Coyote Versus Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull

The Coyote
is the leader, frontman, harmonica, acoustic guitar, tambourine and flute player of American Zen. Coyote's flute playing is a wild self-taught style. Sometimes he sounds like Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, and sometimes he sounds angelically romantic and serene like Donovan.

Led by The Coyote, on his kick-butt flute, American Zen is about life more than any afterlife. "Of course we're concerned about Kharma," Coyote explained. "But Buddhism teaches us that you're supposed to just make your best decisions every moment of the day and presume everything will turn out all right." Coyote is an optimist with the personality of Cary Grant and looks of Richard Gere.

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Tom Calder,
bassist of the band, leads the most carefree lifestyle. "Why work when you can go to the beach," professes the horndog of our spiritual group. Tom's bass style is a blend of Motown Precision bass and Jack Bruce solo lead bass of the British power rock trio, Cream.

"It depends on the song," Tom explains. "I don't have a style. I just play what I think is best for each song."

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Steve Hixon
holds the band down with a variety of percussion and weird drums. "I've never had a drum lesson. I just started playing to Led Zeppelin records," claims Steve. "Since I play to so many different drummers, I don't know who to thank."

"This album was recorded in Coyote's Utah living room so we only had a few days to track all the drums. The next time I visited Coyote, I didn't have my drum set, so we recorded with all his weird percussion he's collected over the years. On the next album, LEVEL 2 = Christ Killer, we record a song with Coyote's medicine man drum. He hollowed out a log, skinned the elk and built this awesome Indian TOM TOM. Wait 'til' you hear that!"

Steve is referring to "I'm Not From Here" which features Rory G on slide guitar sounding like Rory Gallagher and Johnny Winter.

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Rory G.
He doesn't talk much but his guitar can really scream. From his melodic solo of "Black Of Night" to the caffeinated ukuleles of "Whose Have In This?" to the slide guitar of "You've Been Sold," Rory's style is mostly blues based. "Although I like listening to the early black blues recordings from the 50s and 60s, I most enjoy playing along with the second generation blues players like, Jeff Beck, Johnny Winter, Rory Gallagher, Mike Bloomfield and Jimmy Page. I love to jam along to the Disraeli Gears album by Cream. That's my favorite Eric Clapton album."

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COYOTE'S Zens of LEVEL 1
Zen #1     Zen #2     Zen #3     Zen #4
Zen #5      Zen #6      Zen #7      Zen #8

Back to HOMEPAGE of LEVEL 1 website.