foto's: Jacky Lepage

You have a knack for playing with people across a wide range of styles.

I played this festival in Grass Valley, California in the fall with Ted Nash and Odeon. Then we played as a sextet with Wynton. We taught all day. Played a concert, hung out at this jam session until 3. Next day, back up teaching at 10. The next night, Wynton and I must have played four or five choruses of just duo. And it really felt great. We kind of hit it off. So a little after that, I did this recording here in New York. Cameron Brown knows this composer who writes tango. He had helped Wynton out with his tango music, so we did one tune with Wynton on it. He says to me, “You’re playing at Detour tonight, right? And Friday you’re at the museum and then Saturday you’re doing something, too. I’m going to try to make it down one of those nights.” But he also said his schedule was kinda hairy and he never made it. It made me realize that there are all these worlds that writers, or radio people or record people put everybody in, and it’s really pretty invalid.

I just finished a session with a singer where the producer said he thought I was “avant garde” and didn’t play standards. Well, I don’t know what that means, first of all, and no, I like this kind of music. It’s great music if the artists really feel it. That’s what’s so great about what’s happening right now—all these worlds are colliding.

When Arts and Crafts played in Chicago a few weeks ago, that night was as close as I’ll ever get to feeling like I was in Miles’ quintet. And it wasn’t as if we were trying to sound like them, it was just that it was happening. It was like Denis Irwin said, sometimes, the spirits of those people are out there and it’s going to creep in. Well, the spirit of Miles was in the Green Mill that night and checked out what was happening. It was so exciting. And I didn’t fight it or anything, I just thought whatever is supposed to be, will be. You can’t control this music. You can’t say “if it swings, it’s bad” or “if it’s free, it’s bad.” Those lines are getting removed, or redrawn, or getting fuzzier and fuzzier.

Which must be great for a drummer.

Oh, man, it’s really great. I like doing the wide array. When I was in Wichita, you had to play all kinds of gigs. If you wanted to play, you had to play all kinds of stuff. And in Boston, too. It was also cool to get the experience of playing with peers and really discovering things, traveling, and getting to record. Playing with Either/Orchestra was great training—I knew how to work with a large ensemble when I got to New York. And I was listening to Bob Nieske’s new CD and I realized what an impact playing with him had on me. That period of my life is really well documented. I mean [saxophonist/composer] Charlie [Kohlhase]’s first record, Research and Development that is a really important record for everyone on it. And I’ve listened to it one day not to long ago.

It holds up.

It’s really good!

It seems like you were in bands that held together and developed things together over a long period of time.

Yeah, that version of the CKQ was together for six or seven years. That’s a band where I learned a lot about balancing material, learning to negotiate material where you know it begins and ends, but you had lots of freedom within that. Then there were more completely open things, too. I really love that about Charlie.

Either/Orchestra is where I really learned to hear parts going on and working together. I played in a big band in college and really loved it, but I don’t think I really heard the music. I played my part, but that’s it, really. It was E/O where I really heard how things worked and learned to play with a larger ensemble and still have it be kind of loose.

Did you play with Dewey Redman before you left Boston?

No, I met him in Boston. He was playing with Victor Jones and Ed Schuller upstairs at a club called Nightstage and I was playing downstairs with Russ [Gershon], [saxophonist] Salim [Washington], and [bassist John] Turner, and he came down and checked us out. He gave me his number and said keep in touch. I still have the piece of paper. So I would call, every month, for about two years, and he finally needed somebody. I was READY! It was a gig in Toronto. In the Toronto airport, when you fly back to New York on Air Canada, there’s this little snack bar. I pull people aside when I’ve been up there, and say, “See those two chairs over there? That’s where Dewey asked me to join his band.” And I make them go up and touch the chairs. He had only heard me that little bit. And that’s been 8 years in December that I’ve been playing with him. We’ve had a lot of laughs and I’ve learned so much about band leading from him and about sound. He got such an incredible sound.

He doesn’t strike me as a leader who explains a lot or controls a lot, at least explicitly.

In eight years, he’s probably said five things to me. One was like, play this tune like a shuffle. Maybe every once in a while he’ll tell me to bring it down a little. But you know, nothing major. It doesn’t bother me if people give me direction, but with him, he hears what’s going on.

I feel a certain connectedness with [saxophonist] Lee [Konitz], too. There’s something about that true spirit of improvising. Those guys just jump right in the pool.

How did you meet Lee?

He goes out a lot when he’s in town. And I must have been playing with Peggy Stern or Ben and he came by. Then he wanted to do a session, so I came by. We did two nights a Small’s one time, him, myself, and [guitarist] Ben Monder that was amazing. And he called me for the Strings for Holiday record. And we did a couple other trio gigs, one time with Ron McClure, a guy down in Baltimore, and some things with [guitarist] Attila [Zoller], and it just always feels good.

And McBee. I really learned a lot about spirit in music from McBee. He’s always there to play.

With any of these guys, it goes beyond the instrument. Like Sonny Rollins, you don’t separate him and the instrument, they’re one. I think it’s the same way with anyone who’s played music that much.

You were saying some nice things about Buster Williams before.

Yeah. I read this interview with Peter Erskine one time and he said that sometimes he couldn’t believe that he’s sitting in the airport with Wayne Shorter. And I know what he means. There I was having a little happy hour in Buster Williams’s hotel room, listening to traditional Chinese music, talking. If somebody told me I’d be doing this, I’d never have believed them. Of course, if somebody told me I’d be having triplet two years ago, I wouldn’t have believed that either.

When I was in college, I was totally into Sphere. So when Dennis Irwin called me for this tour, I don’t even know how I got recommended, I thought, Buster Williams—cool! I didn’t sit down and listen to every Buster Williams record before I played with him; I’m going to do what I’m going to do. I did this tour with Randy Brecker in Europe, a year ago in the fall. The saxophonist said, “Randy Brecker really likes hard-hitting drummers, I want you to hit.” “You know what,” I said to him, “I’m going to play the way I play, that’s all I can do.” So the first night, we’re in Berlin, on the second tune, Randy walks over and says, “Thanks, I can hear myself. It feels great.” So there you go. I think every time you walk into a new situation, they want you to be yourself, you can’t be something else for them.

I think it’s a sign of a great leader or a great player that they can say, I like what you do.

I think there are times when some people need to put the records away and not be so haunted by the gods of music. It’s scary enough to try to figure out what you’re going to do, without that hanging over you. Or at least, that’s true for me.

There was must have been a point, where you put your records away.

Yeah, there definitely was. Now I pull them out and listen to them differently. I always came at it more from playing that from listening to records, because I was always playing. I always came across records when somebody said to me, oh you should check this out. Rather than studying about it first and then going out to play. I had to actually play, whether I was in Wichita, or where ever I was. That’s what’s so interesting about a guy like Charlie [Kohlhase], or Tim Berne, those guys are similar in that they heard a lot of music before they started playing it. They’ve probably heard more music than players who started way before they did.

Why do you have two bands?

I needed more headaches? No. I didn’t want to do another quartet record after doing two in a row and I knew I wanted to do something with Dennis. I wanted to do something other than saxophone and I’d played with Terrell only once, and I knew I wanted to work with him. And I wanted a piano player. I had played this festival with Benny Green and thought about him, but we couldn’t work out the schedule. And I’d actually called Cedar Walton, but then I thought, I don’t know. I want to have a band that could go out and tour, and I figured the schedule would be really impossible with Cedar. We rehearsed very briefly before making the album and we were done in like 5 hours. Really fast.

People are used to my albums being a certain way, but that one you have to stay with in a certain way. And it was fun for me because I had stored up certain tunes that I’d wanted to play for a long time, like “The Stompin’ Ground,” which I learned from Matt Langley and Charlie Kohlhase right before my first jazz gig in Boston at Charlie’s Tap, April 23, 1987. It was me, Dave Landone, Charlie and Matt. The first time I went to Charlie’s apartment, we talked through some tunes and he said I have this Rahsaan tune on “Stompin’ at the Savoy.” I played “Old Gospel” with Either/Orchestra, we didn’t play it that often, but I always loved playing it. “Love Walked In” was a tune I played with this guy from Wichita, Newt Graben. And then I wanted to write for it, too. So it was kind of a mix. It’s a fun band, because on this last tour, we played a Jaki Byard tune, a tune of Larry’s, played a Kenny Dorham thing. It’s nice to find these tunes that don’t get played.

I liked “All Through the Night,” too. You seem to really connect with folk songs.

Yeah, there’s something about them for me. To me, they are the true expression of people’s feelings and thoughts—whether it’s a work song or patriotic. Before recordings, the song was really important. People learning and teaching the song to one another. I just really loved that one in particular. I’d done “Sweet Betsy of Pike” on As Wave Follows Wave. I’ve always been connected more with simpler compositions, more than really complex compositions. Although I’m feeling more confident about writing now. That’s why I like Don Cherry’s writing, and Ornette’s.

You also seem to pick tunes mean something to you personally. Not just, oh that’s a great tune, but they have connection to your life.

I try to have every tune I record have a purpose. For example, I don’t ever want to feel obligated to play something because that’s what everyone is doing. Like I don’t want to record a Joni Mitchell song because that’s the thing right now. Not that there’s anything wrong with her music. It’s all about the music that you want to do with the people you want to play with. I can’t say, oh I should do this kind of song, or that tune. And I’ve been lucky with the people I play with, because I can put them in a certain setting and let them do their thing. Something they’re comfortable and sometimes it helps if they’re a little uncomfortable, in a place where they have to pull something out that they wouldn’t ordinarily. That’s why I’m into mixing up people in bands.

Do you think it’s possible to over work a tune?

Oh yeah. When I record, I try to do these things kind of fast, I don’t feel like it’s worth spending a lot of time on recording. Not that I’d settle for anything that isn’t satisfactory, but I’m not gonna do 80 takes of a tune to get it perfect. As long as it’s working. It was funny with Larry, because he’d always say, you sure you don’t want to do that again.

We did this new one on the new album that I wrote called “Thank You, Billy Higgins,” and played it some, but I’d changed bits of it. We did seven takes, you know, not complete. I said, you know what, we’ll stop and come in and play it in the morning. And that’s the one we used. It’s going to start the album, actually. And they just played so great on it, it’s a band, it moves as one, totally. I guess being in Wichita, we only had a few guys, so we had to stay together as a band. So when I see Phil Woods quintet, that’s a band. It’s not jazz all stars put together to play some tunes. They had arrangements, and a vibe and they’d laughed together, traveled together. They knew each other. I always thought that was cool. So, getting back to what I said earlier about Charlie Kohlhase and Either/Orchestra, and traveling. We all played together a lot and grew together a lot playing this stuff. I think it was really valuable to have, to obtain that kind of collective spirit.

You don’t seem to over write. Your music is simple in the best possible way, clear, not simple-minded. Why is that?

I like to see what kind of sparks can fly. It’s strictly a personal thing. There are people who write and do it great, and I enjoy that. But a lot of that is just ability. I think I’m just getting to the point where I can write more. I remember going to jazz concerts and seeing guys basically turning pages. I don’t want to see guys turn pages. I want to see guys play. I want my band to get it fast. I think the trick is to put a vibe on it immediately. That’s something that Dewey does so great. It’s so organic.

Any time a club owner says, you might want to play something this way, because the audiences here won’t like anything too far out. Or too straight. Or what ever. That’s something I never want to hear. I get calls from both sides. We think you’re music is a little too free, and then I get calls saying well we think you’re music is a little too structured. Too structured? Because we don’t play noise? Or because we play tunes with song structure or with a beat? To each his own. There’s nothing wrong with something having a beat. Or not. Either way.

I played a gig with Dewey here at the Jazz Standard and he had Sirone on bass. It was unbelievable; I learned so much from Sirone. By the third night I was calling everyone I knew to come down and hear us. We would play “Everything Happens to Me” and we didn’t really stick to the changes, but man, the feeling. And when we played one of Dewey’s blues pieces. People loved it. I was in Europe not long after that and was on a festival bill with Charles Gayle. Sirone was the bassist and he played that music beautifully. You know, they weren’t trying to imitate Albert Ayler, but it was in that vein. That’s the way Gayle hears music, that’s the way he has into the music.

One time Dave Douglas and I were talking, this was years ago now, and he said, some day Anthony Braxton is going to hear you and he’ll say, oh we have to play duets together. So I was at this Festival in Slovenia, and he came up afterwards. Check this bill out—Braxton solo, Dewey’s quartet, Threadgill’s Make a Move. And Braxton talked about the music so perceptively. He has such great ears, he heard absolutely everything that was happening on stage. Finally he says to me, we must play, we must play duets sometime. How could anyone play the saxophone and not hear what Braxton is doing or Coleman Hawkins. You know people say to me, oh I don’t dig Buddy Rich. Man, Buddy was awesome at what he was doing. You may not be into that bag, but when you hear it, you have to acknowledge it. So I think certain circles in music intersect, certain things converge and close together.

When you came to New York 10 years ago, where was the music happening?

There’s a place uptown called Smoke, it’s now called Augie’s. I met a lot of guys up there. I was doing a lot of sessions and meeting people. Visiones was a nice place because it wasn’t a $40 per person vibe and I could go there and hang out, sometimes after a gig of my own. I was able to hang out at Sweet Basil’s because I played there a lot. Cornelia Street. There was this little place Detour. That’s where I got the quartet together, it was the kind of place where I could always get any kind of gig I wanted. They’d give me a couple nights a month to work things out. And it was in front of people, which I think is essential.

Where and when did you first hook up with the Jazz Composers Collective?

I think I played with Ben first. We might have met through Peggy Stern. I played a session once at Jamie Baum’s house with Ron Horton and I brought a Herbie Nichols tune, “Shuffle Montgomery” so we hooked up over that.

You did a concert as an invited composer once, too, didn’t you?

Yeah. That was a really cool turning point. I have the quartet but with Sam Newsome and Joel and Yosuke. Pete McCann played on the concert, banjo and guitar, and Felice [Wilson’s wife, a violinist] played. I did the piece for audience and bass soloist that night. People had to either ask a question or answer one, clap or sing, and then at the end, either crumple the paper or rip it. The music was strong, but I really felt like I came in and I messed with the setting. It was fun. That was January 1997. Right after that we went on the road, but Sam couldn’t make it, so I asked Andrew. I loved the way Andrew was really interactive with Joel

We opened for Erika Badou last summer and played before 15,000 people. It was the Blind Boys of Alabama, Matt Wilson Quartet, and Erika Badou. It was cool. People were really puzzled, because we came on with this minimal stage set up, we put the banner up, and when we did “School Boy Thug” we all put wigs on. It was great for the camera because everyone could see up on the big screen. It was very MTV. Andrew stage dived at the end. He stage dived in Stockholm, too and almost killed himself.

I have to bring this up, but you are known for the humor in your shows.

I feel great about the humor thing. I get bagged on it every once in a while, but I don’t really care. I feel like if it’s allowed me to play in these different places, then that’s fine. We played Salt Lake City in November, and this is the kind of line up they had: Brubeck, John Pizzarelli. And man, they didn’t know what to think. Probably just as they were starting to hate something we were playing, we’d do something they liked—a ballad, or swing, or funk. Not that it was this jumping through hoops show. When it’s music that you really like to play, people know it. So humor is a way to connect. Because it was the Olympic year, we gave the presenters Olympic gold medals for bravery in jazz presentation. We did the ceremony, played the theme music, I did the kiss on the cheek thing. To me, if that means I can go and play music and break new ground for this festival, that had never had anything like us before. They already have us booked to come back in the fall of 2003. I feel like I have to be an ambassador for the music in some ways. That’s what I learned from Either/Orchestra and Charlie Kohlhase, if you present the music in a cool way, people are gonna dig it.

The humor has been a part of what I do ever since I first sat down at the drums. My brother and I would play duo concerts at local 4H meetings or PTA meetings, and we’d tell jokes. It was just drums and saxophone, so we knew we had to do something to make people listen. So we’d talk about the tunes, make jokes and funny noises, use props. I come from a theatrical family.

I’ve learned to cut down on talking about tunes. Because one night at the Old Office at the Knitting Factory, Joel, Andrew, and Yosuke brought a card table and hid it behind the stage. And when I started in on this explanation of the tune, people started laughing and I turned around they were playing cards behind me.

I think that if you can make people laugh, you can also make them cry. And if you keep them in the middle all night, you’re not doing anything either way. And I like to see emotion come from players. If it’s natural, it’s right, and that’s what I am. What’s wrong with smiling?

—New York City, March 22, 2002

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