Scenes from Friday's opening at Raymond Gallery

Friday, Nov. 15, 2013: Take a small gallery on Raymond Avenue in St. Paul, add two shows - one by gallery owner Joseph Brown of artists' portraits and lighted inflatable sculptures, one by legendary Minnesota potter Warren MacKenzie - send out e-cards, dangle the chance to buy one of MacKenzie's pieces (his works are so collectible they're rationed, like sugar during wartime), open the door and stand back. It was wall-to-wall people including many artists. Off the top of my head: Bob Briscoe, Mary Easter, Dick and Debbie Cooter, Richard Stephens, Guillermo Cuellar, Tressa Sularz, "Media Mike" Hazard, Wayne Potratz, Michael Norman. Madness!

Joseph Brown

Warren MacKenzie 

"Media Mike" Hazard, caught in the act 

The crowd!

The crowd!

All photos (C) 2013 by John Whiting

A night at the Artists' Quarter: Bryan Nichols Quintet

Bryan Nichols

Saturday, Nov. 9, 2013: Bryan Nichols, piano; Michael Lewis, saxophones; Brandon Wozniak, saxophones; James Buckley, bass; JT Bates, drums

From the looks on the musicians’ faces, the responses of the SRO crowd, and the comments we heard later in the week from people who had been there, Saturday was a very good night for the Bryan Nichols Quintet. It was the second night of what’s likely to be Nichols’ final weekend at the Artists’ Quarter in St. Paul, since the club is scheduled to close January 1.

On the first night, the quartet (Nichols, Wozniak, Buckley, Cory Healey on drums) played music by Duke Ellington. Saturday’s set list was all original compositions by Nichols. “Where else can you go,” he asked rhetorically on Friday, “and tell a club owner, ‘I can play the weekend, but with two different bands, and we’ll do two completely different things,’ and the owner says, ‘Sure, that’s great’?”

Nichols has been coming to the AQ to listen and play since he was a teenager. He and AQ owner Kenny Horst have a relationship that reaches back almost 20 years. At the close of Friday’s second set, after the quartet played Ellington’s “Do Nothing ’Til You Hear from Me,” he took a moment to talk about the AQ, which he called, in all sincerity, “this hallowed place.”

Nichols is a terrific young pianist, one of the best I’ve heard, and the most consistently interesting, surprising and satisfying. His compositions are varied and individually intriguing. He’s developing his own sound as a composer, but his sound is a house with many rooms. His music can be melodic and dissonant, sharp-edged and spikey, bluesy and laid-back. He writes a beautiful ballad. 

There’s an overarching sense of confidence and optimism in his music; the title of the first (and so far only) quintet album, released in 2011, is “Bright Places,” which fits perfectly. His compositions tease you and draw you in. Some have clearly hearable structures, others seem completely free, until you notice that two or three of the musicians are playing long, elaborate, rhythmically tricky passages in unison. 

His solos are formidable, and he leaves room for everyone else to take the spotlight; since they all have much to say, your focus shifts naturally from the piano to one or both saxes, to Buckley on the bass, to Bates on the drums.

It’s music with which, if you’re willing, you become totally engaged and responsive, whether Nichols is doing two completely different things with each hand, or Lewis is shouting “Ahhhh!” during one of his fiery solos, or Bates is running the tip of a stick across a cymbal, or Buckley is playing one of his song-like, lyrical passages.

“When I put this band together,” Nichols joked at one point during the evening, “I wanted the strongest people I know with the fragilest egos.” Paging through my notes from the evening, I find these: “It must be amazing to write music for these players and hear what they do with it.” “It’s possible, even highly likely that this is one of the best quintets anywhere.” “I feel lucky to be here.”

Saturday's setlist (courtesy Bryan Nichols)

Bryan Nichols

Michael Lewis

Brandon Wozniak

James Buckley

JT Bates

The quintet

Wozniak, packed up and ready to go, spends a few moments
at the bar with Davis Wilson, the AQ's MC and doorman

On Sunday I spoke with Nichols about the Artists’ Quarter, what it has meant to him as a musician and a person, and where we go, if anywhere, when it closes.

PLE: What is your history with the Artists’ Quarter?

Bryan Nichols: When I was 14 or 15, I was introduced to jazz through the MITY program [Minnesota Institute for Talented Youth]. That’s where I met Mike Lewis; his father Greg was a teacher there. I started seeking out jazz clubs. I knew about the Dakota in Bandana Square [its original location, before moving to Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis]. And I heard about the Artists’ Quarter, a basement club on Jackson Street [before moving to the Hamm Bldg.]. I started checking out shows down there. I saw Power Circus with Dean McGraw and Anthony Cox. [Pete Whitman’s sextet] Departure Point. Happy Apple in all of its initial iterations.

When I was a sophomore in high school, Kenny started putting on these Saturday afternoon jam sessions. I didn’t even have my license yet, so a friend drove me. Kenny would pay a house piano and bass player and people would show up and sit in. That’s how I met [bassist] Michael O’Brien. One time he wasn’t there and Kenny had gotten Adam Linz to play. Adam had given half his money to JT [Bates] so there would be a decent drummer. That’s how I met those guys.

I’d go to gigs and those Saturday jam sessions. I wouldn’t miss a Saturday if I could. It was something I planned around. I’d get to play with people and learn the tunes they played. A lot of the connections I initially made in the jazz world came through there. Kenny was always around on those days, and he was nice. I’d talk to him, he’d talk to me, and there was that intimidation factor, but he was always cool.

The Dakota was nice, too, but the musicians seemed inaccessible. It was also a restaurant, and you were supposed to order food. It was more expensive and higher-class. At the AQ, the musicians were accessible and approachable. You could talk to them. People went there specifically to hear the music. To me, that was cool, that the music could be the focal point.

By age 18 or 19 I was sitting in on some people’s gigs, and going to gigs by people I knew – Happy Apple, Motion Poets. Eventually, in 2000 or maybe 1999, I got my own weekend there with a group we called the Melodious Thugs. It was me and Dave King and Mike Lewis and Adam Linz playing Thelonious Monk music. I don’t think I knew it at the time, but that was an arrival point for me. It was something. It was great.

I started playing there in the summers when I was home from college. I’d come home on winter breaks and play there. I moved to Chicago in 2001, and when I moved back in 2005, Kenny started calling me for gigs. I became sort of a regular guy there, a junior member of the scene, and I’ve played there ever since. I’d get occasional sideman stuff. Then Kenny started giving me weeknights with my own group, and calling me to play with national people who were touring without a rhythm section. People like Eric Alexander, Bob Sheppard, Bill Goodwin, Kendra Shank.

I had my CD release there [in 2011]. Unfortunately, that was the same night The Bad Plus played their Stravinsky show at the Loring, but still, it had to be there. That place has been part of my life for 19 years.

It’s kind of crazy to think I’ve been playing the AQ for more than half of my life. From jam sessions when I was 15 to really playing there at 19, occasional weekends when I was home from college at 19, 20, 21, then more regular gigs when I moved back at 25. It’s been a minute.

What was the first thing you thought when you heard that the AQ will close at the end of the year?

I guess the first thing was shock and disbelief, because it’s such an institution. The AQ! It’s always been around – it has to always be around.

I was sad for Kenny because no one wants to be forced out of their business. Then sad for myself because that’s where I play. I played there 30 times in 2012. It’s a place I love to play, where I put my bands. One of the only music-focused venues in the city.

Then I was sad for the community of musicians and listeners. Right now, the AQ is THE place for so many bands. My quintet, Atlantis Quartet, the Dave King Trucking Company, Chris Bates’ band Red 5. It’s the only place where Dave Karr leads a gig. Where you can hear Chris Lomheim, Dave Graf and Brad Bellows’ Valves Meet Slide band, Eric Gravatt.

It’s the only place I know there will be listeners in the audience as well as musicians, and I’ll have a communal hang with people I don’t get to see all the time. That’s irreplaceable – the fact that this is the place for us all to be a community. I can go on a Tuesday night, hear musicians, and see musicians. People know me and I know them.

There’s no other place in town where you have a community space specifically for jazz. It took 30 years to build that. It’s possible that parts of it can move to another manifestation, but all 100 percent of it won’t go. So I’m feeling sadness for all of these things, all of these losses. Plus there’s the evolution of this music over time that has happened there. That’s another loss.

What do you wish would happen, or hope will happen?

I would love to see someone open a jazz club, or jazz/creative music club – however it’s defined – possibly in a different location. Whether or not they choose the AQ name. In a way, I would almost prefer a different name. Let that place’s history be that place’s history. I would love to see a new place for jazz and creative music that has a stage, a piano, and a focus on music. And a sense of music-centered community.

What do you see as the options for jazz in the Twin Cities when the AQ closes?

Icehouse and Zeitgeist’s Studio Z. Those are the only other options for interesting, music-focused jazz. Icehouse will book a few more jazz things. They’re looking at this as a chance to expand their jazz offerings.

Another reason for special sadness about the AQ is it’s one of the only places with a piano. Icehouse doesn’t have a piano; Studio Z does. So when the AQ closes, it breaks down to one place that has the musical instrument I play. The options are super-limited. I hope someone sees that as an opportunity.

_________

All photos (except the setlist) (C) 2013 John Whiting

The luminous Lynne Arriale at the Dakota

Lynne Arriale

Sunday, November 3, 2013: Lynne Arriale, piano; Gordy Johnson, bass; Dave Schmalenberger, drums

The occasion: a benefit for the Dakota Foundation for Jazz Education. The draw: the gifted and elegant Lynn Arriale, who rarely comes to Minnesota.

With area musicians Gordy Johnson and Dave Schmalenberger, Arriale played two sets of standards, originals, and pop tunes made jazzy; her version of Blondie's "Call Me" stands alone and sounds as if were written for jazz all along.

Among the many songs we heard were "A Night in Tunisia," "Wouldn't It Be Loverly," Arriale's own "Yada, Yada, Yada," and a spirited "Yellow Bird," during which Arriale kept delaying the ending, returning again and again to the final two measures, changing them up, teasing Johnson and Schmalenberger.

Arriale's touch is exquisite and varied. Sometimes a silver hammer, sometimes a feather, always precise and expressive. I wish we had more chances to hear her live.

Dave Schmalenberger

Gordy Johnson

Schmalenberger, Arriale, Johnson

Arriale, Johnson, Schmalenberger

 All photos (C) 2013 by John Whiting.

A night at the Artists' Quarter: Dave King Trucking Company

Dave King

Saturday, November 2, 2013: Dave King, drums; Erik Fratzke, guitar; Brandon Wozniak, tenor saxophone; Adam Linz, bass

Some musicians are better talkers than others. Some say everything through their music, and words are their second language. Others aren’t comfortable conversing with strangers or addressing crowds. Still others speak mostly music-school jargon or street, a challenge for those of us who aren’t fluent.

And then there’s Dave King, drummer, composer, bandleader, and raconteur. Not only can he talk about music with clarity and wit, he can riff on pretty much anything else that pops into his head, which, if neural circuitry lit up, would look like Times Square at midnight. He improvises with words as fluidly and swiftly as he does with sticks and brushes. And he doesn't repeat himself. I've never heard him tell the same story twice.

King came to the Artists’ Quarter this weekend for the release of “Adopted Highway,” the second album by his band the Dave King Trucking Company. (The first, "Good Old Light," came out in 2011.)

Davis Wilson
"My lords and ladies! Please moderate your personal chatter!"

Davis Wilson, the AQ’s bearded doorman and master of ceremonies, introduced King to the crowd as “the greatest existential sit-down comic in jazz,” and then they were off: King on drums, Erik Fratzke on electric guitar, Brandon Wozniak on tenor saxophone, Adam Linz on bass. 

The band's second tenor saxophonist, Chris Speed, was absent. He appears on both albums but lives in NYC and only occasionally flies out when the Trucking Co. performs here.

Erik Fratzke

The band has a group sound all its own, created by five musicians who all have strong, well-formed individual voices: King from his years in Happy Apple, The Bad Plus, 12 Rods, Buffalo Collision, the Gang Font, and others; Fratzke from Happy Apple, Gang Font, Zebulon Pike, and dates with Reid Anderson (The Bad Plus) and Bill Carrothers; Wozniak with a long list of bands including the Atlantis Quartet, Zacc Harris Group, Chris Bates Quintet, Bryan Nichols Quintet, and Adam Meckler Quintet; Linz with Fat Kid Wednesdays, Meckler, Nichols, collaborations with Ellen Lease, Pat Moriarty, and Phil Hey, solo projects, and gigs with visitors including Japanese percussionist Tatsuye Nakatani.

The Trucking Co. benefits from all of that collective experience in performing, ensemble work, and composing. Most of the tunes on both albums were written by King; Fratzke contributed one tune to "Good Old Light" and another to "Adopted Highway," and Linz wrote one for "Highway." The music on both albums is complex, fiercely energetic, serious, playful, and also subtle and lyrical. It’s jazzy, bluesy, folk-and rock-inflected. In among the shifting, tangled rhythms are grooves as wide as highways, engaging melodies, infectious hooks, and strong solos.  

Dave King

On Saturday, the Trucking Co. played two sets of music drawn from both albums. The first set was more angular and aggressive, the second softer, more laid-back. Here's the set list, to the best of my abilities to reconstruct it:

Do You Live in a Star City?
You Can't Say "Poem in Concrete"
Mexico City Nights
Ice Princess
?? [King: "A song for my son's goldfish, who swam upside-down]
I Am Looking for Strength
Parallel Sister Track
(break)
Tender Is the Night
Soft Pack
This Is a Non-Lecture
(encore)
Bronsonesque

Salted among the music, sometimes explaining the music (or not), were King's tales and commentaries. Here's a selection:

This is an art collective, it’s not even a band. It’s a post-modern art experience. This is not a song, it’s a tone poem. 

We played “Mexico City Nights” for the first time last night, and I noticed a couple of errors. Fratzke said, “We are not going out like that,” so we argued, then replayed it.  

“I Am Looking for Strength” is part of a declarative trilogy. The first part is “I Will Live Next to the Wrecking Yard.” The one we’re working on now is “I Will Invest in Red Lobster Again.” 

[After a sudden, brief detour into the Doors:] Jim Morrison! He’s heavy. I love reading poetry by 20-year-olds. The most asinine lyrics in the history of the Earth! “I checked out Robert Lowell. I’m not that good, but I look good.” 

My dad was the neighbor in “Home Improvement.” He thought Tim Allen was a troglodyte. [Dwayne King, Dave's father, biggest fan, and purveyor of CDs and records, is almost always in the house when Dave plays and features in many of his jokes.] 

[On Linz’s new composition, “Tender is the Night”:] Jackson Brown and Adam were roommates in college, at the University of Minnesota Morris. Jackson Brown got a phrenology degree, Adam’s was in horticulture.

The AQ was SRO, as it was Friday night, as it has been most Fridays and Saturdays since owner Kenny Horst announced that the club will close on January 1. Last week King wrote a piece for City Pages about the AQ and its importance to the Twin Cities music scene and his own career as a musician. King, the frequent kidder, was as serious as a heart attack. 

Brandon Wozniak

The loss of the AQ will be a major blow. It's the only full-time jazz club in the Twin Cities and for miles around. It looks and feels and acts like a jazz club. Black walls are covered in posters and photos of jazz musicians; one wall is devoted to album covers. There's a long bar ringed by stools and small round tables on the floor with not very comfortable chairs. No craft cocktails and no food, except for Taco Nights, when a local caterer brings in a crock pot, a stack of corn tortillas, and a homemade sheet cake. Davis at the door, ready with a greeting and story, and an old sofa where people gather. And musicians in the audience, always.

The music is unlike anything you'll hear anywhere else within driving distance, except at a few other places around the cities, where you'll hear it far less often. It's real music, immediate, not manipulated, smoothed, autotuned, or fixed in the mix, played by people who would play even if no one showed up, which sometimes happens. You never know what you’ll hear, and you never hear the same thing twice. There’s the thrill of immediacy, the feeling that we're all in this together, fellow travelers, taking risks.

The music is not only live, it’s alive. Breathing, kicking, laughing, crying, being beautiful, acting stupid, finding truth, telling lies, struggling to be understood, like all of us. It's not about ratings, numbers, polls, shareholders, or whether teenagers like it. It's not about being popular. For a moment called the Swing Era, jazz was popular, and that was almost its undoing. When you're popular, there's nowhere to go but down, and soon you're wearing a toe tag whether you're dead or not. 

Adam Linz, badass

Jazz today is often called dead, irrelevant, or in decline. If jazz were dead, there wouldn't be so many kids studying jazz at colleges and universities. Those are not kids whose parents made them go to jazz school. Nobody's parents do that. Jazz is a terrible career choice. With very few exceptions, no one gets rich playing jazz.

And yet, many people play it. They sacrifice to play it. Why? You might ask the same of those of us who listen to jazz. We heard it on the radio, found a parent's or grandparent's record collection, went to a concert out of curiosity or on a dare, or stumbled somewhere across Miles or Monk, Metheny or Anthony Braxton and fell in love. Maybe this happens less these days, but it still happens, and it will keep happening until all of our choices are made for us by algorithms.

The Artists' Quarter is a word-of-mouth place and always has been. That’s part of its sustainability problem – no advertising – but also part of its charm. Someone has to tell you about the AQ. I'm telling you now. If you haven't yet been there, time is running out to have an endangered experience.

The band, minus Chris Speed

All photos (C) 2013 John Whiting.

Ginger Baker at the Dakota: Why?

Ginger Baker by John Whiting

Tuesday, October 15, 2013: Ginger Baker, drums; Pee Wee Ellis, tenor saxophone; Alec Dankworth, bass; Abbas Dodoo, percussion

The title of last night’s encore, “Why?” is a good question to ask about Ginger Baker. Why, at 74 and in poor health, is the former Cream and Blind Faith drummer, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, cantankerous subject of the 2012 documentary "Beware of Mr. Baker,"  hellraiser (his word, and the title of his autobiography), and one of the worst interviews ever, on the road again?

In part, because he needs the money. He recently told Rolling Stone that was one of the reasons he was touring (“You have to earn money to live, don't you?”); he told the British newspaper The Mirror that a woman he hired in Africa as his personal accountant had stolen from him. He took her to court and won, but he lost his polo ranch in South Africa and all of his horses. Baker now lives in England again, with his fourth wife and stepdaughter.

And because he enjoys the music. Why jazz, of all things? Baker has always loved jazz. He started out as a jazz drummer in the 1960s and brought its colors and complexities along when he moved into rock and superstardom. In the 1990s, he formed the Ginger Baker Trio with Bill Frisell and Charlie Haden and later created a group called the Denver Jazz Quintet-to-Octet (DJQ2O) with trumpeter Ron Miles and bassist Artie Moore. He played with Elvin Jones, Max Roach, and Art Blakey. His double-bass-drum kit is a direct descendant of Louis Belleson’s. 

So Baker is not just another former rock (or pop, or country) star who decides to make a comeback through jazz. He’s been a jazz musician all along. In fact, don’t call him a rock drummer. He prefers jazz drummer.

Baker named his latest group Ginger Baker’s Jazz Confusion, and it’s a real jazz band, with roots in America, England, and Africa.

Pee Wee Ellis by John Whiting

Schooled by Sonny Rollins, tenor saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis played with James Brown, Maceo Parker, and Van Morrison. Bassist Alec Dankworth is the son of the great British jazz vocalist Cleo Laine and jazz saxophonist/bandleader John Dankworth. Ghanaian percussionist Abbas Dodoo has worked with Baker for many years; Baker affectionately introduced the big man as “my bodyguard.” He played congas, cowbell, and shekere (beaded gourd).

Alec Dankworth by John Whiting

Anyone in the audience at the Dakota who was hoping for some “White Room” or “Sunshine of Your Love” was put straight by the first song of the night, Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints,” a jazz classic newly infused with African polyrhythms. The rest of the set brought blues and world music and more jazz.

Baker ended each song by telling us what he had played and introducing the next. The set list:

“Footprints” (Wayne Shorter)
“Twelve and More Blues” (Pee Wee Ellis)
“Ain Temouchant” (written by Baker, who introduced it with this story: “I wrote this in the Atlas Mountains in the north of Algeria, where I managed to drive my car at very high speed off a mountain and land on an olive tree in a little village.” It appears on the 1994 Ginger Baker Trio album “Going Back Home.”)
?? (I didn’t catch the name, but Pee Wee threw in a little “Caravan”)
“Ginger Spice” (Ron Miles; from the 1999 DJQ2O album “Coward of the Country”)
break
“Cyril Davies” (Baker; a blues from “Coward of the Country”)
“St. Thomas” (Sonny Rollins)
“Aiko Biaye” (Yoruba folk song from Lagos)
encore: “Why?”

Abbas Dodoo by John Whiting

How was the show? It was good. Very good, and often thrilling. Heavy on the drums, but that’s what everyone came to hear. The legendary, terrifying Ginger Baker, live! Especially when Baker and Dodoo fell into a groove, it was all about the drums, pounding and interweaving those intricate rhythms in among the thunder of Baker’s two basses. Ellis eschewed the funk for which he’s famous and stuck to straight-ahead jazz, making sounds that probably surprised some of his fans in the house: sustained notes, like singing.

It was direct and serious and down to business. In some ways, it was more like a rock concert than many jazz performances; players took solos, but they were short, with no out-there improvisations that can make those unfamiliar with jazz squirm in their chairs. Last night won’t go down in history as the most transcendant or revelatory jazz concert ever, but it was one that a broad cross-section of music lovers – jazz fans, rock fans, ’60s survivors and hipsters – could appreciate and enjoy.

Touring is not easy for Baker. He has COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), caused by smoking, and he still smokes; he says it helps him deal with the pain of another serious medical condition that plagues him, degenerative osteoarthritis of the spine. He told The Mirror that “drumming is agony.” He doesn’t launch into five- or ten-minute solos anymore, but neither does he hold back, even when it hurts, and from what he says, it always hurts. 

Ginger Baker by John Whiting

At the Dakota, he took a 20-minute break midway through because he needed it. When he talked to the crowd after playing a tune, he was short of breath. When he stood up, Dodoo moved in to help him walk off stage. “Let me recover a bit,” he said before the break. “I’m getting too old for this.” When Baker returned, after playing “Cyril Davies” (what he called “the lull before the storm”) and then “St. Thomas” (the storm), he said, “I’m far too old for this. It’s not a joke, it’s serious!”

It was Dodoo who urged us to call him back for the encore. “Make some noise!” he shouted. “Say Gin-gah Ba-kah! Gin-gah Ba-kah!” We did. When the band returned, Baker introduced the encore with, “Terrible things have happened to me in the past, and they keep happening right up until today. And always, when these things happen, I ask a question: Why?” And we sang along: Why? Why? Why? 

All photos by John Whiting.