Driving back to Manhattan during a blizzard in 2000, Harlem musician Dave Nuss lost control of his van on the Cross Bronx Expressway. He was driving with his bandmates from a gig in Massachusetts to his West Harlem home in the middle of the night.
The van began to skid and spiraled 180 degrees.
“All these cars were spinning around us. It was one of these total near-death experiences,” Nuss says. Everybody—the “carload full of all the most luminary free jazz saxophonists”—made it out of the wreck alive, but the “Father Ship,” Nuss’ nickname for the van, was totaled.
