The pic above is from New Year’s Eve ’04 or ’05 I think. The singer on the left side of the pic is Jay Talavera, and this was when we were in Higher Voltage. I played with Jay in Higher Voltage as well as Stone Monkey for a couple years after Citizen Bane, my first band down here in Miami broke up. I also did a lot of acoustic shows with Jay as well. When I stopped playing with Higher Voltage, I told Jay that if he wanted to do shows with me to give me a call anytime and I’d do my best to jam with him. As what usually happens, our paths ended up not crossing again. This summer while I was working on my acoustic album, I thought I should try to get in touch with Jay, as it had been a few years since we had talked. Long story short, I never managed to call him. On the morning of Labor Day, I was reading some stuff about an open mic that I was going to go to but ended up not going, and saw that Higher Voltage had played this open mic as a tribute to Jay and another former member of HV that I didn’t know. I was shocked to see that, and after looking around found out that Jay had passed away in July. As you can imagine, I was stunned.
This is my tribute to Jay:
Jay, it was an honor to share stages with you. I thank you for getting me into both Higher Voltage and Stone Monkey, as well as all the acoustic shows that we did. I feel bad that we lost touch. I’ll see you on the other side...RIP brother...
“At This Time” is dedicated to you...
TB