Since her brilliant self-titled debut in 1979, Rickie Lee Jones has made a career out of confounding expectations. Compared with the career moves of many of her contemporaries, the eclectic character of Jones’s wide-reaching catalog has only come to look more artful and masterful over time, the music of each release capturing the flavor of the moment of its release, without sounding dated.
As she told the New Yorker, eclectic can turn on you:
There was a moment when I was doing jazz, with “Something Cool,” from “Girl At Her Volcano.” But I didn’t follow up on it right away. I went back and recorded originals, other albums. Then Linda Ronstadt released those records arranged by Nelson Riddle. So, when I decided to return to it, I was talking it over with Don Was, who was my producer, and I wanted to do a guitar-based record. He suggested the bandoneón, which is how that record, “Pop Pop,” ended up with this Left Bank, café sound. I thought if I did a piano record it would bury me. It almost buried me anyway. The L.A. Times did a review with two journalists on the same page, a pop writer and a jazz writer, and the jazz writer tore me apart. What was happening? Was I being punished?
Jones has never become a household name, but her influence and legacy can be heard today in any number of artists, from Sharon Van Etten to Cat Power to Beth Orton. Her best work has always come from performing her own songs, but she has proven herself a gifted and original interpreter of others music as well.
Her latest release, The Devil You Know, features the singer’s take on well-known songs by Neil Young, The Band, and The Rolling Stones. (NPR lets you listen to “Sympathy for the Devil.”) The arrangements are sparse and intimate, sometimes just voice and guitar or piano, allowing the full weight and texture of her voice to shine through. Along with these, hopefully we’ll also be treated to selections from her entire catalog when she visits Jazz Alley, January 18 to 20.
Let’s get this out of the way upfront: if you care at all about Rock and Roll that’s older than a year and don’t make it to Jazz Alley to see and hear Jack Bruce this week, we can’t be friends. Seriously, go. How many chances do you get to be in the presence of a living, breathing rock legend of that caliber, much less in a room as relatively small and intimate as Jazz Alley? So do we understand each other? Good.
If he is (somehow) not enough of a motivation on his own, Bruce is in town as part of Spectrum Road, a tribute to the late great drummer Tony William‘s lightyears-ahead-of-any-time jazz rock band Lifetime. Along with Bruce on bass and vocals, Spectrum Road consists of Vernon Reid (Living Colour) on guitar, John Medeski (Medeski, Martin & Wood) on keys and Cindy Blackman-Santana (Lenny Kravitz) on drums.
Far from the fussier and more heavily mannered jazz fusion bands that were its contemporaries, Lifetime brought the rock and the funk in a way that took decades to be truly appreciated much less equaled. The tribute is the brainchild of Bruce, who played with Lifetime, and Reid, whose playing has always belonged more in the jazz/rock family tree along with stalwarts like John McLaughlin and Pete Cosey, even when crunching out rock riffs with Living Colour. The band played Jazz Alley last year, and has returned to Seattle this week to support the release of their new self-titled debut album, out on Palmetto Records.
The band opened the set with their version of Williams’ “Wildlife,” which provided plenty of showcase room for Reid and Medeski, before moving on to “There Comes a Time” with vocals by Bruce, which culminated in a ferocious drum solo from Blackman-Santana. The set moved through many of the best pieces from Lifetime’s catalog, with the band effortlessly shifting from heavy rock (“Vuelta Abajo”) to whimsical blues shuffle to space rock that would make The Mars Volta deeply envious.
While each individual player provided plenty of stratospheric individual moments, Spectrum Road’s group cohesion and beyond-telepathic interplay elevated the performance far above noodley fusion or jam band slog. In place of the typical, epic 10-minute solos, both Reid and Medeski opted for shorter (but still blazing) statements, moving back to ensemble interaction more often than might be expected of a jazz-rock “supergroup.” Bruce laid down thundering bass lines, providing plenty of bottom end, but also moving to the upper register of his fretless electric to converse with the other players. His singular voice, still stunning if not quite as strong (he apparently had a recent throat infection), was featured on a number of songs, including a beautiful version of “One Word” that closed the set.
Even with a front line of that magnitude and muscle, the real star of the show (both this time around and when the band was here last year) was Cindy Blackman-Santana. Her dynamic playing held the whole thing together and propelled it forward constantly and relentlessly. On song after song, just when it seemed as if the energy couldn’t get any higher or the groove any heavier, Blackman-Santana would push it to that next level.
Taking what could be an unenviable task–filling the drum chair in a Tony Williams tribute–and making it her own, Blackman-Santana doesn’t so much channel Williams as she distills his musical legacy to its various essences and expresses it her own original voice (literally at times, providing vocals on some songs). Whether pounding out the heaviest rock grooves or elevating space jams with propulsive beats, Blackman-Santana consistently and effortlessly stole the show from her bandmates, but always in service to the music and not at its expense.
All in all, the band sounded both tighter and more relaxed on this outing than their show here last year. Hopefully, they will continue to work together, as the world needs more of Williams music, especially performed by musicians of this caliber, who have such an obvious love for the material. Spectrum Road is at Jazz Alley through tonight. Go get your face melted.
Jazz legend McCoy Tyner at Jazz Alley Thursday night. (photo by Joe Mabel)
At 73, McCoy Tyner is the last living musician from John Coltrane‘s classic quartet, which also featured Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones. After deciding in 1965 that he could no longer follow Coltrane’s lead, he’s lead an ever-shifting group through post-bop lyricism, with an increasing interest in Cuban rhythms.
I’d heard from a friend how Tyner had been seriously ill lately, but the man in the flat cap who sat down Thursday night at Jazz Alley to open a four-night run, seemed under the weather only through his raspy voice ID’ing songs and/or praising the musicians between numbers. His left hand lead his right hand most of the time, through insistent ostinatos and block chords close to mid-keyboard. Either side could fly up high or down low, though, and he repeatedly built grand assemblages from simpler figures, filling in the sound from his sustain pedal, before lifting his foot to dispel and resend.
Gary Bartz‘s white hair and matching jacket lent him a professorial air, and indeed he teaches at the Oberlin College of Music when not out on the road. His deceptively-simple, supple lines interlaced with the three rhythm players, with occasional piano-sax dialogues. Upright bassist Gerald Cannon, physically imposing as his instrument, struggled against less-than-optimal sound levels during his solos but stayed on the pulse and in the pocket. The band’s youngest member, Cuban drummer Francisco Mela, pushed the beat during the head melodies, laid cymbals on thick for solos; his irrepressible energy drove the wheel for the ensemble’s organic locomotive.
Tyner asked the audience not to “flash bright lights” in his face, a reference, presumably, to someone’s ill-advised flash photography. “I’m trying to maintain a mood up here.” The flashes remained unflashed, then, for most of the rest of the set as the master, deeper and wiser than most from so many journeys, settled into the deep ripples of that mood.
Just a quick recap, then: Sara Gazarek, due at Jazz Alley next Monday and Tuesday, started out (oddly enough) as a child, abosorbing sounds from the Seattle streets; attended Roosevelt High School where she signed up to the school’s illustrious jazz program and traveled to NYC with the Roosevelt Jazz Band. She earned the first-ever Ella Fitzgerald Outstanding Vocalist Award and took herself to L.A. to seek her fortune.
Her first album Yours, from 2005, captured her out of the gate with imaginative arrangements of Joni Mitchell (who herself owes more to jazz than many realize); a smattering of original tunes; and of all things, a song many of our mothers sang to many of us as starting-out children. Gazarek realized “You Are My Sunshine” was at its core a sad song. But she boldly sung sweetly through sadness. Her voice, simple on the surface, threw out more facets with each listen.
Her second studio album Return To You, two years later, brought back some Joni, threw in some Billy Joel, and re-affirmed that she could (co-) write some tunes deserving of standard-status through everybody else. She also cut “Hallelujah,” in danger of becoming a worn-out shoe, but once again distinctive and deceptively-simple arrangement, helped along of course by her band, spun her into the clear.
She’ll appear at Jazz Alley with second singer Johnaye Kendrick; pianist John Hanson; drummer Sean Hutchinson; and bassist David Dawda. Her old record label sank, alas (try buying her stuff from her directly), but she’s inked a new deal with Palmetto Records and a new studio album should hit shelves in the spring of 2012. She recently became a professor through the Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California. She won’t reveal her exact set list, but she promises “old tunes, new tunes and a splash of holiday magic.” I do hope to see you there.
There’s some sublime–and some ridiculous–in Seattle music venues this weekend, so let’s jump right in, shall we?
Tonight (Friday, December 9):
Bushwick Book Club with The Seattle Rock Orchestra present: Music Inspired by Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas@ Town Hall. $15 at the door. Doors at 7pm, show at 8pm.
Born in Brooklyn, the Bushwick Book Club delivers one of those novel concepts that nearly always yields nuggets of sonic gold. The Schtick: Give a classic work of literature to several local musicians. Said musicians digest said work, write songs about it, and perform those songs live. This time out, the Book Club takes on Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo journalism masterwork, replete with accompaniment by the awesome Seattle Rock Orchestra. The ace line-up of performers includes angel-voiced Youth Rescue Mission singer Hannah Williams, roots treasure Jason Dodson of the Maldives, and Mike Votava of Seattle clown princes We Wrote the Book on Connectors (who, happily, play the Sunset Saturday night).
Smokey Brights, Fort Union, Guests@ The Comet Tavern. $8 at the door. Show at 9pm.
If you’re a fan of Hannah Williams’ late great pop outfit Friday Mile, it’s a Sophie’s Choice between Town Hall and the Comet tonight: Williams’ former bandmates Jace Krause and Jake Rohr play with their new band Fort Union at the latter venue. FU’s combination of alt-folk prettiness and ghost-in-the-machine electronics suggests a more vocally-rich version of Grandaddy, with a little Wilco thrown in, meaning it’s as haunting as it is beautiful.
How the Grouch Stole Christmas Tour with The Grouch, Zion-I, Eligh, Evidence (of Dilated Peoples), Scribes @ The Crocodile. $18 at the door. Doors at 9pm.
I won’t pretend that my pale ass is anything resembling an authority on hip-hop, but Dilated Peoples’ 2000 debut The Platform is still one of the leanest and best rap debuts ever. Evidence (one-half of that legendary crew) shares the stage with Living Legends head honcho The Grouch and a ton of other MCs. They all sound more than solid to these relative neophyte ears. The geezer in me’d love to hear Evidence give the awesome “Work the Angles” some stage time, but his newest full-length, Cats and Dogs, sports production as imaginative as (and, honestly, more expansive than) The Platform. It should sound great live.
Down North, Philana, DJ Leopold Bloom @ the LoFi Performance Gallery. $8 at the door. Show at 9pm.
Looking for some funk? You could do a helluva lot worse than heading to South Lake Union to take in Down North, a hard-soul combo with scrappy throwdown energy. Fireball lead singer Anthony Briscoe apparently has Prince, James Brown, and Terence Trent D’Arby sharing harmonic space in his pipes, and he’s a wonder to watch (and hear) in action.
The Taj Mahal Trio@ Jazz Alley. $32.50 advance. Shows at 7:30 and 9:30pm.
See Saturday’s entries.
Saturday, December 10:
The Taj Mahal Trio@ Jazz Alley, December 9-11, December 13-18. $32.50 advance. Set Times Vary.
For damn near fifty years, Taj Mahal’s augmented his style of blues-rock with journeys into reggae, Caribbean, and soul music. And if he’s leaned towards a brighter, more laid-back output for ahwhile, there’s no denying his skills at the fretboard and the sublime rasp of his voice. It’s not just anybody who can pack a fancy joint like Jazz Alley for nine nights of shows.
Angry Snowmans, Neutralboy, Rat City Ruckus @ The Funhouse. $6 at the door. Doors at 9:30pm.
Angry Snowmans come from the frozen North (Victoria, BC, to be exact). They play funny punk songs about eggnog, presents, trees, snow, and being pissed off about eggnog, presents, trees, and snow. Neutralboy are a bunch of Bremerton punks who’ve been kicking and spitting, drunk-and-sloppy-like, for nearly twenty years, and Rat City Ruckus are the only hardcore punk band I know of to proudly claim White Center as their home. Look, you need some sort of antidote to all of the forced-smile perkiness and consumer gorging that is the Holiday Season.
Me Talk Pretty, Madina Lake, New Years’ Day, Avion Row, Hell or Highwater, Alabaster, Anchor the Tide @ El Corazon. $14 advance/$16 day-of-show. Doors at 7pm.
It’s practically a nu-metal Lollapolooza at El Corazon tomorrow, with seven bands playing to an all-ages house. I’m not much of a fan of the subgenre, but this is undeniably a lot of bang for your buck. Three of the bands on the bill stand out: Seattle’s Alabaster hits the Paramore epic-femme-fronted-guitar-rock notes with undeniable polish, and Hell or Highwater offset their generic choruses with a bit of rockabilly twang. Headliners Me Talk Pretty invite serious guilty-pleasure status, though, with a high-gloss but extremely hooky melange of At the Drive-In noodle-rock, herky-jerky new wave, and power pop. Lead singer Iulia Preotu looks like an Eastern Bloc mallrat drawn by anime artists, and there’s an arch strangeness to her delivery that’s sometimes painfully, ridiculously strident–but never dull. If they played through busted amps and weren’t so damned fresh-faced and catchy, they’d probably be indie-rock megastars.
Sunday, December 11:
Supernaughty, Stand Up and Shout @ The Comet. $5 at the door, doors at 4pm.
Pick up some lunch somewhere on Capitol Hill, then mosey on down to the Comet for some tribute band goodness. Supernaughty is a Black Sabbath cover band, while Stand Up and Shout pays homage to the late great heavy metal elf himself, Ronnie James Dio. And you know the latter’s just gotta play this one.
You know a singer’s arrived when she furnishes the voice of a pop star who never existed, to a filmed alternate-history fable about a UK health care system founded on clones bred for organ harvesting. Right?
Well, Jane Monheit might have other ideas, for which I’d forgive her. She might prefer, for example, to be remembered for contributing a lush take on a venerable classic, to a deliriously overblown space opera.
But frankly, the singer’s track record eclipses her soundtrack contributions. Over eight studio albums (most recently 2010’s Home), she’s roamed her supple, considered-but-never-academic vocals through large portions of the so-called Great American Songbook, emerging with distinctive take after distinctive take. She’s also done a song from The Muppet Movie, just to show she knows a solid tune wherever she catches one.
Ms. Monheit brings her show to Jazz Alley for three days starting this coming Friday. Catch her before she finally wins a Grammy.
