LEEF-tastic

Matt Miller has a new review of LEEF in October's All About Jazz-NY. It is conveniently coordinated with our October 19 show at the Bell House (with Darcy James Argue's Secret Society and Travis Sullivan's Bjorkestra).

It’s hard to take anything about the Industrial Jazz Group for granted. Even the LA-based ensemble’s name is misleading to the point that its leader, Andrew Durkin, feels the need to address it in the header of the group’s website. “So we’re not really industrial. Were the Beatles really insects?” As explanations go - humorous as they might be - it rings a little hollow. It does, however, speak volumes about IJG and its singular approach to music-making. Just when you think you’ve got it, when the form becomes clear, the beat insatiable, a song implodes and you’re left to sift through the wreckage or a freely improvised saxophone solo is followed by a foray into ‘70s lounge rock. The result is rarely anything less than thrilling.

Recorded at a series of live concerts from 2004-07 and interspersed liberally with studio material, Leef is an unrelenting amalgam of shtick, pop, cabaret and classical that comes off equal parts Bernstein, Zappa and Mingus. Durkin has a hand in every aspect of Leef, including the live, often improvised performances that make up the album’s core. The result is a so-called “hybrid approach”, where live sections are touched up with studio material and entire passages from studio sessions are inserted into live material. Durkin attempts to tally the ratios in the album’s notes and comes to a rough average 90% live material/10% studio, disregarding the entirely live “Don’t Let ‘em Getcha” and the studio recording of “Fuck The Muck (part one)”. Thus Leef has the spontaneity of live performance along with the lightning transitions and rounded edges of a studio work. Add to that a beguiling uniqueness, humor and beauty and you have a great record by an incredible ensemble.

The White-on-Yellow Album

A new review of LEEF can be found here (scroll down a little), c/o our old friend Joe Taylor.

Did I mention how this album makes for a great stocking stuffer? Aside from the many ways to purchase it online, it is also now available in a brick and mortar context at this Rhino Records (thanks, Tany.)

I wish I spoke Spanish

That way I could have a better understanding of this review of LEEF, just published in the Argentine jazz webzine El Intruso.

Still and all, the google translator turned up this paragraph, which will have to go into my personal hall of fame:

Andrew Durkin, who despite having a doctorate in English literature are self pseudo-intellectual, not designed this maze called the Industrial Jazz Group for ridicule or leave us hanging from a branch like a chimp or for us to eat the boogers in the fetal position while we admire his and spark insight. On the contrary, it invites us to immerse ourselves in this sea of complications in the spirit of that sharpens the wit from a playful perspective. And I see no evil.

Awesome.

Anyway, big thanks to Sergio Piccirilli for giving this poor bastard of a record some attention and love.

Tour tales no. 1: The wages of profanity and political commentary

The Ws were always the kind of fan that any group would be honored to have. When they were still living in Bakersfield, they came to every show, talked us up to all their friends, bought all our records and swag, and even filmed many of our performances. (They would always follow up by sending me carefully annotated DVDs adorned with artwork of their own devising.)

Actually, for a few of our early Bakersfield shows, the Ws comprised nearly half of the audience. Yet they stuck with us regardless of the sort of turnout we got: they were just as enthusiastic about the "tumbleweed gigs" as they were about, for instance, our performance in front of thousands of people at the 2007 Bakersfield Jazz Festival.

So when we arrived at Eugene's Cozmic Pizza last Wednesday evening and found the Ws waiting for us (they had driven 40 minutes from Corvalis, the Oregon city where they had coincidentally moved in the last year), I was, to put it mildly, flattered beyond belief. Initial pleasantries were exchanged (the Ws took pride in knowing several members of the group by name) and we all prepared for the evening's concert.

Once things got rolling with our opening tune (our tribute to Keith Jarrett, which you will remember from the last tour), I sort of lost all perspective on the audience (as I tend to do when I go into conductor mode). So it wasn't until after the end of the first set that I discovered that the Ws were gone. And it wasn't until I had had a chance to speak with Matt (who, as usual, went way beyond the call of duty on this tour and worked the door for pretty much all of our shows) that I learned what had driven the Ws away.

In a nutshell, the Ws were offended by 1. our "filthy" language and 2. our anti-McCain song (which, I probably should have mentioned earlier, is called "Civility").

No, really! Apparently it is possible for someone who has only heard our earlier albums (which feature such wholesome tunes as "Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboy-Presidents," "Full-on Freak," and "Baby, Shake That Thing") to assume that we are an innocuous, god-fearing, Republican outfit.

What can I say? On the one hand, I'm sort of proud that something we created actually pissed someone off enough to make them walk out of a show. I mean, isn't the ultimate point of political art that it have some sort of observable impact? That it move beyond merely noble-sounding lip-service? Isn't that the quality that purists long for when they (however bombastically) say that jazz (or punk, or whatever) is no longer a "socially relevant" music?

On the other hand, if that's a victory of sorts, it feels kinda hollow. I mean, this group is in no position to be losing fans -- particularly the sort of fans who remind one that the root of of the word "fan" is "fanatic." I genuinely liked the Ws, and I'm just as irritated by the fact that they failed to see the "offense" that they took as an opportunity for dialogue about art / politics as I am by the fact that their "fanhood" was very hard-earned over a long period of time. The situation sort of cracks me up and depresses me at the same time.

Not that I have any regrets (whatsoever) about the aesthetic / political directions the band has taken in recent years. The charts are what they are: the truest music I know how to make at the moment. I can't do much about that -- and in fact in some ways I feel that it is only recently that the group has managed to find its own voice. Why on earth would I want to dial that back?

* * * * *

Two addenda:

1. We had good reasons to edit our final two shows of this tour. Our PDX hit was an all-ages affair attended by many youngsters 10 and under -- so while we left the John McCain song in place, we had to creatively tone down the language in some of the other tunes, which truthfully added a whole other level of comedy to the experience (for instance, in "Big Ass Truck" we substituted the phrase "fiddlesticks" for "what the fuck"). And moments before our Yakima show -- the final night of the tour -- I got the talk from the series' artistic director: "Yakima is a pretty conservative town, they're not going to go for anything with the word 'fuck' in it, etc., etc." Again, we creatively toned down some of the language, though it wasn't quite as funny in this context for some reason.

2. A few days after the tour was over, I got a package in the mail. It was from the Ws. They were returning the CD and the T-Shirt they had bought in Eugene a few nights before, with a note explaining that they couldn't support offensive music.

What the fuck?

JazzReview.com sez:

The Industrial Jazz Group (IJG) is a group based in Los Angeles with a taste for the very, very atypical. A critic once described the free jazz group as “cerebral, swinging, challengingly complex and unabashedly fun.” Leef, the group’s latest and mostly live production, pretty much embodies that description with some exceptions. One should be cautioned that there is some racy language that some may find objectionable and could even see as distracting from the bottom line here.

Without a doubt, IJG is having a ton of fun with this production. Having never heard any of their previous releases--and they’ve been on the scene for eight years so far--I was both amused and taken aback by the humor and boldness. One can say that this project brings with it some adventurous, tongue-in-cheek, and sometimes oddly phrased presentations that, like them or not, will keep you listening, if for no more reason than curiosity.

There is a brand of professionalism and competence here that one has to appreciate, even if you frown upon some of the unusual arrangements. Leader and pianist Andrew Durkin characterizes his unique creation as “avant garde party music.” That pretty much nails it or, at least, brings the music as close to an accurate classification as you can hope to get. So, listen to tunes like “Ladies and Gentlemen,” “Bongo Non Troppo,” and “The Job Song,” laugh, marvel, and just let it all entertain you. If you like your jazz free, atypical, and more than a little imposing, Leef might be a trip you can take. Just be sure to buckle up.

Nice! Danke, Ronald Jackson.

Friday Muxtape no. 9; a new review

Dealing with a hellacious headcold and a number of tour deadlines at the moment -- sorry for the lapse in blogging. I'll get back to it soon, but in the meantime here's this week's mux:

1. Albert Ammons: "Bass Goin' Crazy"

2. Buddy Holly: "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" (the demo version)

3. Holus Bolus: "Dirt Track" (This is the great Josh Sinton's band. Holy cow do I love this record.)

4. Soul Brothers: "Indawo Yokulala"

5. Carla Bley "Ups and Downs"

6. The Byrds: "Pretty Boy Floyd"

7. Third World War: "Shepherd's Bush Cowboy"

8. Edmund Meisel: "Die Tat / Fackellichter In Der Stadt"

9. Ray Agee: "From Now On"

10. Golden Arm Trio: "Finster Crumley"

11. Evangelistic Ensemble: "Heaven Belongs to You"

12. Spike Jones and His City Slickers: "Ghost Riders in the Sky" (live)

* * * * *

And the latest review, c/o our friend Craig Matsumoto at KZSU.

More soon...

"What is this shit?"

I can't tell you how long I have been waiting for a "legitimate" reviewer to provide us with a heartily dismissive pull-quote that I can display prominently next to more favorable critical commentary in the IJG press kit. You see, not unlike my new friend in Washington (the guy with the faux fat fetish), I too long to puncture through the tedious pleasantries and spin of the indie music media/promotional derby. Not out of spite, mind you, but just because I'm impatient to get past the words, to something real.

You see, dear reader, once you figure out that, to some extent, PR is a game, and that, with a little persistence, a savvy marketing person can always get someone somewhere to write a compelling review that makes [insert the artist of your choice here] sound like they are the next [insert the music god of your choice here] -- well, then, the whole process starts to feel a little empty. Which is not to say that I haven't appreciated the great things that some of our critics have said about the IJG over the years. Au contraire -- I am floored and flattered by every one of them. In my (many) weak moments, I even savor them.

But the anti-authoritarian in me has also always fought against the notion of filters, and tastemakers, and folks whose authority derives from the things they say about art. Idealist that I am, I imagine a world where a listener's inherent curiosity simply drives her to explore and discover new music -- just as much as (if not more than) the commentary of some self-appointed "in the know" cultural observer. Music criticism, in this crazy fantasy-land of mine, continues to be written and read and appreciated, but primarily as literature. And love-of-music happens not because of what someone said about a piece, or how it was framed, but simply because of what it sounded like.

I know, I know: I'm being pretty unrealistic, and there are certain things you just have to deal with when you get into the music business. But humor me for a minute. Those of you who read this blog regularly know that we came close to achieving my bass-ackwards goal of picking up a press-kit-worthy negative comment with "This is a bad joke -- right?" Alas, that one didn't come from a pro, so it didn't serve my purposes quite so well. But now the cranky-but-entertaining Tom Hull (who really is one of my favorite critics) has delivered manna from the heavens in the form of his review of LEEF. Enjoy:

Cheap cardstock wallet packaging, back cover printed white on yellow (glad I was able to lift the credits and track list elsewhere), full liner notes promised on website but not available yet. Started this while driving around Detroit, but popped it out after a few "what is this shit?" minutes. I've played and enjoyed a couple of Andrew Durkin's group's records in the past, but wasn't prepared for this sharp swerve into Zappa-land. (Actually, I flashed on Brecht/Weill cabaret first, which may have been the initial idea -- but Zappa does get a name check.) I've avoided it ever since, only putting it on when there was nothing else left to unpack from the travel case. Played it twice. First, if you bracket the vocal stuff, the musical performance is stellar. Industrial Jazz has always been a catchphrase in search of a concept -- e.g., the analogy to Industrial Rock never fit -- but Durkin has finally managed to squeeze all individuality out of the big band without sacrificing idiosyncrasy. Hard to imagine anything but a machine managing that, or exhibiting such spurious complexity just because it's possible to gear it that way. Clearest case is "Bongo Non Troppo," working off a relatively simple Latin riff, but there's more in "Howl" and "Fuck the Muck" (at least until the voices appear). The vocal stuff is more scattered -- skit and shtick, a bit of "Fuck the Muck" choir, and two legit songs (both optimistically reprised in radio edits at the end): "The Job Song" (on the Brechtian end) and "Big Ass Truck" (more Zappaesque). In Christgau's CG scheme a couple of these named pieces would be Choice Cuts. I don't do that because I'm still stuck in the old-fashioned rut of trying to swallow records whole. B+(*)

There is one factual error here -- the packaging is not "cardstock," and it wasn't cheap by any stretch. But everything else he says is true. Unless you disagree with it, in which case it is false.

(Oh, and as an added bonus, Hull also covers the new Empty Cage record in this same review set. I'll leave it to Tiner to comment if he sees fit.)

More karma

Got another review for ya -- this time from Doug Ramsey, of the very well-known jazz blog, Rifftides.

In a way, the highest praise may be when someone gives you a clearly favorable review in spite of certain things he or she might not dig about your work.

So I think this is a great writeup, and I'm honored by it.

I guess it's karma

Just learned of the latest LEEF review, by Brad Glanden (published yesterday in AAJ). Not gonna quote the whole thing here, but there are some bits that are turning my face various shades of I'm-not-worthy-red. Among them:

It's difficult to fathom a universe where someone would not enjoy listening to LEEF.

Durkin could be writing great pop-rock if only he had a narrower instrumental imagination.

”The Job Song” will offer laughs to anyone who has pursued an artistic career against the financial advice of parents, teachers, and -- Satan? The moral is that doing what one loves yields rewards far greater than monetary ones; the song proves its own thesis beautifully [...]

Durkin is the Conan O'Brien of jazz, joking about the band's alleged lack of appeal when so much evidence exists to the contrary [...]

So this seems a fitting rebuttal to my ornery and totally uncalled for outburst about a single bad review (from a guy who was probably just trying to do his best, and who probably had no idea his quickly-dashed-off words were going to be responded to with such precious hand-wringing).

What's to complain about when clearly there are some folks who are into what we're doing?

Say it ain't so

(Photo: "Art Shock" by eliazar.)

Well, I've got good news and I've got bad news.

The good news:

The IJG tune "PDX LIX LAX" made it to the second round of judging at the fan-driven site Garageband.com. That's farther than any of our tunes have gotten on GB previously -- and with any luck, "PDX" is not finished yet. Cool!

The bad news:

Today we got the following review from a Garageband user (who shall remain nameless).

This is a bad joke -- right?

This is great for circus clowns or grade 'B' comedians. Can you play all of these notes again in the same sequence? Pretty good musicians but very poor composing on this piece. The discordant sections do not belong. The rest might due [sic] for a Disney soundtrack.

This fella also had the good sense to give "PDX" a "Stupidest Song I've Ever Heard" award.

Hot diggity!

I'm not going for a petulant frenzy here, I swear. Mostly I think the review is funny.

Okay, maybe it did piss me off just a wee little bit at first (I'm only human). But, honestly... mostly I think it's funny. What other response can I have?

One of the many interesting conversations I had with Evan Francis on the way down to LA from Oakland last March (pre-tour) was on the subject of the surprise we both feel when we come across people who are shocked by musical "noise" or "atonality" or "dissonance" (not that those are all strictly identical). It's easy for fools like us, who dabble in such things all the time, to forget that our choice to do so can actually still be "radical" or "offensive" to some people.

And maybe that's not as big a deal as it initially seems. I mean, it's all well and good for me to roll my eyes every time I hear the sort of smooth-jazz-and-funk-derived stuff that is kicking our ass on Garageband right now. But honestly, where would I (or folks like me) be without that consonant norm to buck up against? Of course, that works both ways. How else can insistently sweet stuff make "sense" (even to its most avid fans) except in the context of a sound-world that is constantly threatening to descend into harmonic strangeness?

So maybe I owe this reviewer a big thank you, because he got me thinking about one of my dear old favorite issues: perception.

For me, art is an expectations game. There's plenty of music I enjoy (and / or love) because it more or less fulfills a certain expectation -- it's like satisfying a craving for hummus. I've eaten hummus before, I know what it tastes like, and sometimes I just want to replicate that taste experience. There are subtle variations in the formula -- different brands, different flavors. But once you know what hummus tastes like, the pleasure of eating it doesn't come from surprise, per se.

Two other things. First: I only want so much hummus. And second: I can remember how much I enjoyed the first hummus I ever tasted.

In other words (dropping the food metaphor now), what really drives my listening, what keeps me constantly hunting down new bands and artists and composers, is not necessarily a desire to find more variations of the stuff I already know I like (that's more of a nice fringe benefit), but to re-experience the kind of astonishment I felt the first time I heard, say, "Struttin' With Some Barbecue." Astonishment, for me, is a weird combination of surprise, disorientation, and potential-for-growth, and it accompanies the discovery of something I don't immediately recognize, and something I don't immediately understand (I try not to confuse not understanding something with not liking it). It's easy to forget that astonishment is psychically important (the human nervous system ceases to perceive phenomena that do not change), and that love and astonishment are not the same thing.

Maybe true astonishment happens less and less as you get older, and maybe the quest for it is an idealistic pipe-dream. But for me, it's still the aesthetic bottom line. It's the thing to shoot for as an artist.

And, for what it's worth, your chances of being astonishing are probably inversely related to how reliably you can play "all of these notes again in the same sequence."

(Whoops! I said I wasn't going to be petulant, didn't I? Sorry.)

Music, various artists

I just uploaded my first "muxtape" here.

Of course I had to sneak in a few IJG tunes, given that I'm in promotional mode. Apologies in advance.

But there's a lot of other (and better) stuff there too. F'r'instance: a truly stunning version of Reid Anderson's "Silence is the Question," featuring Andrew D'Angelo on alto. And two short pieces from what may be my new favorite band: Shibusa Shirazu (thanks to Tatsuya Nakatani for hipping me to these guys). And let's not forget the "Leaping Nuns' Chorus," by Dudley Moore (yes, the very same), from the seminal sixties film Bedazzled...

In other words, a veritable potpourri. Or whatever.

Muxtape has a very simple, responsive interface -- if only all music sharing sites could be this way.

Enjoy! Or whatever.

* * * * *

In other news, it is currently snowing in Portland. A week or two ago, it felt like summer had arrived.

Huh?

The road report: March tour, 2008

That there is two thirds of the Industrial Jazz Group, circa March 29, at around 8:30 PM, high in the hills of Berkeley, a few hours before the final gig of our CD release tour for LEEF.

Back row, L-R: Dan Schnelle (drums), Mike Richardson (bone), Damon Zick (soprano sax), Oliver Newell (bass), Dan Rosenboom (trumpet), yours truly (beer), Gavin Templeton (soprano sax). Front row, L-R: Stephanie Richards (trumpet), Tany Ling (vocals), Jill Knapp (vocals). (House and hospitality for this pic c/o Leila Ruyan.)

Not pictured: Ian Carroll (bone), Kris Tiner... at last! (trumpet), Darren Johnston (trumpet), Evan Francis (alto), Kasey Knudsen (tenor sax), Tom Griesser (bari sax), Gabriel Sundy (bari sax), Paul Perez (bari sax), Brian Walsh (tenor sax), Adam Schroeder (bari).

My deepest thanks to everyone involved in this adventure, onstage and off. In the latter category are Matt Lichtenwalner and Tristan (sorry Tristan I don't know your last name) -- boyfriends of bandmembers who both picked up the slack wherever they saw it lying around -- as well as the folks who helped us get gigs: Jim Romeo (San Diego), Kris Tiner (Bake-town), Phillip Greenlief (Oakland), and Ross Hammond (Sacramento). And big thanks to everyone who loaned us gear (Doug Davis, Greenlief again, Romeo again, Tiner again, the members of Joaquin's Night Train). And more and more thanks to those who housed us, fed us, came to our shows, and bought our CDs.

Yes, I'm talking to you. The IJG loves you.



Leaves on a table

You know things couldn't have gone off without a hitch, though, right?

Here was one of my initial challenges: the delivery date for the packaging of the album -- the neat little Arigato Pak solution to the plastic problem that I have been obsessing about for months -- was, as I should have anticipated, delayed by a few days, which meant that I had to order a rush delivery of 100 pcs. to be shipped to me on the road (they arrived on the second day of the tour).

Still, what would otherwise have been a fairly time-intensive task (folding the damned things into the appropriate shape) was made easier by the willing help of the aforementioned Matt and Tristan, and a few other folks as well. (Thanks, everyone.)

Note 1: Something I noticed only after-the-fact about the white-against-yellow writing on the back of the packaging: it is only truly visible in natural light. Initially, that sort of freaked me out, but now I think it's kind of cool.

Note 2: we have yet to develop out LEEF's little "liner notes and extras" page -- hopefully in the next week or two.

Anyway, LEEF is here! Welcome, LEEF.



Near-nudity at 21 Grand

We crossed a few more thresholds of taste with this tour (but who's keeping score, really?). The anticipated (and long-overdue) return of provocative trombonist Mike Richardson (owner of the fleshy thighs in the above pic, snapped at our Oakland gig) may have sparked a pattern of obscenity in some of my newer pieces... but wherever the impulse came from, we now have a song in which two enormously gifted and classically-trained singers (that would be Jill and Tany) are forced to proclaim, "Dinner at Applebee's / fuck all night / dinner at Applebee's / f-f-f-f-fuck all night."

(And that bit happens shortly after the same singers waggle their middle fingers at the audience, in a spoof of the greatest dance-music cliche of all time, which we render thusly: "Raise your finger in the air / wave it like you just don't care.")

(Oh, yeah. And if you were "lucky," you got to hear the above-referenced new tune -- ridiculously titled "Il Ponderoso / Apropos of Nothing" -- on one of the nights that Mr. Richardson's entire performance costume consisted of a single silver thong.)

Make of it what you will. I certainly wasn't expecting any of this to, uh, go down easily. But I'll be damned if I wasn't drawn into post-show pleasantries by more than one seemingly-conservative soccer Mom type. Did they not hear the lyrics, perhaps? Ah, who cares. Music should be the great unifier, n'est-ce pas?

(We even had one night where Jill apologized to a middle school (?) kid named Josh, who was in the audience -- with his parents (?) -- as she introduced "Fuck the Muck." Josh's smart rejoinder -- "Don't you think I say worse things than that at school?" -- produced an excited chant from the band and the audience ("Josh! Josh! Josh! Josh!"), and the kid was summarily invited to the stage (by Jill) to formally introduce the tune, which he did with remarkable gusto. Thanks, Josh!)

I'm still a great believer in the power of obscenity. Despite the remarkable way jazz has, in some circles, become a signifier of politeness and urbanity (nothing wrong with either of those, mind you), most jazz musicians I know are profoundly, gorgeously foul-mouthed. I suspect that's the norm in the community, in fact. Why not celebrate it?

Or use it as a tool? In a world steeped in deception, layered in mask after mask after mask (so that even the phrase "keeping it real" means anything but), the greatest value may be in the stuff that can actually cut through -- whether sound, or text, or image, or idea. (I'm not saying that we've accomplished anything truly incisive yet in this group. But we're trying, and that's partly where the fun lies, for me.)

Off-stage / Ob-scene. Rear guard / avant-garde. Apollo / Dionysus. These are probably the central tensions (and inspirations) of my artistic life. (Are you surprised that the working title for the next album is The Ballad of In and Out?)



Keeping with the animal theme

"Animal songs. Nothing but animal songs."

Well, not entirely. But close. Lately I've tried to keep my writing "grounded" around a one-page list of "keywords" -- concepts, issues, characters (etc.) that help to give our show some kind of coherence and identity (even if that identity is only fleetingly expressed in lyrics). Yes, one of the keywords is "fuck" (you probably guessed that, right?), but there is also a whole cluster of animal keywords -- "frogs," "bees," "wolves," "goats," "crabs," "chickens," "pigs," and "fish" are all on the list. I don't know what sense to make of this (if there is any). But on some level I'm sure the animal keywords have to do with the fact that I spend my days with a three-and-a-half-year-old, who of course is also fascinated with animals, as most children are.

What was it that Stravinsky said about his music being best understood by children and animals? (And what is it that I wonder from time to time about people losing their fascination with both animals and music as they age?)

Of course, on the negative side of this equation, there is also the underlying theme of every California trip we make -- the inevitable passage through the sprawling expanse of "Cowschwitz" (thanks to Evan Francis for introducing me to that term). I'm not exactly a PETA person, and this surreal hamburger factory is really only about ten minutes out of a six hour journey between LA and the Bay area. Still, the whole thing is not only depressing, but disgusting -- can it be normal to stand around in your own shit all day? -- and its continued existence seems somehow like further evidence of a general decline in western civilization.

Or something like that.



A near-miss in Bakersfield

One of the other challenges this go-round was when one of my guys -- let's call him "Slick" -- nearly disappeared into the wilds of Bakersfield, lured by the siren song of two of the city's native daughters. It made for a little bit of a stressful afternoon the next day, when he was a no-show as we were trying to leave town with enough time to get up to Oakland for another gig. But it also made for a comical comeback when he arrived shortly before downbeat (roughly five hours later) in a rented silver Mustang (I guess silver was one of the official colors for this tour).

You might think I'd be pissed off by this sort of thing, cuz it does happen from time to time when we're on the road. But here's my take: as long as, in the end, everything makes for good music (and without a doubt, "Slick" knows how to make good music), and nobody gets hurt, I'm cool. As Zappa said:

I respect musicians' idiosyncrasies -- they add "texture" to a performance. Musicians tend to generate better "texture" when they get "The Blow Job." Yes, I want them to find that elusive cross between a waitress and an industrial vacuum cleaner.

That about sums it up -- except that I'd use "Blow Job" as a metaphor (cuz different musicians want different things).



Six facts about me

1. I have been (consciously) writing music since I was seven or eight.

2. This year I will be forty.

3. I now have a kid of my own, and a mortgage.

4. I have a lovely wife who "gets" me, and who puts up with my artistic delusions / ambitions. (So the fact that this band is still around is partly her fault.)

5. I have never felt saner in my life, but I have never had more people openly questioning my sanity.

6. If being a musician -- and especially a composer for an original big band -- is an abnormal career aspiration, then as I get older, I get farther and farther away from being able to return to life as a "normal." In some ways, I feel like I am living out this (hackneyed) artist-fantasy in the most bass-ackwards way possible. Instead of having committed myself to music as a vocation in college -- which probably would have been more sensible, but, given my personality, might have burned me out by the time I was thirty -- I actually tried for a while to get into a more "respectable" career (a "real job," if you will), always doing music passionately but surreptitiously, and splitting myself into two incompatible identities. In a way, that was a useful experience, because it engendered, over a period of about ten years, a sense of longing (and resistance-to-normalcy) that simply had to spill over at some point. I guess that's what's happening now.



Getting paid

Wow, these tour blog posts are becoming a little redundant -- there are only so many ways you can say "Hey, that was a great tour, I love the folks in this band, I love the audiences, I can't wait to do it again." All that was true this time too. But my sense is that we've reached a certain plateau of "success": more often than not, we have great crowds, great responses... and lukewarm-to-shitty bread. Once in a while, the bread is better than lukewarm -- but not often enough. If I could only afford to hire a business manager, I might be breaking even (how's that for irony?).

Still, that's fine. For a while. But how wide is this plateau? How long do we have to stay at this level before we can move up to the next one? (And what is the next one, exactly?) Those are really the big questions. Cuz this is very cool, to be sure, but it's still an ever-so-delicate balancing act, made possible only by an absurd dance of nonexistent budgets and overstretched credit cards and less-than-optimal traveling conditions (and so on). That part of it may not always be obvious from the outside. Or at least it seems that way whenever someone finds out what I do, and asks the same initial question: "How do you make it work? You know, like, financially?"

As if! Please, everybody, listen carefully. I do not make this work financially. Maybe I make it work in most other ways. But financially? No sir, not yet.



And there's the rub. Truthfully, one of the things that has kept the group going for so long is the participation of ridiculously talented musicians who also happen to be willing to play in the group for ridiculously low sums of money. Because they like the music, they like the people, and they like the experience. Many of them have told me explicitly that, if it came down to it, they would do IJG gigs for free. Some have even refused to take any money on the nights when we have clearly bombed (thankfully we are bombing a lot less these days).

All of which is flattering beyond belief. Trouble is, it's not enough. The guilt that accompanies dragging these folks from the comfort of their warm beds (or wherever) to head out on an adventure that may or may not help them pay their bills -- well, it's becoming excruciating. That guilt is not going to stop me (at least in part because I'm addicted), but my compulsion to tour doesn't sit well with the fact that the tours aren't producing the kind of cashflow that the project needs (and deserves).

So boy oh boy am I obsessing about the question of "payoff." I need to speed up the slow burn. (And to that end I have some new schemes which I'll be revealing soon...)

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not kvetching. Ah, hell, let's end this with some levity:

And now a series of random shots



Ever wonder what kick-ass percussionists look like while eating breakfast? That's Dan Schnelle and Tatsuya Nakatani (who double-billed with us at Bakersfield, and pretty much floored everybody).



Chalk graffiti at the Fox and Goose. Not sure which list Gavin is at the top of, but I always listen to what the chalk says.



Ian C. catching Z's by the fire. (Didn't I say something about less-than-optimal traveling conditions? That's right, here's one of my guys sleeping on the fucking floor.)



Thank you, thank you, thank you, and goodnight. See you again real soon.

Because I'm addicted...

...to making these stupid little videos, here's one for "Bongo non Troppo." The audio is the album track (that's right, this tune is featured on LEEF), but the video is (mostly) from the recent tour... plus a few shots from a public domain film on the beatnik scene in Greenwich Village (circa, oh, a few decades ago)...



At various times, I have introduced this tune as being dedicated to the proposition that disco does not, in fact, suck.

Videography by the usual suspects (ML, JK, AD, the Internet Archive)...

Text-based posts to return soon...

[My closing comment in the video: "Thank you to all our dancers."]

Incident at Umbria

A full-on tour post is coming soon, but in the meantime I wanted to lay this new video on you.

You all remember the hubbub last July, yes? (If the words "Jarrett," "Umbria," and "2007" don't ring a bell, you'll need to click that link for the appropriate background.)

I'll probably never be able to convince anyone that our version of this "performance" (i.e., my setting-to-music of the controversial comments) is not meant to be disrespectful of Mr. Jarrett -- even though that's the case. I mean, sure we're having a little fun at his expense, but the larger issue for me is the way in which a mega-jazz-event like Umbria exemplifies a frightening (and counterproductive) divide in the jazz world. Let's face it: the superstars and the scrappy up-and-comers are inhabiting different universes. There is no clear relationship or implied trajectory between them. And speaking from the perspective of the scrappies, Keith J.'s outburst couldn't have been stranger or more incomprehensible to me had he been from, say, Mars. (You mean they're actually paying you to play at Umbria and you're going to fucking complain?!)

Anyway, this is one of the better renditions (it was recorded in Bakersfield) of the piece with which we opened our shows last week. For handy reference, here are the lyrics in question:

I do not speak Italian
so someone who speaks English can tell
all these assholes with cameras
to turn them fucking off
right now
no more photographs, including that red light right
there

If we see any more lights
I reserve the right and I think
the privilege is yours to hear us
but I reserve the right
and Jack and Gary reserve the right
to stop playing and leave the goddammed city

I see a red light there and that means you, you you
(4X)

The text is verbatim (and I guess typical) Jarrett, except for the repeated line at the end, which I borrowed from Daniel Brio's All About Jazz piece on the incident.

And here's Kris Tiner's writeup on the Bakersfield show.

Like I said, more soon. I'm just getting my head back together.

[cinematography by Matt Lichtenwalner -- thanks, Matt!]

[vox: Tany Ling (soprano), Jill Knapp (alto)]

Road pix

A smattering of images from the first few days of what has been probably our nuttiest tour yet. (Photos by Jill, Matt, and Andrew.)

Onward to Bakersfield!

Here we go again

So, yeah, we're off. The whole Califor-ny-a tour. Can't wait to dig into this one... new music, some new players, some great old friends -- it'll be a helluva week. And it'll be trippy to be back in the land of milk and honey, after my first full year as a Portlander (where the color is green, and the atmosphere is moist -- which is kind of not how it is in CA). And I may actually get to read a book or two while on the road, so that'll be nice.

You know the schedule. Come out if you can! We'd love to see you!

The only drag is that my laptop crapped out on me recently -- so that minimizes my blogging opportunities. I may have a chance to check in a few times to share some pix or what-have-you... we'll see.

Let me tide you over with this so-wrong-it's-right Joel McHale quote, ganked from that silly Entertainment Weekly, and uttered in response to some poor American Idol kid's forgetting of the lyrics to some Beatles tune: "Congratulations, Yoko Ono, assassins, cancer, and one-legged gold diggers: You're no longer the worst thing to happen to the Beatles."

Zounds! I hope I don't forget the names of any of the fantastic musicians who are playing with us this week. Here they are:

Damon Zick, Gavin Templeton, Evan Francis, Cory Wright, Brian Walsh, Kasey Knudsen, Adam Schroeder, Gabriel Sundy, Paul Perez, Tom Griesser (saxes)

Stephanie Richards, Kris Tiner, Darren Johnston, Dan Rosenboom (trumpets)

Mike Richardson, Ian Carroll (bone)

Dan Schnelle (drums), Oliver Newell (bass)

Jill Knapp, Tany Ling (vocals)

Yee haw!

Metal Jazz on Industrial Jazz

Greg Burk just posted a lovely CD review / tour preview on his (highly recommended) online vehicle for such things, Metal Jazz:

Tues. March 25 -- Composer Andrew Durkin’s rather large Industrial Jazz Group has fun with music. Sometimes too much fun, I think, but I enjoy a high quotient of gloom and rage. The IJG’s new “LEEF,” for which tonight’s show is a release party, is amazing in many ways. As usual, it combines a lotta styles, taking an old ragtime riff or “Volga Boatmen,” say, and expanding the harmony, messing with the tempo, twisting it around. There’s plenty of purely original stuff, too, changing all the time and keeping up a high level of energy, invention and smartly applied dissonance. With a greater emphasis on vocals this time, “LEEF” comes off as a kind of modern light opera, telling a slapstick story of artistic alienation and vehicular devastation. You will not be bored. At Temple Bar, 1026 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica; 11pm; $10.

Gracias, Greg!

A little love

Brick Wahl at the LA Weekly just wrote a nice little blurb on us -- mostly as a preview of our upcoming Temple Bar show, but there's also a sentence on LEEF (so I guess that would be the album's first published review):

Now, you might need a bit of an outish edge to dig The Industrial Jazz Group ... then again, underlying the IJG’s 15-piece in-your-face attack are Andrew Durkin’s solid, Mingus-soaked arrangements. The group’s Industrial Jazz A-Go Go is just terrific, all swinging craziness, like Stan Kenton smoking all his band’s dope and cleaving Mingus’ ax with an ax. We love it. And the upcoming LEEF is from a live gig at home in Portland ... funny swinging stuff with clumps of European music and Zappoid art rock and cabaret tossed in, missing only Joel Grey. They’re at the Temple Bar on Tuesday, at 11 p.m. on the dot. One set only, alas.

A few corrections -- first, LEEF was mostly recorded in Amsterdam, not Portland. Also, there's a typo in the online piece -- "IJF" instead of "IJG" (I corrected it in my cut-and-paste). And finally, for this tour, the group will actually be sixteen people, not fifteen. (More on that later.)

But anyway, big thanks to Brick for this great piece!

And, uh, yeah, so I guess we'll be touring in CA next week. Wow -- I guess it's our CD release tour for LEEF. Who'd'a thunkit?

Here's the itinerary:

Station identification

Hi!

Did you know you can now pre-order LEEF? The album will be ready to ship sometime in the next few weeks. And the online price will go up after our upcoming tour (i.e., on April 1) -- so grab yours now! (You know, if, like, you want to.)

Oh yeah, and there's an added benefit of pre-ordering: you'll help us offset some of our touring costs!

In other words: everybody wins!

* * * * *

After much discussion and soul-searching, I decided to release LEEF in an environmentally-conscious package produced by a local outfit called Stumptown Printers (and here I must thank Kris Tiner, all the way down in Bakersfield, for pointing out this amazing resource in my own backyard). Stumptown does a lot of good work, but the package I chose is known as the Arigato Pak. It's basically a (CD-sized) all-paper matchbook-like design -- with a spine (hooray!). It eliminates the need for plastic and glue. Plus it's configured in such a way as to protect the CD from fingerprints.

Hope you like it!

* * * * *

Unlike me, Seth Godin seems incapable of ever blogging about anything lame. He recently posted this excerpt from what seems like a pretty funny book by Dan Kennedy -- an inside look at some kind of archetypal "Record Label Executive Mentality." The question t hand: "How many record execs does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"

First of all, before we change anything, is the light bulb really burned out? Maybe we just need to breathe some life into it; repackage it, maybe the light bulb could do a duet with somebody (Sheryl Crow? Tim McGraw?) in hopes of getting some crossover appeal, maybe it could be in a beer commercial, maybe we could get it out on the road with a brighter light bulb. The other thing to think about is that this summer, Honda is rolling out a 100 Million dollar campaign for a new car aimed at thirty-somethings who consider themselves adventurous/spontaneous but can't really afford something like a luxury S.U.V. and it might be a perfect campaign to tie this light bulb into, at least it would be the perfect demographic, in terms of age.

Also, and this is just an idea: what if we found out what video games are being released in the third quarter and maybe pitched the idea of having our light bulb make an appearance in the video game at some certain level of completion; like, you get to a dark cave, let's say, if it's an adventure game, and if you have enough points you can get the light bulb - and it would be our light bulb, obviously - and then it's easier to see in the cave. The other thing is this: worst-case scenario the light bulb is, in fact, burned out. Is that really the end of the world? I mean, maybe that's actually of more value to us in the long run: Picture this for voice over: "The light bulb is dead. . . but the legend lives on. . . re-released, re-mastered, revealed. . . the light bulb. . . IN STORES NOW." It almost makes more sense than taking the time changing it, plus, if it's dead we can sell it without dealing with it, you know what I mean? No demands from it, no hotels, no road expense, no delays in the project from its end, etc. But, like I said, I'm just thinking off the top of my head here, just brainstorming, and none of this is written in stone. But the first thing we should do is figure out how we want to handle this, because the light bulb's manager is a total nightmare and we're going to have to take a meeting and listen to him sooner or later, and we should know what our plan is before we sit down with him. And let me tell you right now that the first thing out of his mouth is going to be, "This light bulb should be the brightest light bulb in the world, and it could be the brightest light bulb in the world, but you need to support the light bulb, you need to give the light bulb TV ads, you need to be more active in giving the light bulb tour support, we need to have some promotion from your end!" and on and on. And in that meeting, if you're in it, the only answer from our side should be that we're obviously very excited to be working with the light bulb, that we don't think it needs to be changed, that the only problem is people haven't seen how bright the light bulb could be, and our plan is to do everything we can to make this light bulb happen.

I'll send out an email to everyone before the meeting to remind people of our position on this, but the bottom line is we don't have the budgets right now, and basically we need to see something happening with the light bulb before we go throwing good money after bad, but obviously we can't have the light bulb's manager hearing that. I can tell you all that I'm personally very excited to be working with the light bulb, I think it will light up very brightly, and we're not going to stop working the light bulb, in whatever ways budgets will permit, until it does, in fact, light up very brightly. . . the light bulb is a very big priority for us from the top of the company to the bottom. Period. We can talk more about this when I am back from Barbados next week, and I'm going to need everybody's help on this. I know we can do it, but we need everybody working hard.

* * * * *

And, by the way -- I know that good PR / marketing requires that you have a story, but this is off the charts.

Carl Wilson astutely points out that "the entertainment business's version of whoring remains a hair's breadth away from the literal version"...

Which is true, I think... though I hope it doesn't change how you view the album ad with which I began this post!

LEEF Trax: PDX LIX LAX

photo c/o Nick Moon

Madness.

That's right, I said it. And I'll say it again. Madness.

Don't those guys look tired? Punchy? Ready for the looney bin?

That fellow to my right is Nick Moon -- who, by the way, is quickly becoming Portland's go-to guy for audio recording. Although his most high profile gig might be working with Gino Vanelli, Nick's resume lists a growing "who's who" of local/regional jazz (and jazz-related) talent: Nancy King, Belinda Underwood, Alan Jones, Madeline Eastman, most (all?) of the members of Pink Martini, etc. Why he consented to working on the new IJG record is simply beyond me.



"Historic" Troutdale, OR: home of Tone Proper Mastering.

But consent he did. And I'll bet he regrets it, because what started as a two-day project back in November quickly turned into four, and then six, and then eight, and now... well, let's just say we worked pretty much every day last week to finish the fucker (and just in time for our upcoming tour, I might add). Apparently mixing a live multi-tracked big band recording -- especially one that was made without using any real separation techniques (bafffles, clip-on mics, judicious and sparing placement of monitors) -- is a lot harder than I had originally supposed. Boy did I learn a lot about some of the things that can go wrong (hello, low-end bleed!).

It's amazing how something as sedentary as mixing -- really hardcore mixing, even over a short period of time -- can be physically exhausting. I suppose that's a function of the kind of repetitive listening that's involved. It's a kind of listening that is probably not at all "natural" -- the ears, I suspect, are not really built to take in the same song (or even snippets of the same song) hundreds of times in a row.

Hence the semi-zapped look on our faces in the pic above.



Going to the studio: it's almost like taking a leisurely stroll through a quaint little tourist town -- but not really.

* * * * *

Those of you who are already on the Facebook bandwagon (I'm going to assume Jason Moran's use of that term has de-pejorativized it) may have noticed the Industrial Jazz Group page over there. This is but one of the places you can check out an advance copy of "PDX LIX LAX" -- one of the representative pieces from the most recent incarnation of the group. (A "more final" mastered version is also available here.)

PDX was written in the summer of 2006 -- midway between two events that turned out to be pretty crucial to its conception, completion, and title: first, the ill-fated CD release show for "Industrial Jazz a Go Go!", which took place at Hollywood's Barnsdall Theater in April, and second, my relocation to Portland, OR, in September of that same year.

When I look back on it now, that seems like an amazingly compressed period of time in which to undergo such a drastic shift -- especially with wife and kid in tow, and especially given that I had no idea during the CD release show experience that I would be out of LA (my home for ten years) within a few months. But the "Barnsdall incident" helped to solidify that migration for me -- as you might notice if you read the above-linked post (which was probably written in a fit of pique: fair warning) . It's not that I necessarily minded dealing with the possibility of a low turnout for any given IJG show -- I know that risk is pretty much inevitable wherever you go -- but I was tired of compromising so many other aspects of my life just to stay in a town that was not much more welcoming of the arts than any other big metropolis in the country.

Anyway, "PDX LIX LAX" emerged in Barnsdall's wake -- pretty much in tandem with another LEEF track, "Howl." (I tend to write things in pairs, for some reason.) This is actually the second arrangement of the tune. In the original version, the melody of the "A section" (basically, the first half, before the gospel-like groove kicks in) was mostly shared by two alto saxes in unison. But as I was preparing for our last east coast tour, I got the bright idea to convert a significant portion of the A section into more of a "Concerto for Evan" (highlighting the idiosyncratic brilliance of longtime IJG collaborator, Evan Francis).

For comparison of these arrangement approaches, you can check out this excerpt from the original arrangement -- this is the beginning of the tune, as heard in a performance at Club Tropical (in Culver City), at the outset of our August 2006 west coast tour (the alto parts were expertly played by Ariel Alexander and James King, both motherfuckers in their own right).

One of the performance possibilities that was opened up by the later revision -- and I think I had a strong feeling that Evan would go this route, though I don't remember explicitly coaching him into it, and it's certainly not indicated on the chart -- was that the first statement of the melody would no longer have to be limited to the ink; i.e., Evan was freed up to start with an embellishment instead of a theme. The fun part (for me, anyway) is that the listener doesn't really know what the embellishment is an embellishment of until the second statement of the melody (at around the 1:12 mark), where the ensemble pretty much takes over and puts the tune out there quite emphatically. So things are kind of backwards. (On top of all this, I should add, the looseness of the opening is heightened by drummer Dan Schnelle's willingness to provoke and propel Evan's playing.)

What can I say? I'm fascinated by inversion. I like the word "preposterous."

Anyway.

Not totally unrelated: one of my favorite Prince tunes is "Forever in My Life" (from Sign o the Times). It includes a "backing / counterpoint vocal" that anticipates the tune's "lead vocal" (in a more typical pop arrangement the relationship would be the other way round). I haven't listened to Prince in a while, but SOTT was a favorite of mine for a while -- so I'm guessing that "Forever" had some sort of impact on my rearrangement of "PDX."

(You can file that bit under "artists you would never have guessed as influences on the IJG.")

* * * * *

P.S. Does PDX really "lick" LAX? Well, that's a loaded question. I do love it here. In particular, I can say that it's extremely cool to live somewhere so green, and yet still so satisfyingly urban. And there is something endearing about PDX's pride in local quirkiness (one reason I used a local manufacturer and printer for the replication / packaging of LEEF -- more on that soon).

Also: check out M. Farina's post / link on the Portland music scene. That's more about licking SEA-TAC, I guess. Maybe I'll write a sequel tune.