- One of my greatest mentors who I just love and I have learned so much from him on and off the bandstand is the great John Clayton.

And I remember one of my first encounters with him, he wrote something that was just crazy hard.

It was just so difficult for me to play.

And I looked at John, I was like, John, I can't play this.

This is hard.

And he looked at me and he said, "No, it's not," and walked away.

And that was it.

- It's really cool for me to see Gilbert do what I've done.

I remember Ray Brown, he was one of my mentors, great bass player.

I mean, iconic bass player.

And he was helping me and every step of the way I'd say thank you, thank you, thank you.

Finally, one day I said, you got to be tired of me always saying thank you.

You helped me so much.

And he said, "No, I'm doing this for you because somebody did it for me and you're going to do it for somebody else further down the line."

- That means I need to learn it and I need to play it for the gig tonight, you know?

And then I started to look, I looked at it again and it looked like a completely new piece of music.

And I, and I said to myself, you know what?

It's not that hard.

I just need to look at it and put some time and, you know, maybe dissect it and work it out, but I got this.