One Note At A Time
Jazz Roots Trio Drummer Chris Braun
Working Hard To Keep And Make Up Time
By Andy Jones  Marinscope Newspapers  August  9th, 2007

   Jazz Roots Trio Drummer Chris Braun can tell you all about "the school of
hard knocks."  He was a prize pupil--and lived to tell about it. 
   In 1973, at the age of 19 San Anselmo native Braun was an up-and-coming
Jazz Drummer in New York City, where he played with the likes of John Scofield,
Joe Lovano, Dave Liebman, Sadik Hakim, George Coleman, and a New York tap
dancing organization named the Copasetics. 
   But one night that year, on his way to a club Braun encountered a robbery
in progress that changed his life forever. 
   "I was walking down the street 6 months after I moved to New York, to this
nightclub, to see this girl" Braun, now 54, said.  "I was right near NYU and went
into this Deli to get some orange juice and some big guy came out with a butchers
coat on and another big guy told me to go to the back room.  I fought him off
but another guy came out with a pistol so I had to go to the back room."
   While in the back room with the store owner and other customers, Braun made
the mistake of staring at one of the robbers. 
   "He took his gun and he clobbered me,"  Braun said.  "He hit me as hard as he could and I didn't fall down.  I thought to myself 'I better fall down or they are
going to hit me again.'" 
   While he was on the ground, in a pool of blood, the robbers left and the store
owner called the police.
   "I never looked in the books to catch the guy.  I was only 19 and I was afraid
they'd come and get me," Braun said.  "And I couldn't get my stitches because I
didn't have any insurance."
   It all sounds bad enough, but the shotgun blow to Braun's head also triggered
the epilepsy that Braun had unknowingly had since childhood. 
   He continued to play drums throughout the '70's and most of the '80's before
he had to seek help for his worsening medical condition.
   "What basically started happening is that the injury started affecting my body.
I withdrew a bit," Braun said.  "My girlfriend and I split up after 7 years and I moved up to Spanish Harlem and started driving a cab.  I was spinning down
and out."
   Around the same time, however, Braun began studying tai chi chuan with highly
regarded instructor William C. C. Chen, a practice to which Braun attributes his
recovery.
   "Seventeen year, it took that long for the injury to get to me.  The water around
my brain expanded and started pressing on my brain," Braun said.  "I would see
huge lights and weird things.  I foolishly thought it was part of the martial arts,
but after a while no one would get in my cab.  They thought I was out of my mind."
   "One day I was driving down 96th Street and all these lights started flashing
and I was had this seizure," Braun said.  "And I drove down Park Avenue the wrong way to a hospital and that was the beginning of me getting better."
Page 2  Braun: Drummer Still Holding Down The Beat
   The process didn't exactly begin right away however.  Once at the hospital,
he was misdiagnosed as having a mental illness.  Braun claims he was locked up
for 4 months in a mental institution and given the wrong medications.
   Finally, after his family went to bring him back to California, Braun said he began
to stabilize and was properly diagnosed left temporal lobe epilepsy.  At the time
doctors told him he'd not be able to work as a drummer anymore.
   The seizures and the swelling of the brain left Braun with limited mobility and
it seemed like a long shot that he would walk normally, much less play the drums.
   With traditional doctors not suggesting anything hopeful for recovery, Braun
sought out the help of Eastern medicine.
   "Some time around 1995 I hobbled into the Yellow Emperor in San Anselmo
an acupuncture place, and met Dr. Pindy Wong, Ph. D., a licensed acupuncturist,
and she got me playing drums in 14 visits, " Braun said.
   With regular visits to Dr. Wong and continued practice of tai chi chuan, Braun
continued to relearn his drumming skills.  He finally made a comeback and started
playing gigs at 19 Braodway in Fairfax, CA in 1999.