On February 12th (2017) in the midst of my very first year as a new official member of The Recording Academy – Texas Chapter (National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences), I had the extraordinarily distinct honor and privilege of enjoying my very first ever GRAMMY Award weekend experience at The 59th GRAMMY Awards in Los Angeles, California. The mind altering experience of such a monumental event absolutely went far beyond the scope of life changing for the rest of my career as a professional recording artist/musician/songwriter I assure you.
As soon as my plane landed in Los Angeles and I arrived downtown to check into my hotel room at the LA Hotel Downtown, I dropped my things off in the room and walked to the Los Angeles Convention Center to go pick up my tickets and credentials for the GRAMMYs. Once I was inside, I immediately noticed hearing up on the second floor, as I was walking up the stairs, the classic 70’s dance tune “You Should Be Dancing” by The Bee Gees. It turned out that the rehearsals for The Bee Gees tribute segment of the television broadcast was directly across the hall from where I had to go and sign for my personally assigned GRAMMY tickets. After I was done, I stuck around for a little while to soak up the awesome energetic feeling that was coming over me as I enjoyed listening to the incredible sound of those amazing musicians prepare for what turned out to be a truly awesome live broadcast.
As I began walking back to my hotel, the most unusual thing happened along the way………it began to rain in downtown Los Angeles. Of course it didn’t even begin to come close to comparison to what we get regularly here in Dallas, but it was still mind blowing to actually be a Texas native walking “in the rain” on the streets of downtown Dallas. I arrived back to my hotel, after grabbing a prime rib steak dinner to go at Lawry’s Express along the way, and got some much needed rest as my adrenaline was finally beginning to settle back down from the excitement of actually bring back in Los Angeles for my first ever GRAMMY Award weekend.
The day of the awards ceremony was an absolutely incredible experience beginning with the non-televised portion of the awards presentations that were streamed live from the GRAMMY website (www.grammy.com). The host for the entire live streaming portion of the awards ceremony was comedienne, Margaret Cho, who herself was also nominated for a GRAMMY for Best Comedy Album which was won by Oswalt Patton.
Oswalt gave a very toughing heartfelt acceptance speech describing the tough year that he’s had to endure going through the passing of his wife whom which he dedicated the winning of his Grammy Award. There were various presenters during the course of the ceremony, but I was very excited when I was pleasantly surprised by the special appearance by the absolute lovely Mya (her album “Smoove Love” was nominated for a Grammy Award) and one of “The Original Seven - The Time”, Jimmy Jam. As a bassist, his partner Terry Lewis has always been one of my many influences as a musician/songwriter whom I feel personally doesn’t get nearly enough recognition as the incredible bassist that he is.
As a native of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, it felt so good to cheer on the home team of artists, groups, and bands that walked away winning a Grammy Award to bring back to the DFW area: (Snarky Puppy, Pentatonix, Kirk Franklin (with Tamala Mann), and Maren Morris). One of the biggest surprises from one of the artists receiving a Grammy Award that day was finding out that the 83 year old International Dean of The Blues, Bobby Rush, was winning his very first Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album (Porcupine Meat) after releasing 300 albums (in his own words). The last award category for the live streaming portion of the ceremony went to one of my all-time favorite bands, Megadeth, for Best Metal Performance (Dystopia). To see Dave Mustaine give the acceptance speech on behalf of the band made me feel like I was truly living wide awake in a dream state because I have been a huge fan of Megadeth for as long as I have been a fan of Metallica and I had the fortunate blessing of actually witnessing this icon metal band win their very first Grammy Award with my very own eyes less than 50 feet away from the stage.
There are so many great performances that I could touch on from the live television broadcast, but I will hit on the ones that had the most significant impact on me personally as I had the privilege to witness it live. That night was the very first time that I finally got to see Metallica perform live as they performed with Lady Gaga who was fresh off an incredibly awesome Super Bowl performance a week before in Houston which is just about a 3-hour drive down I-45 from us in Dallas. Being able to see Morris Day and The Time perform live for the second time in my life during the Prince tribute, its’ impossible to seated in your chair and that is absolutely no exaggeration whatsoever. However, my level of reverent respect for Bruno Marz as a musician (not just a singer) drastically increased exponentially. Nobody, and I do mean NOBODY, ever even saw it coming when Bruno played his rendition of Prince’s solo that hauntingly looked a lot like the one featured in the classic 1984 film, Purple Rain. The performances that both Chance The Rapper and Adele gave made me realize that I was watching royalty perform at its finest and it reminded me just how incredible fortunate I am to have been given such an incredible privilege in being a member of The Recording Academy. Not to mention that when our President of The Recording Academy, Mr. Neil Portnow, came out and gave his speech; to me personally, I honestly felt that all of us in attendance that night were listening to our State of The Music address as members of The National Academy of The Recording Arts and Sciences.
As I stated at the beginning of this blog: to say this was a life changing experience/blessing for me as a new Academy member is an absolute understatement I assure you. One GRAMMY year down, and now an annual lifetime more to go.
Bo Hutchinson