Hi folks. My latest effort as a bandleader, A Small Patch of Earth, is being released in just under two weeks on Shifting Paradigm Records. I call this group the Elemental Quartet, and I'm thrilled to be joined on this music by some of the Midwest's best musicians (and most wonderful people), guitarist Matt Gold, bassist Brian Courage, and drummer Devin Drobka. Today I'd like to introduce you to my fellow musicians, and I'd also like to share a playlist I made of music that at least indirectly inspired the music on the album.
Matt was previously on my Jazz Ensemble's 2019 release Forward. He's a guitarist of some repute, you might say, and has done some incredible work of his own, as well as regular appearances with musicians like Greg Ward, Marquis Hill, and Makaya McCraven. He's a versatile performer whose work often combines elements of not just jazz but of country and folk music, alternative rock, and more. A Small Patch of Earth had a heavy inspiration from
a lot of non-jazz music (see below), so Matt seemed like the perfect guitarist. He's also just a great player no matter what he's doing and a beautiful human being who makes everyone around him feel good, so that was a no-brainer.
Speaking of beautiful humans, Devin Drobka is someone who I'd never recorded with before this project but who I've played with regularly for the last ten or so years. He's performed live with both of the previous smaller groups I've recorded (my quintet and the 5+4 ensemble), and I knew that this project was begging for his sensitive, spacious approach. It was Devin's idea to get this music out of a recording studio and into a more resonant recording location; instead of recording in a studio, we set up shop in Demmer Recital Hall at Ripon College, where our engineer, Tom Washatka, did a great job of capturing the naturally resonant sound of the room.
I have been playing music with this group's bassist, Brian Courage, longer than almost anyone I still interact with professionally, going all the way back to 2007, when I was in my second year at Lawrence University and Brian came in as a fresh-faced, short-haired new student. We played a lot of music in college, then Brian spent some time in the Twin Cities and New York before settling in Chicago. We played occasionally when he was elsewhere, but it's nice to have him within shouting distance again. Brian, like Devin, is one of the more sensitive musicians I know, a bass player who is uniquely attuned to melodic playing.
I've built a YouTube playlist of a bunch of songs that either directly or indirectly inspired the music on this album. A lot of it is just about what the kids call "vibes": this music doesn't necessarily share a whole lot in common from an instrumentation standpoint or even when it comes to genre, but it all kind of fits into the same general vibe.
For me, this album was a return to simplicity; it would be cliche to describe this work as a "simple album for complex times," so I won't do that, but from a compositional perspective, I was very much aware of this aesthetic. This is my fifth album as a leader but it is the smallest group I've ever recorded, and especially as my last two projects were for bands of 18 and 9 people with very intricate, often very lengthy pieces, I wanted to make a group where I could write songs that were, in a word, "smaller." Most of the music on this album fits onto a single page, and for the first time in my recorded career, I wanted to emphasize the group's improvisational side rather than centering big fancy compositions.
Here's a link to the YouTube playlist, with songs listed below:
Aoife O'Donovan - "Stanley Park"
Becca Stevens - "Harbour Hawk"
Beck - "Unforgiven"
Ben Wendel - "Julia"
Bill Frisell & Thomas Morgan - "Small Town"
Bill Frisell - "Winter Always Turns to Spring"
Billie Holiday - "Autumn in New York"
The Blue Nile - "Let's Go Out Tonight"
Cormac McCarthy - "Revolve"
Goat Rodeo - "Helping Hand"
Eels - "Daisies of the Galaxy"
Endless Field - "Unending Season"
Eple Trio - "River Song"
Fabian Almazan - "Rhizome"
Gillian Welch - "Everything is Free"
Grégoire Maret, Romain Collin, and Bill Frisell - "Re: Stacks"
Jakob Bro - "Heroines"
Joni Mitchell - "A Case of You"
Larry Goldings - "Le Cortège"
Matt Gold - "Truehearted"
Nancy Zeltsman - From My Little Island: 7. Folk Song (composed by Robert Livingston Aldridge)
the olllam - "lllow the sun"
Paul Motian Trio - "It Should've Happened a Long Time Ago"
Randy Newman - "I Think It's Going to Rain Today"
Ron Miles - "Bruise"
Steve Tibbetts - "Station"
Sufjan Stevens - "Should Have Known Better"
Tigran Hamasyan - "At a Post-Historic Seashore"
The Westerlies - "Weeping Mary"
Wolfgang Muthspiel - "For Django"
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