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| Ethan Iverson, Reid Anderson and Dave King at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis December 28, 2014 Photo (C) 2014 John Whiting |
Date of interview: December 5, 2017
Pamela Espeland: This will be your 18th Christmas at
the Dakota.
Dave King: That’s right.
PLE: What has it meant to you to play the Dakota every Christmas
for all these years?
DK: I think it’s really special for all of us. Growing up in the
area, we saw very seminal shows at the Dakota as teenagers, in the old location
at Bandana Square, and had all these memories. We started with maybe one night,
then Lowell gave us two nights and it started to build. It felt like such a
great accomplishment to be on the Dakota’s radar for a regular thing. They
treated us as a real deal band with a real buzz on it, even back then. Lowell
always gave us that respect.
[Note: Lowell
Pickett is the owner of the Dakota Jazz
Club in Minneapolis.]
Lowell has
really great ears. He knows the music. He knows jazz. He knows what he’s
booking, and for him to hear that in us before we had built an audience. … He
helped build the band. In those shows at the Dakota, we started to see the
potential of people really liking this music.
You’ve had the only annual residency at the Dakota in
this entire time.
That’s
correct. Lowell has renewed it with real commitment every year, and also brought
us back at other times off-season. We played once in the spring when a new
record came out. He’s helped us do shows at the Ted Mann and other places. He’s
brought us down to Arizona for shows at the Musical Instrument
Museum. So we always felt like Lowell was a part of our inner circle
ascension team. He believed in what we were doing and was proud of what we were
doing, and that meant a lot to us, because Lowell isn’t just a club owner.
We built our
Minnesota audience at the Dakota. There’s an assumption that The Bad Plus is a
Minneapolis band. That’s totally untrue. The band has always been based in New
York. I live in Minneapolis, but it’s a New York band. That’s where our first
shows were.
Many people consider you a Minneapolis band.
Happy Apple is a Minneapolis-based
band, to make the comparison. I think it’s important to remember that The Bad
Plus didn’t toil in Minneapolis for years and then come out. We played in New
York more, and we would come and play Minneapolis once a year. I just want to
give respect to the bands of Minneapolis that are part of this scene, that have
grown in this scene, that have dedicated their work to this scene.
It’s erroneous
to consider The Bad Plus a band that is Minneapolis-centric, even though we
were born and raised here. Reid [Anderson] and Ethan [Iverson] haven’t lived
here since high school. I moved away and then moved back and formed Happy Apple
in the ’90s. We’re proud of being from the Twin Cities. But 18 years in, when
somebody from London is still going “the Minneapolis-based The Bad Plus,” it’s
like … what???
What will we hear this year at the Dakota? Are you
doing anything different because it’s your final Christmas here as the original
group?
I’m not sure
if we’re doing anything different. Sometimes in the residencies we might repeat
a set, but of course they’re always different. We’ve been playing a few older
things lately that we hadn’t played in a long time. Nearing the end of Ethan’s
tenure in the band, we’ve been picking some tunes he would like to play, some
we haven’t played in a while. These will be some of the last times we play
them, because moving forward with Orrin
Evans, we’re doing Reid’s and my music.
We’re going to
try and make it thrilling for everyone, us as well, because this is a positive
new chapter for everybody. It’s not a sad thing. It’s a really positive thing.
I’m told that you came up with the name The Bad Plus.
What’s that about?
It’s about
nothing. Naming a band is a painful experience for the most part. In the early
2000s, there were a lot of “The” band names. I thought to myself – what if it
was sort of graphic, like Pop Art, where it sounds like it means something, or could
mean something, but it’s not really direct? It’s almost an oxymoron, but it’s
very simple and memorable and graphic. You can see it and you remember it. The
first logo was “The Bad” and then a plus sign, for a minute. It was based on
something simple and memorable that might mean something and might not, but it
really doesn’t. There’s no literal meaning to it.
Was there a runner-up for the band name?
There wasn’t. One
of the amazing things about this band – and it’s the same bringing Orrin in –
is there’s very little haranguing over decisions. It’s like, “That sounds good.
Done.”
That’s the way
the records have always been made. We make records so fast in this band, and it
continued with Orrin. We had almost the whole record tracked in one day, and
the next day we did a couple tunes and finished by the afternoon. That’s been
the way we’ve done it with Ethan forever.
When we did it
with Josh [“The Bad Plus Joshua Redman,” 2015], he couldn’t believe how fast it
went. At first, Josh was like, “I’d like to fix that” – not that Josh does a
ton of editing – and then he started to see what this thing is. It’s believing
in the first-thought, best-thought concept. There isn’t a lot of sitting around
and arguing. Everyone recognized each other’s strengths and we rolled with
that.
I attribute
that to keeping us together for 18 years, one of the longer-standing jazz
groups in history without a lineup change. There wasn’t a ton of “I don’t know
about that.” More like “That sounds good to me. Done. Why make it more
complicated? That sounds great.” That’s been the ethos of the band. Everybody
is personally responsible for dealing with certain things, and everybody has
their strengths and weaknesses, and we try to divvy it up that way.
 |
| Dave King, December 2017 (C) John Whiting |
We were very
surprised by the attention. We had a few years before then of noticing that any
time we played it felt strong and at ease, as if we didn’t have to try too hard
or talk about it too much. All those things that can bring down a band or
people working together.
We felt
excitement from the audiences even in the early days of not many people being
there. We played a three-night stand at the Old Office in New York in 2001. It
was a Friday, Saturday, Sunday. For Friday’s first set, there were about eight
people in the audience. By Sunday, it was totally sold out. That’s, like, 80
people, but it started with eight. And it wasn’t because we were playing Aphex
Twin. We had all these complex originals. We put in a couple of standards and a
couple pop tunes we were deconstructing. We just sort of felt – there’s something
here.
[Note: The Old
Office was part of the Knitting Factory in Tribeca, which closed in 2009.]
None of us
thought when we put this band together that we’d get a record deal. It just
sort of went, and we went with it. We didn’t go into Columbia telling them “We’ll
do anything to be on Columbia records!” We went in with an attitude like “We do
what we do, and we’re glad you like it, so we’re going to continue doing what
we do and you will leave us alone.” That sounds precocious, but we were in our
early 30s. We weren’t this 21-year-old hungry. We’d already done over ten years
in DIY land. So when we rolled in, we felt very strong.
[Note: The Bad
Plus’s record deal with Columbia began with “These Are the Vistas” in 2003.]
Where it was
going, we had no idea. But we were ready. And the guy who signed us, Yves Beauvais,
knew that. He realized, “We have to get out of the way. These guys are going to
do what they’re going to do.” We had an engineer, Tchad Blake, who was way
outside the jazz spectrum. We had an artwork concept, a series of paintings
from this artist in New Orleans [Stephen
Collier] I’d seen in the New American Paintings journal. One became the
Robonaut cover. We weren’t going to have some dumb jazz cover art from the
Columbia Records art department.
I didn’t know you also managed the art.
We have been
in control of every single art package, everything we have put out, ever. We
art directed every photo shoot. We delivered records the way we wanted them in
the order we wanted them in. For the second record, “Give” [2004], Matt Freisen,
the bass player for Halloween, Alaska, did a drawing and we used that. All the
graphics, all the aura was generated by the three of us.
Columbia did
the first three records. They were wonderful to us. They left us alone
completely. We haven’t had a regular record deal since Columbia. We’ve had
licensing and distribution deals with everyone including Sony, but we’ve owned
the records.
With “These Are The Vistas,” things kind of blew up,
and The Bad Plus was both praised and trashed. You were a big deal in the jazz
press and the mainstream press. What was that moment like?
First of all,
we were excited to be getting attention. Second, we knew that anytime there’s
some sort of attention given, especially in jazz, there’s going to be a side that
will try to bring you down. One thing we knew was that our heroes were
critically derided. So in many ways, we were in line with our heroes.
We were glad
also that some very straight-ahead jazz critics really liked us. Gary Giddins
was a fan. Stanley Crouch was a Bad Plus fan, believe it or not. The surprising
element of where criticism and praise were coming from lent itself perfectly to
the complex nature of The Bad Plus. It led to the story of what we believed
ourselves, that we were much more complex than huge, poppy jazz, or the rock
stars of jazz. You could show up [at a concert] and we’d play all this thorny
music and one or two rock tunes, and they were sometimes the most avant-garde
things we were doing.
Going through all
that, we were happy we were getting the chance to play music for people. Sure,
if you’re reading an article where somebody is saying you suck, your feelings
can’t not be hurt sometimes. You’d be lying to yourself if you were like, “I
don’t care.” Of course you care that somebody thinks your work is terrible, But
every artist goes through that. Go read old reviews of Thelonious Monk and John
Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. I’m not putting us in that league, but I’m saying
in our generation, that is comparable. Those were all critically derided
musicians. Today every reissue gets five stars, but at the time, they were
maligned. Ornette Coleman was maligned up until his death.
We weren’t an
easy conclusion. We were complicated. And we were ultimately seen as that, and
we outlasted a lot of that stuff. We haven’t seen much negativity about The Bad
Plus in years.
What are you leaving undone as the original trio? Is
there anything you haven’t done that you wanted to do, or anything you would’ve
done differently?
No. I don’t
have anything. I think we did more than I ever thought we would. From reworking
classical music to doing records with guests to our recent stuff with Bill
Frisell. … Making 13 records in 18 years. It’s unbelievable. And we might have
played more concerts, truly, than any jazz group in history without a lineup
change.
How many concerts did you play?
It’s been, like,
150 a year since 2003, and 2002 had at least 30 or 40, and 2001 had about 20.
So if you do the math, that’s far more concerts than any working jazz group in
history. It’s more than the Keith Jarrett trio ever played.
I’d be
interested in somebody pointing out what jazz group played more shows in
history without a lineup change. And I’m not saying that to be braggadocious.
That’s just being a road band. One reason we have the longevity we have and
built the crowds we built is that we got on the road and toured. We didn’t just
sit around playing a couple weeks here and a couple weeks there. We toured
every month since 2003. It’s rare that we’ve had over a month off since then.
So I think we
did what we wanted to do, and I think it’s the perfect time to have Ethan move
on to what he needs to do, and he has all the blessings in the world from me
and Reid.
Ethan’s classical background is pretty heavy and deep.
What about Orrin?
There’s this
idea that Ethan is the only classical guy in The Bad Plus. Reid has a classical
music degree from Curtis Institute, one of the most prestigious conservatories
in the world. Reid is someone who can get a high-level orchestra gig. Even the
way he writes – the way he uses triadic harmonies – is rooted in European
classical music.
Thank you for reminding me of Reid’s classical
background. Reid has been kind of the quiet Beatle.
And he is during
interviews. He typically wouldn’t say anything when people said, “Ethan, you’re
the classical guy. …” We would all kind of shift in our chairs, like – uh-huh.
What Orrin
brings that is very Bad Plus-ian is that Orrin is unique. He’s kind of a
natural weirdo, like we are. He’s not an easy conclusion. He’s a band guy. He
is also idiosyncratic. It’s hard to pin down where he’s coming from, which is
very Bad Plus-like. He has multiple dimensions, and classical music is in
there.
He and Ethan
are totally different pianists. But for me, the common bond of The Bad Plus is
more about what you do once you’re in there. [Hearing Orrin play] was an
instantaneous glow of joy coming out of the piano. He immediately brings a new
energy. We’re not expecting Orrin to be Ethan or fill Ethan’s shoes. We want
Orrin to be Orrin and join The Bad Plus and be a Bad Plus-ian kind of
philosopher.
Looking at jazz 18 years ago and jazz now, what
difference has The Bad Plus made in the sound of jazz, the attitudes about
jazz, and what people expect from jazz? What do you think your impact has been?
In my most
humble space, if I look back on the last 18 years, I think The Bad Plus
challenged the piano trio. We challenged it by being leaderless, which is very
rare in the music. We challenged it by having three composers – not one, not
two, but three. We have three independent voices that are equal.
We challenged
the dynamics of the piano trio the way they’ve never been pushed before, and we
challenged the oeuvre of the piano trio with some rock music that was not the
Beatles and the classic stuff that jazz musicians have taken on. The way we did
that was different, and it’s safer now for everybody to do it. We took a lot of
the heat for that. If you’re coming up today, it’s completely normal to take on
whatever music you want without anyone saying anything. Whereas, if you played
Blondie 18 years ago, that was different.
And Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.”
Yeah, and the
way we did that was different. We didn’t put a bunch of jazz chords on it and
go, “It’s a jazzy ‘Iron Man!’” We met it on different terms. So honestly, I
think our contribution is, we took every classic format of the piano, bass and
drums and we turned it upside-down. Along with people like Jason Moran and Craig Taborn, we shifted
it around and put it someplace else.
Who is The Bad Plus’s closest imitator?
I really don’t
know. Sometimes we hear people that we can tell have come up under what we’ve
doing. Sometimes we hear about a band. Sometimes when we hear somebody that
sounds a little bit like what we’re doing, or a lot like what we’re doing, and
you never hear them mention us, we know that’s a dead giveaway that they
checked us out. I’ve heard a few things by a band called GoGo Penguin from the UK. We’re in there,
man.
There’s no way
you can avoid a band that’s 18 years old with 13 records and has played every
festival on earth 15 times. There’s just no way. But whatever anybody wants to
take from it is fine. We know there wasn’t anybody sounding like us before us.
We do know that.
What is your favorite The Bad Plus album and why?
It’s
difficult. … I’m going to say “Suspicious Activity” [2005]. When I think of the
three Tchad Blake records, which I love – “These Are the Vistas” [2003], “Give”
[2004], and “Suspicious Activity” – I think “Suspicious Activity” has the most
tempered version of what we’re like live.
The first two are
very pushed and maxed. People would see us live and say, “You’re a lot softer
than we thought.” “Give” is an explosion of statement because it was the
follow-up to “These Are the Vistas” being so successful.
I like parts
of all these records still, when I listen to them, which isn’t very often. And
I like a lot of what we’ve done since. I like elements of everything, of
course. You’ve got to like what you’re doing, or else whatever, but I think for
me “Suspicious Activity” stands alone as a sonic statement that’s very unique.
And the writing – it’s all originals other than the “Chariots of Fire” cover,
which I think is a great cover and very intense. That’s the epitome of The Bad
Plus taking on some complex, emotional music, facing down the theme from
“Chariots of Fire.” I remember we all very gleefully agreed that it was a tune
we had to try and do very heavy and serious. It’s a great piece of music.
Ethan loved “Give”
the most, I would have to guess, because he talks about it a lot. But I think
Reid would agree that “Suspicious Activity” is up there. Or maybe Reid likes “Made
Possible” best because of some of the electronics. But for me, it’s “Suspicious
Activity.”
Reid said he loved all of them equally.
That’s very
Reid.
I will say
that the new one with Orrin, with all due respect to everything we’ve done, is
my favorite thing we’ve done in a long time. I think it has a very fresh energy
and a unique set of music on it, so I’m very happy with it
When I contacted you about this interview, I said I
wasn’t writing a breakup article. But I want to talk a bit about Ethan’s
leaving. When did you know that a change was coming?
You mean, when
did Ethan quit?
Did you know it was coming? Did you feel it needed to
come?
It definitely
needed to come. I had sensed it for a few years, even though every time we play,
everybody’s throwing down. It was never about the work not being good. The
records are strong. I believe in every one of the records we’ve made. But it
became increasingly frustrating between Reid and Ethan, and how they viewed
each other’s motives – not only in improvising together, but what their motives
were for the band and in the band.
The band not
having a leader has always been a sensitive subject. We’ve gone through many
years of leader-centric promoters and people thinking that Ethan is the leader
because he plays piano. And you understand that, but it’s a very difficult
thing to navigate, especially when you contribute at the level Reid Anderson
does. Reid Anderson is not just the bass player of The Bad Plus. Reid Anderson
is one of the most creative composers in jazz. He’s known for this, and he’s a
very strong personality even though he’s quiet, and he has a very serious,
strong vision. Possibly the strongest of the three of us.
I think they
started to distrust each other’s motives. I kind of became the middle child,
which is how I fit into life most of the time anyway; I’m the middle child in
my own family. I just wanted those two to clear the air with each other. They
weren’t yelling at each other or being angry like that. It was more like a
smoldering kind of distrust. And with Ethan getting more and more into his blog
[Do the M@th], and being out in the
world doing that, and then playing with us, we would feel like Ethan was not
100% in there emotionally. … When you’re a jazz critic and you’re a musician,
that can be a sticky place.
So I felt for
a few years that it could happen at any time. Either Reid would want to remove
Ethan from the band, or Ethan would leave the band. When Ethan quit finally, it
was not a surprise at all. And it wasn’t a huge, dramatic thing.
How did it happen, and when? Reid said January.
It happened
last November, right before we were going to play a show at the Rough Trade record store for the
release of “It’s Hard” [2016]. He quit when we were driving there in the car. He
said, “I think it’s time for me to move on,” and we accepted that and mulled it
over for a few months and talked about if we’re going to continue or not. We
weren’t quite sure.
Then we went
through the holidays, and Reid and I got together and did a lot of
soul-searching. We came to the conclusion that why should we end The Bad Plus
because Ethan wants to? Ethan’s not the leader of The Bad Plus. So we thought
about Orrin and Reid called him up and put it flatly to him, and he said yes
immediately.
So that’s how
it was. And then we told Ethan last January on tour and he said okay. And we
said – what do you want to do? Do you want to finish out the whole year? And he
said yep.
So we’ve just
been playing all year. It’s been fine. We’ve been out on the road, doing what
we do. We’ve been playing and I get along fine with Ethan and always have. And
I’m happy for him. I’m happy he’s going to do some other stuff, and I’m happy
for Reid and I. And I know Reid is very relieved, and we’ve been working really
hard with Orrin this year and it’s very exciting. This music is alive for sure.
When did you start working with Orrin?
In the spring.
I’d go to New York, we’d rehearse a bit, then Reid and he were getting
together, then we all brought in new music to some rehearsals in the summer
here in August, and then we tracked in September. We’ve been doing a lot of
work. We also rehearsed a bunch before tracking in September and getting the
whole book ready for beginning in St. Louis, and we’ve got a bunch of the older
music going, and we have a whole new record.
[Note: The Bad
Plus has a decade-long tradition of playing several nights at Jazz St. Louis, formerly Jazz at the Bistro, in
January. They’ll debut the new group there.]
Can you talk a bit more about the new record?
I think it’s
the strongest thing we’ve done in a long time.
Where did you record it?
In New York at
Brooklyn Audio, where we’ve done several records. We used the same engineer,
Peter Rende. The Bad Plus is a collective, and [the new record] sounds like
three collective-thinking creative people playing together in a language that
everyone understands.
We’ve known
Orrin for more than 20 years. When we tracked it, it went like that – bam!
Easy. Zero stress. There was a bit of stress getting it together because we
don’t live in the same city. Orrin lives in Philadelphia. So you’re adding an
extra element of reuniting on the road, finishing up this year with Ethan, and
preparing all that new music. But then, when we got in the studio, it just felt
so right, so very affirming. It was like – yep, this deal’s good.
I can tell from listening to some of Orrin’s earlier
music that he knows The Bad Plus.
He’s been into
The Bad Plus forever. He was one of our earliest supporters.
Is Orrin writing new music for the band?
Absolutely. He
brought two tunes into the new record.
The ethos of
group music has been our message since the beginning. Here we’re really living
the message. We’re switching the pianists and it sounds like The Bad Plus.
Whoever brings in music, it gets treated like the sound of this band. Everybody
is treating the music like they wrote it, and everyone’s voice is equally
heard.
When Joshua
Redman played with us [and contributed two songs to “The Bad Plus Joshua
Redman”], we still sounded like The Bad Plus. We didn’t sound like Joshua
Redman’s band. Orrin fit in beautifully with that construct.
It should be
stated that we never had tryouts to fill Ethan’s place. We thought we would
continue if Orrin wanted to do it, because we just knew he was the one. So it
was a simple question: if Orrin wanted to join The Bad Plus or not. If Orrin
wanted to join The Bad Plus, we would continue The Bad Plus.
Are you thinking about calling the new album “Never
Stop II”? Reid said that was on the table.
Yeah, that’s
the name of the record.
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