I was playing mostly in rock bands in my 20s and had the opportunity to play with Long John Baldry and with Amos Garrett. I started playing the guitar when I was eight years old and I’m 49 right now and I’ve played in bands all my life. Tell us a bit about your musical journey.ĭoug: It’s been all I’ve ever wanted to do. I had composed the tune of it a long while back, but had not recorded or performed it. I also contributed a ghazal to this album in which Salil and Doug played their stringed instruments and my wife Amika Kushwaha played the harmonium. Salil played a traditional composition in Raga Vishwakauns, which is his own creation, with Doug melding his playing into the raga with his dobro, and myself on the tabla. Salil plays the satvik veena, a 19-stringed version of his father's patented mohan veena, and creates rich and dynamic sounds to this new album. There are a lot of Indian influences in the album…Ĭassius: Yes, Salil Bhatt, the illustrious son of the Grammy Award winner Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, and I have contributed a lot of Indian influences in this album. Every time we get together Salil has to travel all the way from Jaipur, so a lot of miles are involved (laughs). Indian ragas are very long, sometimes eight to 20 minutes, so we tried to do more of a song-oriented CD this time.Ĭassius’s wife suggested the title-she is a guest on harmonium in the album-because it involved musicians from Florida, Chicago, India, Canada and Texas. Basically, what we tried to do with this album that was different from the first two was to make it a little more accessible to Westerners.
And, we did the rest of the recordings at Cassius’s house in Vancouver-just the trio Slide To Freedom. We decided to pull everyone together to do some recordings, with BettySoo, The Campbell Brothers, and Calvin Cooke. My other musical partner BettySoo from Austin, Texas, was going to be there as well. We were going to Folk Alliance in Memphis and we found out The Campbell Brothers were going to be there-they contributed steel guitar, electric guitar and drums to the CD. Tell us more about the album 20,000 Miles and how you selected that title.ĭoug: Part of that album was recorded in Memphis out of Royal Studios, which is a legendary studio. He didn’t try to play like an American musician and I didn’t try to play like an Indian musician so what we had in common musically was to just respond to each other. Salil is an Indian classical musician and I am an American slide guitar player-we found that the common ground was we both just played without thinking about what’s going on. Why is your band called Slide To Freedom?ĭoug: We liked that name because features a lot of different kinds of slide guitar. In the following interview, Cassius Khan and Doug Cox discuss Slide To Freedom, 20,000 Miles, upcoming projects, and more. The album also features Sacred Steel’s founding father Calvin Cooke, Austin-based singer-songwriter BettySoo, and electric gospel music legends The Campbell Brothers.
The three musicians are the members of the band Slide To Freedom, whose album 20,000 Miles was released on October 11. What do you get when you put together steel guitarist Doug Cox, satvik veena player Salil Bhatt and tabla player and ghazal singer Cassius Khan together? A spicy fusion of the best elements of blues and Indian music that leaves you asking for more. In an interview with Khabar, two of the players, Cassius Khan and Doug Cox, speak about their individual music as well as about this collaborative work. 20,000 Miles, the debut album of fusion band Slide To Freedom, features a rare tabla player who is also ghazal singer a celebrated satvik veena player and an innovative steel guitarist who has traversed from rock to blues, country, and folk.