a deserving woman was finally honored, not that he added another award to his shelf.
His latest project focuses once again on a music maker from the magic city, this time jazz guitarist Eric Essix. Essix, a chart topping award winner himself who was listed among the city's top 100 things to see, is also the youngest person to be inducted in Alabama's Jazz Hall of Fame among greats Nat King Cole and Sun Ra. But considering the extent of Essix's talent, these achievements may be not be as surprising as another feat: succeeding on his own terms while remaining on his own turf. Rather than heed the call of big city studios, Essix chose to return to Birmingham after graduating from Boston's prestigious Berklee School of Music. He set up shop downtown, not far from where his grandfather bought him his first guitar. He was ten at the time, and Birmingham's role in Civil Rights was less about anyone's dream than the simple reality of daily struggle. The sounds of the sixties rose and fell around Essix, creating a rhythm that he would make his own. "There's really no reason for me to live in LA or New York," Essix says. "We have an airport here, we have fax machines, and now we do everything via computer--create music, transfer music. So there's really no reason for me to be anywhere else." Cammeron takes viewers inside Essix's studio but doesn't stop there. The documentary traces the creative process for Essix's latest album "Abide with Me," highlighting performances at Workplay, then culminating with the release party. "I had to depend on archival footage to show Dorothy performing," Cammeron says, "but with Eric, it unfolds right there, in front, for everybody to watch. We get to see it happen." This time Cammeron, who has waited on curbs, atop tractors, and even inside a principal's office during his more than three decades of filmmaking, says this documentary was genuinely a pleasure to make. "Eric's really giving. He's easy to work with," Cammeron says. And while it was Cammeron's respect for Essix that interested him initially in the project, his love for jazz was also influential. "Eric's so good that he converted our whole crew, everybody from editors and engineers to videographers and budget coordinators are now jazz fans." Jazz, considered the greatest American cultural achievement, embodies a spirit of democracy that won't be pinned down to any one place, any one sound, or any one interpretation of performance. Jazz makes the same song different every time. No matter the difference, Essix says, he knows there's one thing that doesn't change for him--the gospel influence. "Gospel music for me is the basis of everything I do. If I sit down and analyze my playing, writing, aarranging," Essix says, "I'm gonna find some gospel in just about everything that I do." Essix confesses he could practice more but it's not perfection he's after. "I want people to feel something when they hear my music, experience something emotional, spiritual." And that aspect of jazz-the wordless feeling that must be experienced--is why Cammeron included plenty of concert footage, enough that he says with a grin, "Maybe it's not a documentary after alll. Maybe it's a jazzumentary." For Essix, it's neither, because it's never been about classifications. Jazz is his way of life. When he lets loose on Amazing Grace, his forearms bending the notes from his Red Gibson hollowbody to his will, it's impossible not to get lost amidst what are unmistakably the sweet sounds of home. For more information about Eric Essix, visit his web site. Press Releases || The University of Alabama Center for Public Television |