My Favorite
Things (1960-1969) concludes a trilogy by Haynes' free-wheeling
"jazz-grass" string band Free Country, where he's joined by longtime
collaborators Hank Roberts (cello and vocals), Jim Yanda (guitar) and Drew
Gress (bass). Released over nearly two decades, the band's three albums
encompass nearly the entire history of American popular music in their own
irreverent, stripped-down fashion: their 1999 debut focused on pre-1900 tunes
from the Revolutionary War to Stephen Foster; The Way the West Was Won took on
the first half of the 20th century, with cowboy songs and Hollywood movie
soundtracks.
The
concluding chapter narrows the focus to a single decade, but what a decade:
over the course of two discs, the quartet takes on everything from John
Coltrane, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix to Burt Bacharach and the theme from
Star Trek - as Haynes himself puts it, "you've got everything from
schmaltz to the highest art."
Beyond the
fact that the '60s were the formative years for the band's members, the decade
is so ripe for extensive reinvention because, Haynes explains, "It was our
last cultural revolution. This is the last decade that everybody agrees on, so
this is a look at that psychedelic, diverse musical landscape. We face many of
the same questions now that we faced then, and it will be interesting to see if
there's another social revolution."
If there is,
Free Country is here to provide the soundtrack. With Roberts' wry baritone, the
knotty interaction of the strings, Haynes' loose-limbed, evocative percussion,
and a profound conversational spark forged over decades of collaboration and
the magical live sound born of recording in the round, the band captures the
spirit of the 1960s with the urgency of now. "The '60s had this great American
outpouring of creativity," Haynes says. "There was music that
everybody shared: Santana and The Beatles knew about A Love Supreme, from
Hendrix to what Bernstein did on Broadway, everything was changing. This band
focuses all those things into one sound."
On the
opposite end of the creative spectrum, No Fast Food, with Gress and NEA Jazz
Master David Liebman, was formed as an outlet for Haynes' compositions. The
trio's third album, Settings For Three, is their first not recorded in concert
but carries the electricity of their live performances into the studio. As the
straightforward title implies, the intent was simply to provide fodder for the
three musicians' estimable improvisational gifts, or as Haynes puts it, "I
wanted to give the guys some new settings to play in and also familiar
territory to romp in."
The opening
track, "El Smoke," takes its name and inspiration from a different
group - Haynes' collective quartet Joint Venture, where he and Gress are joined
by saxophonist Ellery Eskelin and trumpeter Paul Smoker. Of course, No Fast
Food make it utterly their own, ranging from the atmospheric to the rhapsodic
over the track's ten minutes. Haynes has written lyrics for the second tune,
"Joy," though they're not sung on the recording. No matter, as Lieb
and Gress seem to have absorbed the composer's poetic meaning, which looks at
the many different sides of joy, from the outwardly ecstatic to the more
profound and complicated.
"There's
joy as we know it," Haynes says, "but then there are all these other
shadow aspects of joy. I really appreciated how the guys played on it because
they reveal those different depths: not just that first expression but then all
the ripples that happen beyond that."
Speaking of
multi-faceted, the blues offers an endless supply of variations and
possibilities, and that's certainly the case with the wide-open "Blue
Dop." High-spirited and grooving in this rendition, it's a piece that
suggests myriad approaches and changes each time the trio launches into it. The
onomatopoeic "Whack Whap" shows off the mirth and humor that the three
can share, a wild avalanche of sounds and sonic surprises.
"Longer
Shorter" pays homage to Wayne Shorter, taking the legendary saxophonist's
composition "Pinocchio" as a starting point. The hard-driving,
sharp-angled tune nods toward Liebman's history with Miles Davis and Elvin
Jones while spotlighting his singular approach to the soprano. The ballad
"String Theory," which kicks off with Liebman conjuring fluttering
bird calls on flute, is a vehicle for Gress' poignant arco emoting. To close the
album, "Shramba" takes a different twist on the samba, progressing
through all twelve keys over Haynes' rollicking rhythmic bed.
Through the
simultaneous release of these two thrilling albums, Haynes provides a study of
two facets of his expansive musical personality. Both are wildly inventive and
thrive on the personal interactions of the musicians involved, but where My
Favorite Things is subversively accessible, Settings For Three is an enticing
challenge. "You've got one group where the universe is the option,"
Haynes says, "and another group where the microcosm is the universe.
They're very different kinds of playing yet you look for freedom in both."
A veteran
artist based in New York for 25 years, drummer/composer Phil Haynes is featured
on more than 70 releases from numerous American and European record
labels. His collaborations include many
of the seminal musicians of this generation: saxophonists Anthony Braxton,
Ellery Eskelin, and David Liebman; trumpeters Dave Douglas, Herb Robertson, and
Paul Smoker; bassists Mark Dresser, Ken Filiano, and Drew Gress; keyboard
artists David Kikoski, Denman Maroney, and Michelle Rosewoman; vocalists Theo
Bleckman, Nicholas Horner, and Hank Roberts; violinist Mark Feldman, and the
composers collective Joint Venture. His current projects include the romantic
"jazz-grass" string band, Free Country; the saxophone trio No Fast
Food; bluesy power organ unit The Hammond Brothers, featuring young B-3 master
Paul Bratcher; and the classic piano trio Day Dream, a cooperative with Yamaha
artist Steve Rudolph.
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