Danny Fox Trio | Time Took Care of It (2023) COOKBOOK

I have long turned to music and food to satisfy my soul. The connections between them are endless. They bring people together but also provide solitary comfort and sustenance. There are countless styles, methods, and forms from all over the world to explore.As a professional musician and avid home cook, I notice similarities when composing a piece and concocting a dish: Does this song need another section? Should I add a bread crumb topping to this pasta? A dominant or diminished chord here? Smoked paprika or sumac? Does it need editing? Are there too many ingredients in this chickpea stew? How do I link these disparate melodic ideas? What if I combine bitter radicchio with milky mozzarella? Can I write a song with these compositional limitations? What meal can I make using only what’s languishing in the fridge?

Improvising is about reacting to what’s happening around you and inventing on the fly. Cooking engages all of your senses as you make adjustments and add creative flourishes. It's no coincidence that the vast majority of my musician friends are good cooks and open-minded eaters. I have been at gigs where the entire set break is spent discussing pizza techniques or Ma Po Tofu recipes.

With that, I present a mini-cookbook companion to our trio’s fourth album Time Took Care of It. In our 15 years as a group we have shared countless meals. I cherish the rehearsals that spill into impromptu home-cooking or discovering an exciting spot on tour: butter burgers in Milwaukee, steamer clams in Portland, dim sum in Oakland.

Even the clunkers were memorable. Max and Chris will never let me live down the time I nixed a fast food stop on I-80 hoping to find a more satisfying culinary experience, and instead I led us to a red sauce joint straight out of Kitchen Nightmares. Then there was the time that Max ordered the delicacy “pizza slice wrapped around hot dog” in Columbus, and we'll never forget how good that beer tasted after we mistakenly found ourselves in the middle of the woods as guests on a culty radio show.

Each album track has a dish and drink pairing. The recipes are not ironclad and the measurements are rough. Luckily there is no comments section! (You can send complaints to me directly). Hope you enjoy the album and recipes. Thanks for supporting our trio. Let’s eat!