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Sweet Home
Chicago: Ken Vandermark has an incredible thirst for music, and he drinks
until the bottle is empty.
No-one could
accuse Ken Vandermark of being diffident or lazy. Since moving to Chicago
in 1989 he’s been a tireless instigator of musical activity, bringing
together musicians from diverse genres such as rock, r&b, punk-jazz, free
improvisation and, of course, his first and perhaps most enduring love,
jazz. He has guested with a number of the city’s wig-out rock and r&b
ensembles such as The Coctails, The Crown Royals, Waste Kings, the Denison/Kimball
Trio, and, most notably, The Flying Luttenbachers (who also recorded with
Hal Russell), but nowadays he prefers to be the host. Aside from the important
role he plays in the post-Hal Russell NRG Ensemble, which is stewarded
by Mars Williams, since 1992 his ensembles have included The Vandermark
Quartet, Caffeine (with Jim Baker and Steve Hunt), the Steelwool Trio
(with Kent Kessler and Curt Newton), the Barrage Double Trio, Cinghiale
(with Mars Williams), the Standards Project, FJF (with Mats Gustafsson,
Kent Kessler, and Steve Hunt), the DKV Trio (with Kent Kessler and Hamid
Drake), Steam, and the Vandermark 5. Some of these groups are ongoing,
several have bitten the dust, but each has recorded at least one CD of
original and often excellent material.
Although
he’s moved on both as a composer and an instrumentalist, and no longer
finds his work with the Vandermark Quartet satisfying, the group’s piratical
swagger, film-noir themes and volcanic solos are irresistible. The couple
of discs they recorded for Platypus are hard to get hold of, but do try,
they’re well worth the effort. Some of that group’s musical concerns are
picked up and subjected to considerable refinement by the Vandermark 5,
and their recordings for Atavistic are possibly the best things Vandermark
has done. His compositions draw on a wide range of sources (often indicated
by track-by-track dedications, a la Steve Lacy), and his ability to integrate
them seamlessly into memorable and highly-personalised forms is a sign
of growing maturity. Vandermark’s compositions stand head and shoulders
above the identikit, off-the-peg, sampled-to-death music that currently
swamps the market.
I talked
with him in June ’98, just before he embarked on a short tour with the
Vandermark 5, and like all good story-tellers, we started at the beginning...
Was tenor
sax your first instrument?
Actually,
I started off with a trumpet and switched to tenor in high school. I’ve
been playing music since elementary school, but I only got serious about
it when I was at the university in Montreal studying film. By the time
I graduated I’d decided that I wanted to devote myself to music. In the
United States the options are to have a day job and play at night, or
try to become a professional musician, which means you do weddings and
things like that which really didn’t interest me at all. [laughs] So I
worked at a convenience store and a hardware store in Boston. I was doing
stuff with a trio called Lombard Street [which included Curt Newton, latterly
of Debris and the Joe Morris Trio] back in ’86 through ’89. But when I
moved to Chicago it took a really long time to find musicians to hook
up with. Eventually I did some stuff with Hal Russell when Mars Williams
was out of the band for a while.
It must
have been difficult to step into his shoes. He’s a phenomenal musician.
Well, I think
part of it was being ignorant, and not realising what was going on. [laughs]
I didn’t really know what I was getting into, you know.
Presumably
you’d heard some NRG Ensemble recordings?
No. I wasn’t
aware of a lot of the music happening in Chicago, the stuff Hal was doing,
what Fred Anderson was doing. I knew about the AACM, the Art Ensemble,
Muhal Richard Abrams — those guys were famous... I went into the NRG
Ensemble audition and I guess they kinda liked the energy I had, the attitude
or whatever. I did stuff with Hal until Mars came back. The scene in Chicago
at that point was extremely cliquish. It’s changed a little bit now. People
are more aware of each other and tend to work together, or at least be
more open to what other people are doing.
The AACM
has attracted the criticism that it tends to be cliquish.
The AACM
makes it difficult to be involved if you’re not a black musician. You
can do stuff at the school, but the bands themselves... I don’t think
any of their groups include white musicians. It’s a race issue the AACM
has created, for reasons I can understand on one hand, and I wish it would
change on the other. But there are certain people within that group I’ve
done work with.
Ari Brown.
Yeah, I’ve
played with Ari, he’s a great guy, a fantastic musician. And Harrison
Bankhead. And people who aren’t part of the AACM really, like Hamid Drake
and Fred Anderson. The AACM present Fred when they have festivals, because
he was one of the prime movers when the organisation started. In general,
I find musicians who aren’t associated with the AACM are a lot more open-minded.
I also realise that I’m privileged in that I don’t have to take race into
account nearly as much as they do. If I take a gig I can take it because
of the music, I don’t have to worry about politics. Music isn’t necessarily
the best way to get across a political agenda. I’ve tried to create situations
where AACM bands and bands that aren’t associated with that group play
on the same bill. There shouldn’t be all these issues separating the musicians.
You’ve
been running a club for some time with the writer John Corbett, the Empty
Bottle. Is that still happening?
Uh-huh. It’s
been more than two years now. We just had our second festival at the beginning
of May. It’s provided, on a consistent basis, an outlet for music from
outside Chicago. It’s been fantastic for the music scene ’cause of the
cross-pollination of ideas. We can see people play from all over the place
and say, "Holy mackerel, look what they’re doing in Sweden!" and take
those ideas and steal them. [laughs]
Well,
you seem to have stolen Mats Gustafsson. He works with you a lot.
Yeah. He’s
amazing. Have you heard the AALY Trio record that we did?
No, not
yet.
Check that
out. It’s more in line with FJF. It shows a different side of Mats’ playing
— free-jazz rather than free-improv. That group is absolutely mind-boggling.
Kjell Nordeson, the drummer, and the bass player, Peter Janson, are just
incredible.
They’re
musicians I’ve never come across.
That’s one
of the great things about the Empty Bottle series: seeing these musicians
you’ve never heard before, and realising how strong the scene is internationally.
There have been more than a hundred concerts at the Empty Bottle, and
the festival was really successful this year. We made all the money to
cover the musicians’ fees from what came through the door; there was no
corporate or grant funding at all. The audience has been growing since
’92. It’s a really strong and well-educated audience. They’ve seen huge
amounts of music from all over the place, and they’re really supportive.
I get to play on average about three times a week in Chicago. We don’t
make any money, but we cover our cab costs and maybe make enough to have
a few beers.
Despite
your fundamental interest in jazz, your groups often have an ensemble
sound that’s nearer to rock music.
There are
definitely elements of that, particularly in the Vandermark 5. There are
things about certain kinds of music that I find extremely interesting
and attractive to use. The people I play with most, Tim [Mulvenna] and
Kent [Kessler], we spend a lot of time talking about it. We aspire to
work and perform on the level of the bands we really love: the Clifford
Brown/Max Roach group, or the Ellington group, or Ornette’s and Coltrane’s
quartets. They had an aesthetic based on working together, a group sensibility.
So what we need to do, aside from rehearse and talk about ideas, is to
be out there dealing with them and playing the music live.
Steam
and the Steelwool Trio are more explicitly a part of the jazz continuum
than the Vandermark 5. I know the trio is defunct, but will Steam be doing
another record?
We’ve been
talking about it for a while. Georg Gräwe wanted to do a record with
Steam for his label, Random Acoustics. But we need to work on the music
in performance, and that’s not possible. No venue in Chicago right now
has a piano. Jim Baker [also of Caffeine] has an electric piano set-up,
but it’s really not very satisfying sound-wise. Jim’s one of the most
under-rated musicians in Chicago. Part of the idea behind Steam was to
get to work with him.
It would
be nice to hear the other material in the band’s repertoire — compositions
by Dolphy, Ornette, and so on. I’d be particularly interested to hear
your take on Dolphy’s tunes, because his style of playing is so different
from yours.
I agree.
And Dolphy is an amazing composer. You play "Miss Ann", and when you come
out of that head you just wanna play; it’s set up a trajectory and fired
you out into the unknown, and with a lot of momentum. There’s a big difference,
I think, between great composing for improvisation and great through-composed
music. Sometimes people get confused about these differences. "East Broadway
Rundown" is a great composition for improvisation. Or "Take the Coltrane",
that Ellington tune. It’s such a simple — [sings several bars] — that’s
it; but, man, when that’s run its course you have so many rhythmic and
melodic implications. There’s a complexity to it that allows room for
lots of interpretation. And Dolphy’s music doesn’t have to be played the
way Dolphy played it. Obviously, he may be the greatest interpreter of
it ’cause he wrote it, but there are implications he never touched upon.
Same with
Monk. That’s why Steve Lacy is such a great interpreter. It’s botch
Lacy and Monk when he plays. You work with strong rhythms and subtle
nuances. I imagine you’re pretty good with Monk.
Yeah, his
music is very much about rhythm. From my standpoint, the rhythmic aspect
is so important. I’ve learned that from listening to players like Lester
Young and Coleman Hawkins. Hawkins will do stuff in a tonal centre that
harmonically or melodically is so odd, I mean extremely dissonant. And
Lester Young will land on these notes, and they’ll be like GRONK [makes
a dissonant noise], and you say, "Holy shit, I can’t understand what this
guy is doing." But he makes it work through the motion and the rhythm
of the line. His insistent GRONK DE-GRONK GRONK GRONGRONK [dissonant noises
rhythmically inflected] is the same as Monk jabbing the keyboard. It’s
an expression of the implications of rhythm. Bebop, too, isn’t just a
revolution in harmony, it’s a revolution in rhythm. You get a lot of that
in James Brown’s music, and it’s very attractive. You hear it in delta
blues before the music got codified into 12-bar form. These people would
speed up and slow down, but it’s so expressive and utterly personal. The
music is about rhythm in many ways; it’s what I like to focus on.
It’s noticeable
in the way you launch into solos, as if the first couple of bars have
been lopped off. Suddenly you’re in there and going full-tilt.
Yeah, yeah.
That’s about energy and tight rhythms. But it’s also part of Hal Russell’s
legacy, isn’t it? Actually, I’m glad you brought that up because...
this’ll be hard to get across without slighting Hal, and I’m definitely
not, I’ve got a lot of respect for his music, more than I did when I was
dealing with it first-hand. But I was more influenced by things before
I came to Chicago — Joe McPhee, Joe Morris, Ornette Coleman. Part of
what I didn’t like about Hal’s music was the way he controlled things.
You could be in the middle of a solo, and if Hal was bored he would change
it. In retrospect, it’s an interesting way to approach the music. His
sensibility was so odd you couldn’t predict what he would do, and that
kept the music spontaneous and fresh. Hal — and this is to his credit
— was a musician of immense personality. But the perception that he had
a lot of influence on the musicians is basically a mistake. Kent Kessler
and Mars Williams had a great impact on Hal’s music. That thing you mentioned
about starting past the beginning of the solo comes more out of Dolphy,
or the intensity of Cecil Taylor, than Hal’s extreme use of jump-cuts
and shifts. I’m very interested in having things come out of the improviser’s
stance. If Kent’s taking a solo I prefer to let Kent make the decisions.
If he decides, "OK, I’ve said what I want to say," that’s better than
me saying, "You’re done." Because a lot of the time I find that improvisers,
if they’re good improvisers, will do things that surprise me, and they
should be given the freedom to do that. Whereas with Hal the aesthetic
was dictated by his attention span. That was sometimes very frustrating
to work with. Some nights he’d let you solo on and on, and you’d be confused
by that, you kept waiting for him to cut you out. Other nights you’d play
three notes and all of a sudden the tune was over.
Back in
the days of Calling All Mothers you were still doing a few of Hal’s pieces.
But on This is My House and the new NRG disc there aren’t any Hal Russell
compositions. Was that a deliberate policy?
It was more
about trying to document the stuff we were playing well at that time.
When we first regrouped we’d pull tunes from Hal’s book and say, "Let’s
try this one," and we couldn’t play them because of the way the melodies
were phrased; we couldn’t imitate Hal doing it. And we decided not to
do some of Hal’s music on the later recordings. The NRG Ensemble was begun,
developed and set on course by Hal, but since his passing we’ve been guided
by a different set of principles.
I think
it’s a better group now. Some of the tracks on Bejazzo are terrific. Not
just your compositions, things by Mars, too. "Cakewalk", for example,
which brings out Brian Sandstrom’s guitar in a new way. Hal used Brian’s
guitar as a kind of musical cement mixer — Yeah. [laughs] — it
churned and churned and then something else happened. But now he’s incorporating
delicate little noodling figures, things like that, and it’s really expanded
what he’s capable of doing with the group.
Definitely,
definitely. You see, Hal also had an interest in things that wouldn’t
work, things that would fail. For fifteen minutes we were expected to
go GRONK-GRONK-GRONK-GRONK-GRONK [dissonant noises of plodding, unvarying
metricality]. We’d do it ’cause it was his band. But now, if something
doesn’t grab Mars in the first ten seconds, he’s not gonna do it. That’s
part of the reason why Mars elected to have only our own stuff on the
new record, and in that way sever the tie to Hal. Even now there are people
who write about the things we do as if they’ve been generated by Hal.
After
all these years? That must be really irritating.
Yeah, but
that’s not to slight Hal, it’s not a criticism of him. It’s about the
critics. I see what I do as an extension of this amazing music, so I have
a responsibility when I pick up the horn and play. It’s not just fuckin’
around. I’ve got a whole stack of great saxophone players on my back [laughs],
and it’s a great thing to be tied to that incredible tradition. The same
should go for the people who write about it. If they don’t have that sense
of responsibility and respect, they shouldn’t be writing at all; they
end up doing a huge disservice to the music, the musicians, and themselves.
Getting a bad review is fine, I’ve had tons of bad reviews, but it’s just
as frustrating to get a good but ignorant review. I’m pretty young, I
can say, "Well, screw it." But people have written stuff about Fred Anderson
that completely maligned him in print.
The Fred
Anderson/DKV Trio disc was superb.
That was
an immensely important project for me. Fred’s coming out of a serious
blues tradition, the bending of notes, the phrasing, the stopping and
starting and rhythmic motion. He’ll hit a B-flat incredibly flat, and
he’ll hit it the same way each time, and to play well with him I have
to match his tuning. It’s a real challenge. But for people to say he’s
playing out of tune is an incredible insult. No-one says that about Joe
Maneri.
You said
the Vandermark 5’s first release, Single Piece Flow, was "effective".
Why only effective?
I think we
should have waited longer before doing that record. The band got together
in the Spring of ’96, and my expectation, based on other projects, was
that we’d need six months of playing and rehearsing. I’d played with Tim
and Kent in Steam and we clicked, there was no problem. I play with Mars
all the time. Jeb Bishop is an extremely fine musician, and I’d done other
stuff with him. So I though, "This should be a piece of cake." But when
we played we discovered there was an extremely different rhythmic sensibility
in the group. I tend to centre on the beat, Jeb tends to hang back, and
Mars is extremely on top. So what would happen is we’d play the heads
and they’d be fine, we’d go into the solos and Mars would push the beat
way, way over, and the rhythm section would try to accommodate that. Then
Jeb would take his solo and it’d be mayhem. To get a unified approach
took a really long time. I don’t think the first record is bad, not at
all, but it probably would’ve been wiser to spend a little more time.
Shortly after that we started a series of performances at the Empty Bottle,
and very quickly the band zeroed in on what it was supposed to do... The
second record is, I feel, extremely strong. I was better able to write
for the band, I had a better sense of what the band was about.
Were the
compositions written for those particular musicians?
Sure, and
on the first record too. The idea of the quintet is that I can do more
involved writing.
The compositions
on Target or Flag are more sophisticated than the pieces you wrote for
the Vandermark Quartet. It’s an ensemble sound created as much by the
compositions as by tight rehearsal.
I’m glad
that comes across. It’s my idea to tackle difficult or complex material
and not have it sound difficult or complex, to get inside the music and
let it breathe. I think maybe we pulled it off with Target. Unfortunately,
because of the time Mars has to devote to Liquid Soul [his Acid Jazz group],
he’s had to leave the band. He’s been replaced by an alto player, Dave
Rempis, from Chicago, who’s been with us since March. Dave’s playing is
— to oversimplify — somewhere in between Eric Dolphy and Lee Konitz.
He has an interesting approach and a really strong personality. But I’m
still doing stuff with Mars — Witches and Devils [a band devoted to the
music of Albert Ayler], Cinghiale [an Italian word meaning "the wild hog"]...
I’m generally very fortunate in the things I get to do, but the last year
has been unbelievably exciting. I got to play with Evan Parker. Stuff
with Mats and the AALY Trio. I did a recording with Joe Morris and DKV
that’ll be out on OkkaDisk in the fall. There’s an amazing amount of stuff
going on, and the music is so exciting.
This may
take us back to where we started, but... when, as a musician, did you
first realise you were good?
Maybe back
in ’92, when the Vandermark Quartet started and was received with enthusiasm
— that had an impact. At that point, had I been asked, I would’ve said,
"Yeah, I feel like I’m a good player." But looking back on it, when I
hear those records, I can’t listen to them. It’s like, "Oh God, what was
I thinking about!" That’s a healthy sign, because it indicates that my
ideas are changing and developing. Also, when I get to play with people
I absolutely revere — Mats, Joe McPhee, Evan Parker — and felt like
I didn’t embarrass myself, that I was able to hold my own and contribute
musically. That was when I started to feel I had something to say that
was worthwhile. Maybe I’m not playing on the level I want to, and maybe
I’m not playing on the level of the musicians I’m playing with, but I
feel I’ve got enough personality to express something interesting, I can
contribute — that’s the biggest thing.
NEWS & VIEWS
When I talked
with Vandermark for the second time, at the end of July, he told me that
his six-year association with the NRG Ensemble had come to an end. Nothing
to do with musical differences as such, he was just ready to move on.
It makes NRG’s latest release, the pugilistically-inclined Bejazzo Gets
a Facelift (Atavistic ALP73), an item to savour. He also talked about
the possibility of touring the UK in December with either the Vandermark
5 or the DKV Trio. Gigs are currently being arranged in Scotland and Newcastle
upon Tyne, and sought elsewhere. If he comes to a venue near you, try
to see him.
Because his
discography is extensive, and some of the material (on Eighth Day, for
example) is no longer available, or extremely hard to find (Platypus),
I decided to ask him to nominate his best recordings. Some were recorded
under his own leadership, on others he’s a major contributor:
NRG Ensemble - Calling All Mothers (Quinnah 05)
Barrage Double Trio - Utility Hitter (Quinnah 09)
DKV Trio/Fred Anderson (OkkaDisk 014)
Vandermark 5 - Target or Flag (Atavistic ALP106)
AALY Trio + Ken Vandermark - Hidden in the Stomach (Silkheart 149)
The Peter Brötzmann Chicago Octet/Tentet (OkkaDisk 022)
While certainly
not disagreeing with his choices, mine would include:
Vandermark Quartet - Big Head Eddie (Platypus PP001)
Steelwool Trio - International Front (OkkaDisk 005)
Buy any of these discs and you’re guaranteed quality listening.
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