Kermit Driscoll - It Ain’t Easy Being Green

I received a message from my publicist buddy Matt, who spoke to Kermit at IAJE last summer. Kermit was paying $5,000 per week on antibiotics alone. Encourage people to make tax-deductible donations, and attend this awesome benefit show if you’re able.

“Though he has never released an album under his own name, the bassist Kermit Driscoll has had a considerable impact in adventurous jazz circles over the last 20 years. Mr. Driscoll first emerged as a close compatriot of the guitarist Bill Frisell during an influential stretch from the mid-1980s through the mid-'90s.

Mr. Driscoll concurrently tangled with an honor roll of downtown composer-improvisers like the alto saxophonist John Zorn and the trumpeter Dave Douglas, with whom he worked in a collective called New and Used.

Then at some point in the mid-'90s, Mr. Driscoll unknowingly contracted Lyme disease from a deer tick bite. He spent years contending with headaches, joint pain and deep fatigue before receiving an accurate diagnosis in 2005, when the disease was already in its difficult-to-treat third stage. Mr. Driscoll had stayed somewhat active during his illness — he appeared on several noteworthy 2005 releases, including albums by the guitarist Ben Monder and the drummer John Hollenbeck — but he found it increasingly hard to work. Last month he managed to perform on a benefit in his honor with Mr. Douglas and Mr. Monder, among others; this month he played a concert with Mr. Hollenbeck's Large Ensemble.
(The next day he said that the music healed him — he felt a lot better,� Mr. Hollenbeck said in an e-mail message. (With this disease you go up and down.�
On Monday Mr. Driscoll will appear, but probably not perform, at the largest yet benefit for his medical expenses. The lineup will include Mr. Frisell, with his 858 String Quartet; Mr. Zorn, with an undisclosed ensemble; Mr. Hollenbeck, with an ethereal group called the Refuge Trio; and the bassist John Patitucci, with the saxophonist Jon Ellis and the drummer Kendrick Scott.

(Monday at 8 p.m., Tonic, 107 Norfolk Street, near Delancey Street, Lower East Side, 212-358-7501, tonicnyc.com; cover, $25.)

Tax-deductible donations can also be made payable to Emergency Relief Fund (Kermit Driscoll) and mailed to Bill Dennison, Musicians Union Local 802, 322 West 48th Street, New York, N.Y. 10036.) — NATE CHINEN

A little Kermit Driscoll bio site for your edumacation.

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