SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
WINTER, 2017
VOLUME FIVE NUMBER ONE
ORNETTE COLEMAN
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
TYSHAWN SOREY
(November 4-10)
JALEEL SHAW
(November 11-17)
COUNT BASIE
(November 18-24)
NICHOLAS PAYTON
(November 25-December 1)
JONATHAN FINLAYSON
(December 2-8)
JIMMY HEATH
(December 9-15)
BRIAN BLADE
(December 16-22)
RAVI COLTRANE
(December 23-29)
CHRISTIAN SCOTT
(December 30-January 5)
GIL SCOTT-HERON
(January 6-12)
MARK TURNER
(January 13-19)
CRAIG TABORN
(January 20-26)
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/brian-blade-mn0000623443/biography
Brian Blade
(b. July 25, 1970)
Artist Biography by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
A native of Shreveport, Louisiana, Brian Blade established himself as a versatile, accomplished drummer early in his career, appearing on albums by the likes of Joshua Redman, Kenny Garrett, and Bob Dylan. Blade released his first album, Brian Blade Fellowship, at the age of 27 in 1998, and followed two years later with Perceptual, both on Blue Note. Always an in-demand sideman and collaborator, Blade continued to find work with a bevy of artists, including Joni Mitchell, Bill Frisell, and Wayne Shorter. Ten years after releasing his first album as the Brian Blade Fellowship, he returned with Season of Changes in 2008, this time on Verve. A year later, he released the solo Americana singer/songwriter effort Mama Rosa for the label.
At the beginning of 2014, the BBF band re-signed
with Blue Note in a cooperative deal with the Shreveport,
Louisiana-based Mid-City Records. Their fourth album together, Landmarks, was issued in April of 2014. The quintet was augmented by guitarists Marvin Sewell and Jeff Parker. Blade was part of a celebrated trio that included guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel and bassist Larry Grenadier on Driftwood for Deutsche Grammophon a year later. In 2017, Blade and his fellow sidemen in Wayne Shorter's longstanding quartet -- pianist Danilo Perez and bassist John Patitucci -- recorded together as a trio for the first time. Their debut album, Children of the Light, was issued by Mack Avenue in the fall of 2017. During the same season, Blade's Fellowship
band reunited to release Body and Shadow on Blue Note. Recorded in the
historic Columbus Theatre in Providence, Rhode Island, the album was
co-written, arranged, and produced by Blade and pianist Jon Cowherd.
https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/brianblade
Brian Blade
”I remember when I first read the words hanging in a frame on my grandma Rosa's wall. The serenity prayer was something I couldn't understand until almost thirty years later, but now after experiencing some peaks and valleys of life, those words ring in my ears with clarity.”
Brian Blade has set those words to music for his first recording as a singer, guitarist and songwriter: Mama Rosa is a revealing journey through thirteen songs about family, loved ones, travels and a sense that these things that shape and inspire us have to be shared with others to complete a circle. He has been writing and recording material with words for as long as he's been making music. In fact, Mama Rosa grew naturally from the four-track home demos that he's recorded over the years and several of the original performances from those tapes can be heard on this album. Initially, Blade felt that these songs would never be heard by anyone else, but after encouragement from longtime friend Daniel Lanois, these home recordings became the cornerstones for the album. There is an initial spark close to the moment of inspiration and that intimate vibe is felt throughout Mama Rosa.
“For some time now, these songs have existed in the solitude of my room, and I got a lot of joy and satisfaction from just knowing that they existed,” Blade says. “But at a certain point I questioned whether it was fear or selfishness that kept me quiet. Facing the music and the mirror, I began to ask if this was the end of the process? What does God expect of me? Maybe someone else might find some inspiration in the songs.”
The lyrical themes of home, memories and loved ones, and how they shape who we are, are reflected in Blade naming the album after his grandmother. Rosa is the subject of the album's vivid opening track “After The Revival.” Sung from the perspective of his mother Dorothy Blade, expecting the birth of her first son, Brian's older brother, Brady, Jr. “After the Revival” also alludes to Blade's early years at the Zion Baptist Church in Shreveport, Louisiana, where his father is pastor, and where Brian first started singing and playing the drums.
The multi-talented young veteran is already widely respected in the jazz world as drummer/composer/leader of Brian Blade and The Fellowship Band, with whom he has released three albums. He is also known as the drummer for many heroes of the music world, including Daniel Lanois, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Wayne Shorter, Seal, Bill Frisell and Emmylou Harris. Blade is always searching for the balance that gives a song a personal story with an outward reaching resonance. One such song of memories is entitled, “Second Home,” a tribute to his teacher, John Vidacovich, and the city of New Orleans where Brian met Fellowship band mates Jon Cowherd and Chris Thomas. He lived in the crescent city for seven years while studying with musical masters Ellis Marsalis, David Lee, Jr. Bill Huntington, Mike Pellera, George French, Germaine Bazzle, Steve Masakowski and John Mahoney. Mama Rosa marks a new endeavor for Blade: a lovingly crafted, emotionally affecting song cycle that's deeply rooted in a rich vein of personal experience. “All That Was Yesterday”, “You'll Always Be My Baby” and “Nature's Law” show Blade to be a soulful and expressive vocalist and a songwriter capable of rendering evocative stories that resonate with insight and empathy. “Revealing more of ourselves is always daunting,” says Blade, “but I feel like I need to keep challenging myself and peeling away layers to get to the core of who I am and what I have to offer.”
Mama Rosa's organic musical palette showcases Blade's diverse talents on acoustic guitar and drums, and one of the people who has inspired Blade for many years now, longtime friend and music maker champion, Daniel Lanois. Lanois is the featured soloist on Mama Rosa, offering perfectly formed and spiritually elevating Firebird guitar improvisations on the songs “At The Centerline,” “Mercy Angel,” “All That Was Yesterday” and “Her Song.” In addition, guitarist Goffrey Moore, steel guitar virtuoso Greg Leisz, bassist Jenny lee Lindberg (Warpaint), singer/songwriters Aaron Embry (Amnion), John Bigham (The Soul of John Black), Rocco Deluca and Daryl Johnson, and the Fellowship Band members Jon Cowherd, Chris Thomas and Kurt Rosenwinkel all help to serve the songs brilliantly. A deep sense of brotherhood echoes throughout the entire recording. Kelly Jones, a truly gifted songstress, blends beautifully with Blade on “Mercy Angel” and “Get There.” Hearing them together brings to mind the inspiration and long history of touching duos, including Fred and Annie Mae Macdowell, George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton, Johnny and June Carter Cash, Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack and Sullivan and Iola Pugh (The Consolers). In addition to Blade's original compositions, the album features a memorable adaptation of Brazilian music icon Milton Nascimento's “Faithful Brother,” as well as the pair of atmospheric instrumentals, “All Gospel Radio” and “Psalm 100.”
“I hope that people will find some personal joy in these songs from Mama Rosa. The real challenge is to be honest with myself and to let more of who we are be seen and heard as the songs reveal themselves.”
Brian Blade was born on July 25, 1970 in Shreveport, Louisiana. His mother, Dorothy Blade is a retired kindergarten teacher and his father, Brady L. Blade, Sr. is the pastor of the Zion Baptist Church in Shreveport. During his childhood, Brian would hear Gospel music in his everyday life, as well as the music of Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind and Fire, and the Staple Singers. In elementary school, his music appreciation teacher, Lucy Bond, introduced her students to the music of Maurice Ravel and in this class, Brian would play the recorder and various melodic percussion instruments associated with the Carl Orff pedagogy.
From about age nine to age thirteen, Brian played violin in the school orchestra and continued to play until following in the footsteps of his older brother, Brady l. Blade, Jr. who played the drums in the Zion church.
During high school, both Brady, Jr. and Brian were students of Dorsey Summerfield, Jr. and performed as part of Dorsey’s professional group, the Polyphonics. During this time and through his experience with Mr. Summerfield, Brian began listening to the music of John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Thelonious Monk, Elvin Jones, and Joni Mitchell.
In 1988, Brian moved to New Orleans to attend Loyola University. It was at this time that Brian would become friends with Jon Cowherd. Both Brian and Jon were able to study and play with most of the master musicians living in New Orleans, including: John Vidacovich, Ellis Marsalis, Steve Masakowski, Bill Huntington, Mike Pellera, John Mahoney, George French, Germaine Bazzle, David Lee, Jr., Alvin Red Tyler, Tony Dagradi and Harold Battiste.
There were many inspiring musicians living and visiting New Orleans who helped Brian in his development. Some of these friends are Chris Thomas, Peter Martin, Nicholas Payton, Antoine Drye, Martin Butler, Delfeayo Marsalis, Joshua Redman, Harry Connick, Jr., Gray Mayfield, Marcus Roberts, Victor Goines and Daniel Lanois.
In 1998, Brian and Jon Cowherd began recording their own music with the group Fellowship. The band members are Chris Thomas, Myron Walden, Kurt Rosenwinkel and Melvin Butler. They have released 3 albums together – Fellowship and Perceptual, both on Blue Note, and the 2008 Verve recording, Season of Changes.
Since 2000, Brian has been part of the Wayne Shorter Quartet with Danilo Perez and John Patitucci.
http://www.bluenote.com/news/brian-blade-the-fellowship-band-celebrate-a-2
Formed in 1997, the Fellowship released their eponymous Blue Note debut in 1998, but the bond among the musicians goes back even further. Brian Blade, the band’s namesake and drummer, first met pianist Jon Cowherd in 1988 while attending Loyola University in New Orleans, and they met bassist Chris Thomas in the Crescent City a year later. With Myron Walden (alto saxophone and bass clarinet) and Melvin Butler (tenor saxophone), the Fellowship Band’s sturdy unified bond (“we think of the band as a collective instrument,” Cowherd says) has evolved with every album, and Body and Shadow, which also features Denver-based guitarist Dave Devine, is an extension of that evolution.
Blade and Cowherd wrote, arranged and produced the songs for Body and Shadow, which was recorded at the historic Columbus Theatre in Providence, Rhode Island. The experience reminded Blade of recording the band’s debut with producer Daniel Lanois at the Teatro, a former movie theater in Oxnard, California.
“It is always great to be in the moment and in process with the band,” says Blade. “We come in with all our grand plans and then there’s this yielding to, ‘Okay, here’s what’s actually being captured.’ Maybe not what I thought but another feeling, another energy, which is unpredictable. There’s joy in the whole mystery of what we are hoping to create. You step into the process to see what you’re made of, individually and together. Since we’ve shared so much time together, that trust and the sort of inherent knowing of what’s needed for each other kicks in pretty quick.”
“I think we have a lot of hope for the world and ourselves and the desire to create something which will move or touch people,” Cowherd adds. “There’s a spiritual background to the band. We come from a foundation of playing music that is inspirational and I think we all want it to be intellectually interesting, too.”
2017 ALBUM RELEASE SHOWS:
November 10 – Scullers – Boston, MA
November 11 – Exit Zero Festival – Cape May, NJ
November 12 – Bethesda Blues & Jazz Supper Club – Bethesda, MD
November 14-19 – Jazz Standard – New York, NY
http://www.drummerworld.com/drummers/Brian_Blade.html
Continuing our mini-series on drummers informed by the Afro-diasporic elements of New Orleans culture, here are a pair of interviews with Brian Blade, who turned 41 on July 25th. The first conversation, which originally ran on http://www.musician.com, comes from 2001, not long after Blade had joined the then newly-formed Wayne Shorter Quartet with Danilo Perez and John Patitucci. The second, which ran on the now-dormant webzine, http://www.jazz.com, is a composite of a June 2008 interview on WKCR and a phone conversation in the spring of 2009. Most of the expository text comes from my introduction to the jazz.com piece.
As I wrote in my preface to the earlier piece, Blade, then 30, was “one of the few drummers with a distinct personality in hardcore jazz—credits include Kenny Garrett, Joshua Redman, Pat Metheny, and Mark Turner—who also has stamped his imprint on popular music through stadium gigs and recordings with Joni Mitchell, Daniel Lanois, Seal, Emmylou Harris, and Bob Dylan.”
At the time, Blade had just released Perceptual [Blue Note], the second release by Fellowship Band, on which the leader and his unit—Kurt Rosenwinkel, guitar; Myron Walden, alto saxophone; Melvin Butler, tenor saxophone; Jon Cowherd, piano; Christopher Thomas, bass—interpreted original tunes by Blade and Cowherd that drew on a range of heartland folk styles, with guest turns by Lanois and Mitchell punctuating the flow.
What were your earliest musical influences?
The way I was brought up, boundary lines were never laid on the ground between people or the music. I always felt comfortable trying to surrender to the situation, no matter what banner may fly above it. You’re always trying to serve the song. My father is a minister and a great singer. My brother, Brady, Jr., who is five years older, is also a drummer. He left for college when I was around 13. He had been playing drums in church all this time, and when he left it was like everyone turned to me and said, “Okay, it’s your turn.” It was my duty, in a way. I never thought about it in terms of continuing into the next decade.
So you were just plunged into the waters of drumming, as it were.
[laughs] In a way, in the church environment, but there it was okay, because there’s tolerance there.
What was the sound of that music?
My father would tell me of his memories, and how there wasn’t even a piano; when he was coming up, people would clap their hands and sing and stomp their feet. I played right behind a great organist named Colette Murdoch, and there was piano and, of course, myself and the voices. Hindsight reveals that it taught me the essentials needed to be a part of a group, not only as a musician, but as a human being.
You mean beyond technique, in terms of the spiritual aspect of participating in a collective.
Absolutely. These people who would sing these songs didn’t come to music in a methodical way. They didn’t study it. They just sang, because it was praise! Hopefully, that’s what you’re trying to reach for. People get used to structure and chord progression. But when you’re not aware of these things, the spirit has to move you. So you surrender to that. I think it means a lot. Of course, it’s good to have balance. Now that I am playing music and making recordings, I want to know more and more.
Was Shreveport anything like New Orleans in microcosm, a smaller version with a lot of cultural influences coming in?
Not really. In a way, you could split the state of Louisiana in half culturally. Where I grew up, at the northwestern tip, there is this triangularity. Texas and Arkansas and Louisiana collide there. So it’s quite different from New Orleans, being this port of entry for so many cultures. It’s more inland, so you don’t have such a thick soup, so to speak, on the streets.
Was there a lot of blues?
Oh, absolutely.
A lot of country music?
Absolutely. Bands from the South and from across the globe would come to Shreveport. I saw the Modern Jazz Quartet there, Dizzy Gillespie was my first concert, the Neville Brothers would come through… So the Diaspora was presented to me.
Did it all seem like a continuum to you?
It absolutely did. That’s another wall that never came up for me, the sacred and secular. I’m still trying to do the same thing, and hopefully project the same feeling. I was always playing in high school, different music. When I went to New Orleans it just became more of a concentration on instrumental and vocal jazz music.
It’s interesting, because your teenage years coincide with the trend toward compartmentalization of music in the broader media – more compartmentalized radio, MTV is beginning. Maybe in Shreveport it wouldn’t have hit quite so strongly.
Yes. I’m thankful for the folks I grew up around in Shreveport, because everybody was open to so many different things. Even the ones who weren’t had a certain discipline that they wanted to share with me, and I am thankful for that, too. But I always knew, no matter what, that playing the music was always a joy, whether it was jazz or an R&B gig, or playing with a country band. It was always the joy of it. I try to carry that into every situation.
How do you prepare for the different feels of, say, swinging on the ride cymbal in jazz vis-a-vis, say, laying down a rock backbeat?
I think it’s important that you realize what the situation requires. No matter what your strong suit may be, hopefully you can find that singular thread that knits the music together, rhythmically. Again, for me, it all boils down to serving the song. Technically, I draw on the things that I’ve practiced, that I still practice, listening to recordings and trying to learn how Elvin Jones might execute something, or Art Blakey, or John Bonham for that matter — people who have created a sound, possess such an amazing groove and a great sense of tone and projection. When you analyze and absorb as much as you possibly can, it sets you up for any situation.
Let’s talk about some of your major influences. You’ve mentioned Elvin Jones as your hero.
Yes. Fortunately, I’ve been able to see Elvin several times over the last ten years actually, and God, it gets better and better every time. A Love Supreme was one of the first records that sticks in my consciousness. It’s an ideal that you aspire to. Also the things that Elvin plays on “Ballads” with only the snare drum, bass drum, cymbals and hi-hat. It sounds like a village of folks playing rhythm! He can create such a wide dynamic.
I should also refer to my teachers in New Orleans. John Vidacovich was and still is important. Sometimes when I hear him I think, “Oh God, I’ve stolen everything from Johnny V.” But hopefully that’s not the case. Aside from having always the deepest sense of groove, Johnny is always concerned with this sort of melodic motion coming from the drums. He moves the music and shapes it, and kind of gets inside of it. He’s more of a philosophical teacher than one that taught in a methodical way.
He did that great book with Herlin Riley.
Yeah, New Orleans Drumming. Totally. Herlin is another from New Orleans, and David Lee, Jr., who used to play with Sonny Rollins. Herlin to me almost embodies what New Orleans is. It’s like a perpetually modern approach. When you hear brass bands in New Orleans, the arrangements are like turn-of-the-century, coming into 1900! But the grooves and approaches are still evolving. So Herlin somehow takes these street rhythms, and breathes into them a new perspective from a New Orleans viewpoint.
I used to hear David Lee play trio all the time with the alto saxophonist Earl Turbinton and the bassist James Singleton, and also in a piano trio with Ellis Marsalis. He always moved the music forward, kind of an unwavering force, totally swinging all the time, never losing sense of that motion. As a teacher he had me learning the names of certain beats — “This is a Merengue, this is a Calypso.” It was very specific. He had me playing out of books. A very methodical way of approaching the drums. He and Johnny Vidacovich had very different ideas of what they felt they needed to impart to me, and I kind of got the whole picture. It was good to have both perspectives; each is valid, and I don’t think you can have one without the other.
Was Ed Blackwell’s sound universe a big influence on you?
Absolutely. In Ed Blackwell there’s this Africanism, moreso like a Western African playing a drumset, in a way. He’s always playing these sort of little conversations within this four-legged instrument! It’s interesting how many ideas can come from one place.
Which emanates pretty directly from the fact that New Orleans historically was a place where drums could be played.
Totally. I used to go to Congo Square. From what I’ve learned, a slave would walk from Mississippi just to be there for a day, you know, to have this vigil, this drum… There is storytelling in the instrument and what you put into it — but only what you put into it, I think. You have to go to it wanting to tell people something. If you’re only playing beats, then what is it for?
In New Orleans there are certain idiomatic things that you have to do in playing certain functions that traverse the whole timeline. Was that part of your experience there?
Well, I did march in a few parades during Mardi Gras. For me, the most fun thing is to see the brass bands, and how the past, present and future all collide at that very moment when you’re listening to them. I listened to Paul Barbarin records at the suggestion of Ernie Ely, who is another hero of mine down there. I was a busboy at a little place on Decatur Street called the Palm Court, where a guy named Greg Stafford played trumpet and Ernie was the drummer. The way they played the swing beat was real! They were playing these songs the way I felt they should be played, with the sensitivity but the passion for it. It wasn’t as if it was something relegated to olden times.
Have you studied in any systematic way African music, Afro-Cuban music?
Only as a music fan. I love to listen to music, and I buy a lot of recordings. Most recently I’ve gotten into this singer who I think is from Mali; her name is Oumou Sangare. The drums are very soft on these recordings, but the rhythm is so strong. I think that’s what creates a groove, the interplay, and realizing that you may not have to do so much as the drummer to create something quite intense.
Is the science of rhythm in those cultures a different perspective than the trapset philosophy?
I think using all four limbs, perhaps it’s easy to get wrapped up in that, like the fact that you can create quite a complex landscape of rhythm. But to find that singular thread that makes the music live, that’s always the challenge. I’m a big fan of Paul Motian, and particularly Elvin Jones. Just one strike of the cymbal, there’s something transcendent in the sound.
You also mentioned John Bonham. Who are some of the people who influence the approach you take in your Rock life?
Well, for me John Bonham stands as one of the great drummers of any time. This density that comes from his sound and his sense of groove is unbelievable. So laid back, too, but at the same time moving the music forward. I always admired him. As well as Levon Helm of the Band records. He has this feeling that comes from a certain part of America, like Tennessee…
Shreveport!
[LAUGHS] Well, there’s this thing that happens, like all these musics, Country and Bluegrass and R&B, they all kind of collide, and out of it comes someone like Levon Helm. You hear the Motown sound and you hear these Stax records; all of these grooves kind of come out in his playing, but it’s uniquely him at the same time.
What’s the attraction of Paul Motian’s sound?
Johnny Vidacovich introduced me to Bill Evans records, because he liked Paul Motian so much. He possesses this amazing looseness that is so lyrical, but also at the same time the pulse. People sometimes miss that Motian really moves and gets inside of the music. It’s quite a different approach from records where you hear Art Blakey or Philly Joe Jones play the drums. But at the same time there is this swing and, like I say, this pulsation that injects the music with a good feeling.
You were talking about David Lee being extremely specific and almost pedagogical in his teachings. Tell me about practice — what you practice now, and how much you practice? Or is it more bandstand-oriented?
Since I have been on the road quite a bit for the last six or seven years, it has been difficult to practice regularly, and it’s important to take advantage of the time you have. On the road a lot of it happens mentally. I play the guitar every day regardless of where I am, because I can take it into hotel rooms! It’s good to have that musical connection, no matter what.
When I’m at home and do get to practice, I like to sit at the drumset and play time for periods of ten minutes at a time. Sometimes I play song forms, but sometimes I just play time, make this continuous line of different things so that hopefully, in live situations which are so unpredictable and when all this stuff goes out the window, your physical instinct will kick in. I try to get around the drums comfortably and play things that I hear, challenging myself to execute things. Usually it’s the distance from your head to your hands that’s the problem; you slow things down and speed it up again, that sort of thing.
What was your practice like when you were younger and forming?
In New Orleans I spent a lot of time playing with my friend Christopher Thomas, the bass player, in bands with Peter Martin or Nicholas Payton, or just the two of us for an hour or two on different tempos, playing blues or song forms or just quarter-notes together to see how disciplined we could be, to see where each of us felt the pulse and if the groove was together. I think it’s important to have companionship with someone, to try to find your place in a group. Because you’re going to be playing with people hopefully! There won’t be many solo drum concerts coming in the future for me.
So as important as it is to tell narratives and so forth on the drums, it isn’t going to happen without extensive preparation.
I don’t think so. Some folks just have this ability to tell a story, but I don’t think anyone can bypass these fundamental things. I don’t think anyone wants to really! Most times it’s lonely, like spending time in your room, listening and trying to see how things are played and how to get a certain sound, so then you can hopefully be free of it once you play more and more with every experience.
A final point. Rather uniquely among drummers of your generation you’ve made a mark in the Pop and Jazz worlds. But your imperatives seem to come out of jazz in a very profound way, and to inflect your stance towards the other areas.
Well, jazz definitely is predominantly what I do play. I’m not offended by the word “Jazz.”
Some people are.
Yes. Well, I think we get caught up in terminology too much. Maybe it’s just where I grew up, but for me the music was this singular thing. I never put up too many walls between genres and all this. Maybe that’s presumptuous or puffed-up to say, I don’t know, but…
That said, what does jazz mean to you?
There’s the improvisatory freedom that you don’t really experience in other musics. Within the forms and constructions you play, it gives you the opportunity to take flight and create your own picture with each performance of maybe the same piece, or with a different group of people, or with the same group of people — you challenge each other to tell a story every time. It’s the improvisatory freedom which makes it magical. It’s unseen. Hopefully you go with no preconceptions, so that it truly is of the moment. That’s the beauty of jazz music. Not to say that you aren’t playing songs, because that’s also the challenge: With that freedom, can you really create this narrative and take the listener as well as the people playing together on a journey that completes a sort of circle.
* * * *
In 2008, after an eight-year gap, Fellowship—comprising the same core personnel stated above—performed on Season of Changes [Verve], a succinct, streamlined suite on which Blade shaped the flow through subtle permutations of groove and drum timbre.
During that interim, Blade had toured extensively with Shorter, Redman, Garrett, Herbie Hancock, Bill Frisell, David Binney, Edward Simon, and other upper echelon improvisers from different points on the stylistic spectrum. In the process, he burnished his stature among his generational peer group. In a Downbeat Blindfold Test a few years back, after remarking on Blade’s “real old-school sound,” drummer Jeff Ballard said: “Brian’s choices are amazing. What he plays is all for the composition. His mix of texture and tonality is perfect for that moment in the whole tune. So is his matching of sound to what’s going on in the placement. Also, he’s got patience with the biggest P on the planet. He forces things not to be automatic.”
Shortly before the jazz.com piece appeared, Chick Corea had hired Blade to play the second half of a long tour by his Five Peace Band project with John McLaughlin, Garrett, and Christian McBride, made a similar point. “After working with Brian for a couple of tours, he’s become one of my favorite drummers of all time,” Corea stated. “He thinks as a composer, and he’s very expressive. He carries the tradition not only of Philly Joe Jones and Roy Haynes and Tony Williams—in my mind, he kind of holds the torch of the creation of jazz drumming—but he also does what might be considered, in more conservative music, radical things. Like playing very quietly, Or not playing at all, or playing very edgy and bombastically, all within the same framework. He came in and the whole set turned around.”
This interview was framed around the release of Mama Rosa [Verve], on which Blade plays not a single beat on drums, but instead communicates with his voice and his guitar, revealing himself to be a first-class singer-songwriter. The 13-tune recital includes 10 Blade-penned songs that comprise a quasi-autobiography, touching on themes of faith, family, love, loss, and remembrance. Blade sings them without affect, allowing the power of his words to come through with phrasing and nuanced articulation. Lanois, the date’s producer, counterstates Blade’s message on guitar, Kelly Jones provides eloquent vocal harmony, and Fellowship colleagues Cowherd and Rosenwinkel also contribute to the proceedings.
“Revealing more of ourselves is always daunting,” Blade stated in the publicity materials attendant to the release. “But I feel like I need to keep challenging myself and peeling away layers to get to the core of who I am and what I have to offer.”
On Mama Rosa you reveal a side of yourself that you haven’t previously offered to the public. It’s a suite of music that includes ten songs you wrote while touring over the years. Can you tell me how the recording took shape? Is there an overall narrative arc, and did the songs fit cleanly into it? Was a lot of production involved?
As you say, it has been running parallel to my writing for the Fellowship Band, but in a very private way. Everything on the record was recorded at home on my 4-track, and it gave me enough satisfaction just to know, ok, they exist, and I’m fine with that. I’m thankful that I’ve had a little bit of time to write down my memories and experiences, and thoughts about my family, and life in general, and connect them with music. Some of those original four-track recordings are on the record as I did them in my little room, or various rooms around the world. But then it got to the point where I’d share them with my friend Daniel Lanois, and he encouraged me to try and make an entire record of it. As we went through the process he’d say, “Ok, I don’t think we can better this version from your home recording, so that’s on the record.”
Which of these songs is the first that you wrote, and when did you write it?
I guess “After the Revival.” Yes, that first song. I want to say on guitar, at least 12-13 years ago, even before Fellowship music started to come to me. It was a song written from the perspective of my mother, say, 1964, when she’s about to have my first child, my brother Brady. I was trying to think of what she might have been feeling at that time. My father is a pastor, so he often used to go out to preach at revivals when we were growing up. He was trying to build a home and take care of his family, but also go forth with his own mission as a minister. It’s really all about my grandmother Rosa, who is my mother’s mother, and also my mother and brother.
Can you tell me something about Rosa? Is she from Shreveport?
Yes, she is. Basically, she always took care of people’s houses, like a housekeeper her entire life, and she ran several kitchens at Southern University and places like that around Shreveport, Louisiana. Actually, the cover photograph is from the Jaguar Grille, which is the Southern University kitchen there. She’s a sweetheart! So I felt it was fitting to dedicate the record to her, and what she means to me, and hopefully the songs embody the joy she brought to my life and to so many other folks.
I gather you’ve recently moved back to Shreveport.
I’ve been spending more time there since I gave up my place in New York, just to connect with them more than just Christmas every year, as I get older and they get a little older.
This happened about two years ago. Has living there had any impact on your musical production? You remarked in conjunction with this recording (and I’m paraphrasing) that in a certain way you feel it’s time to be more open about who you are.
Well, maybe so. I don’t think I was ever concealing anything necessarily. But particularly with this Mama Rosa music, they almost feel like diary entries to me. It’s kind of like, “well, do I want the world to read my diary?” No, not really. But at the same time, it’s my music, too, which is something I love to share. So I felt, well, I have to let it go in order to move forward and feel like I’m doing the right thing not only for myself, but for the grand scheme of things.
When did you start writing songs?
I want to say ‘96-‘97, just before the first Fellowship record came out.
So the process begins during or right after the time you’d been on the road with master singer-songwriters—Emmy Lou Harris, Dylan, Joni Mitchell.
Exactly. And Daniel Lanois.
Who you met in New Orleans. Was writing something that always had interested you? Did it start to emerge for you at that time?
It did, particularly from being around my friend Daniel Lanois, and watching him in the process, how he would write down ideas and form them into poetry and connect them with music. Obviously, Joni Mitchell, too. She’s my hero and my greatest inspiration for this way of seeing a story unfold, and putting down your observances and experiences in some way that might strike against someone else’s life and experience. That’s why I think her music endures and keeps getting deeper and deeper, the more I listen to it. It’s always a privilege to be around her and to be around Daniel or Emmy-Lou or Dylan, and to see the attention they place on all the elements of storytelling.
Are you or have you been a big reader? I noticed in an old interview that you majored in anthropology at Loyola University in New Orleans.
Yeah. I always sort of wanted to be Alan Lomax in this life, just go around finding cultural significance through people’s music. In a way, I’m doing it as a musician, strangely enough, not necessarily documenting other people’s music, but trying to take in as much as I can, and having it distill itself in me. It’s a constant research, a constant study, and you’re never there—you’re just on the trip, I think.
You moved to New Orleans in ‘88. How soon after arriving did you meet Daniel Lanois?
It would have been around ‘91-‘92. Maybe a little later.
By then, he’d already produced Dylan.
Yes. The second record, For the Beauty of Wynona, was about to come out, and he was going to go on tour with Darrell Johnson, who played bass with the Neville Brothers at the time. Daniel made a record with them called Yellow Moon. But we met and rehearsed at a little theater in Algiers where he was holed up, and became fast friends. We went on the road for three months, and we haven’t stopped since. We’re bound as brothers.
Was he the person who led you to Joni Mitchell and Dylan and Emmy-Lou Harris?
I was already very aware of their music and a fan.
I meant personally.
To Joni…yes, I guess to Emmy and Bob as well.
Songwriting. Apart from the inspiration and the message behind the words, it involves a specific craft. Did it take a long time for you to develop the craft?
It’s a good thing that in my time off from the road, or even on the road, I put down every little fragment, or thought, or word, or chord that might be an inkling to something whole, something larger, a full song, a full idea. In those times, it’s almost like a meditation. You just try to stay in it as long as you can, to focus on the thought. Hopefully, I’m getting better and better at that. Same with the Fellowship Band music. I’m trying to write specifically for the guys in the band and for myself to hopefully get in on this story, to be able to deliver it and know it well. I guess the challenge is to do that…well, not necessarily quickly, because you can’t rush it. The process is still a mystery to me. You’re still almost grabbing…reaching out into the darkness for these little points of light, and you’re not sure where they’re coming from. But if you can just be in the moment and hold onto it as long as you can… It’s hopefully getting better.
But from what you’re saying, storytelling has always been an abiding interest for you.
Absolutely.
I’d imagine that your time in New Orleans perhaps influenced you to apply the notion of storytelling to the way you think about drumming.
New Orleans was my first time away from my family, starting college in a whole new community, one of the greatest places in the world, so unique in feeling and just the emotional vibe on the streets and the beat that lives there—and my teachers. John Vidacovich was very important. There’s a deep sense of groove, but also a deep concern with creating melodic motion from the drums, with moving and shaping the music. He’s more of a philosophical teacher than one that taught in a methodical way. David Lee had me play out of books, and placed names on certain beats—one is a calypso, another is a Merengue.
I guess along the way, my experience in New Orleans finds its way into all my music. Unconsciously, it’s just a part of how I go about making music.
Your creativity emerged on this very solid foundation. It sounds like a similar process was at play in your songwriting.
I must say that my teachers definitely gave me that foundation. You’re always grappling with that place between your head and your hands that you want to connect, and not have a gap between what you hear and what you execute. I used to go to Congo Square, where a slave would walk from Mississippi just to be there for a day, to do this vigil and play the drum… There is storytelling in the instrument, but you have to go to it wanting to tell people something. If you’re only playing beats, then what is it for?
Now, with the songwriting, I felt I was a little on my own. But the thing is, even before I met Daniel or Joni or Bob Dylan or Emmy-Lou, their records existed. What I definitely know is that when I hear something that touches me, then I go into the analytical process after it touches me, to say, “Ok, what is it that touches me about it? And can I put it into words? What makes it so emotionally powerful?” So I try to step away from my own writing and hopefully have that objectivity as well. “After the Revival.” What is this song trying to tell you? Who’s involved? Where are we? Is it in a specific place? Is it literal or is it more metaphorical? When you start to put words on things, too, perhaps it gets a little closer to the bone. Joni Mitchell’s influence also infuses the instrumental music, the Fellowship Band music, and it’s just as close to my heart as the Mama Rosa songs, but when the words enter the picture it’s maybe a slightly different trip, a more personal trip.
A lot of the songs on Fellowship Band’s Season of Changes sound like they could very well have lyrics, and for all I know, they do and you haven’t recorded them.
Some of the songs do begin with a lyrical idea, but then they end up living in the instrumental world. I guess I’m never so sure as to where a song is going to end up living. The process is that either I end up develoing this one sentence into a full lyrical idea, or else that idea is just a starting point that will give me the instrumental story. I’m never sure. Maybe that’s the great thing about the mystery, too. It throws you into the process, and you just have to take the trip.
When did you form Fellowship Band? You’ve had a fairly stable personnel.
It starts with Jon Cowherd. Jon was already at Loyola when I arrived in New Orleans in 1988, and we became fast friends and played all the time. That was the genesis of the band, actually—not knowing it, of course, until a decade later, when we made our first recording. A year or so after I met Jon, in 1989 or 1990, Chris Thomas moved to New Orleans to attend the University of New Orleans, to study with Ellis Marsalis. So there was this trio core in New Orleans that was the beginning of the band.
You must have met Myron Walden after moving to New York in the ‘90s.
Yes. I met Myron at Manhattan School of Music. I was playing with Doug Weiss and Kevin Hays, and Myron was there.
It’s hard to think of too many other bands in which I’ve heard the excellent tenor saxophonist, Melvin Butler. His sound seems perfect for what you’re trying to do.
It is. Melvin’s tenor voice, and how he delivers melody and emotes the feeling, the essence of what I feel the music is… He’s just a gifted person. It’s in his heart and in his soul. He went to Berklee, and had relationships with Kurt Rosenwinkel and musicians in New York, like Debbie Dean and Seamus Blake, who were all at Berklee during that same period of time. I met Melvin through Betty Carter, when she hosted her first Jazz Ahead at BAM. At the time, Chris Thomas and Clarence Penn were in her band. Peter Martin, too. Melvin is a very studious man, very much on a mission. He’s a professor now. Ethnomusicology. He’s busy writing, but he’s got a dedication to the band, which I’m thankful for.
Do you hear the drumkit differently playing with Fellowship than with other people?
I don’t necessarily think it’s different. The vocabulary is all the same. Within each situation, I’m primarily trying to do the same thing—serve the moment, serve the song. Thankfully, I’ve been given that liberty in almost every situation I’ve been a part of. Sometimes I’m amazed. I’m back there, I’m looking at Wayne Shorter, and thinking, “God, this is what I do!” There he is, the very man himself. When you encounter your heroes, it becomes even deeper and greater to you in terms of your reverence and respect for them, and love, just as people.
Are you composing or thinking of the overall sound of the Fellowship Band from the drums? Or are you thinking in a similar way as you would as a sideman, reacting to the flow around you?
That’s interesting, because obviously, I have a connection with Jon Cowherd… Whatever Jon brings to the table musically, I know I’m going to—hopefully—give the right thing for it. Myself, after I’ve written something, I then have to leave the guitar and sit by the drums, and it’s really kind of new for me at that moment, as if I’m playing someone else’s music. Especially when it’s in the hands of the people in my band, all of a sudden it becomes alive to me. So I have to create a part for myself in the moment. I suppose I’m always doing that. Insofar as how it fleshes out in terms of the group dynamic, I think everyone is sensitive to finding their thread and fabric, so to speak. That’s what I’m always trying to do.
As a working drummer in live situations, you always have to play the room. One week you might be playing the Village Vanguard, after spending a month playing concert halls with Wayne Shorter.
True. I think a lot of it comes from my earlier experiences, firstly playing in church in Shreveport, and doing many, many gigs in ballrooms and hotels and lounges, all these different environments, different musics. That has informed my ability to adjust, to adapt to the environment quickly and say, “Okay, this is the sound,” and be able to fill it but not overwhelm it. It’s always a challenge. Every day is a different experience.
Can you speak to the band’s name, Fellowship?
I guess the big idea is what I hope to present with the music itself, this bond and this solidarity, not separatism or things that place boundary-lines between us. The music is perhaps not always easily defined, but I would call it our folk music, and it’s based on our relationships.
In a previous conversation, we spoke about the role of location being crucial to your broad conception of music—American heartland music. Shreveport is situated more or less equidistantly between the Delta, the Bayou, and the Ozarks, which is the confluence of a lot of streams, I suppose you absorbed a lot of them as a kid.
I suppose I did. Gospel, of course, being at the core of it. But then, I heard so much music. Chuck Rainey and the Neville Brothers, Asleep at the Wheel, this kind of cross-section of Soul and Country and roots music, as well as all the recordings I was trying to listen to. So yes, it is a curious place, right at that point in Louisiana.
Have your experiences with Wayne Shorter modified-morphed your views on presentation, or forms of tunes, or how you tell a story on the drums?
It’s definitely given me a greater degree of courage, to take chances. That’s what I love about Wayne. He’s such a master, such a genius composer, such a funny man. So for him not to rest on what he’s already established, absolutely the bedrock of this music, his unrivaled compositions… He’s still searching for new pathways and a different direction every night. So I try to do that myself. There is that unknown, which Wayne embraces wholeheartedly, and he’s brought us into that, like, “Okay, flashlights on—let’s adventure.” But then also, Wayne is always writing and bringing things in, and often, as a trio, Danilo and John and I will go through things at soundchecks. We may not get to them for a while. But Wayne is always planting seeds, and the growth comes slowly but surely.
The concerts give the impression of being 60 minutes of collective improvising, with occasional references to the tunes. How does it function? Are there cues? Is it just that you’ve been playing together for so long that you have that mutual intuition?
Right. After nine years, that unspoken language develops, just from that immeasurable amount of time together. But beginning from nothing, there are points at which someone might actually play something that we are familiar with. “Oh, I know that melody.” “Oh, do you want to play that?” “Okay.” You might agree, and everyone goes there, but sometimes four threads of thoughts are intertwining. So somehow, within all that variance, comes a singularity as well. Wayne loves that. He loves for you to make your choice and stick with it.
There’s a quality of real sound-painting, almost as though he’s seeing the sounds as colors and shapes as he’s creating them.
His imagination is so incredible, and you can hear it in his tone and his improvising. I think of it as always this cinematic view running. There’s also the symphonic aspect of everyone’s vision. It always seemed to exist in Wayne’s music, all the records I bought while I was in college, all of his Blue Note recordings, and later his Columbia recordings, and obviously Miles’ quintet with him, and also Weather Report. He always projects some other idea somehow, something bigger, something out of this world. Wayne is such a pictorial thinker, and he has such a cinematic, descriptive eye, and it’s great to feel like we’re part of that vision that can make his music. It’s perfect on paper. As far as I’m concerned, we just have to play what’s on the page and I would be so satisfied with that. But he wants to break out of that form almost immediately, before we even get to it, to create something that’s all of ours, so to speak. It’s been such a privilege with him to hear and just play one note, and what’s in that note is so profound and beautiful. But it’s also been great for me and for Danilo and for John to have played together for so many years now where we can walk out on the wire, so to speak, with no script, and improvise, compose together for the moment. It requires a great deal of trust, and also simultaneously, ambitiousness, and patience to put yourself in a vulnerable place, and hopefully have your instincts kick in and deliver the goods.
You mentioned how important the recordings that Wayne Shorter was on were to you as a young guy. Parenthetically, I once presented a track of yours to a veteran drummer in a Blindfold Test, and he mistook you for Tony Williams, which indicates your command of that vocabulary. Could you speak of the drummers you studied early on?
As to Wayne’s recordings, of course his Blue Note recordings with Elvin Jones, but I also initially tried to absorb Art Blakey as much as I could. Max Roach as well. Definitely Tony Williams. After I met Greg Hutchinson and Clarence Penn, they said, “Man, you need to check out Philly Joe Jones, you need to check out Papa Jo Jones.” So obviously every thread connects. Then you start to look at the progression. You can hear Papa Jo in Elvin. You can hear Art Blakey in Tony. Even Tony at 17, you’re talking about a fully formed genius. He set the bar so high, and you can hear that he absorbed the history of not only swing, but how to command a sound at the instrument. I guess I’m trying to do the same thing. Those are my pillars.
Were you an emulative drummer as a kid? What I mean is, would you try to play as much like Elvin Jones as you could, or as much like Art Blakey as you could, or as much like Tony Williams as you could, and then form your own conclusions out of that to become Brian Blade? Or was it more an osmosis thing?
Well, at home, in practice, I would try to. I did a little bit of transcription, but also less writing of it and just sitting at the drums and trying to learn how to execute these things that I liked. But when you’re playing in a situation with people, you make music in the now and not play something that you… It becomes a part of you, hopefully, and you can transmit it, but I know where it came from. I had so many opportunities to play all kinds of music. I was always listening to Steve Wonder, and Earth, Wind and Fire, or Todo! Again, these connections. Like, I’d hear Jeff Porcaro play a beat, and then later I would come to hear Bernard Purdie, and say, “Oh. Bernard Purdie!” I’d start to go deeper into the roots of where things come from. Sometimes when I listen back to things and hear myself, I think, “Wow, there’s New Orleans!” It’s always there, that pulse and memory of that place, my teachers and heroes there. It all has formed my way of playing music and seeing the world to a certain degree as well.
Did guitar precede the drums for you?
No. Violin did, however. But after, I guess, junior high, the line got blurry—I started playing snare drum in the sort of symphonic band. But for me, the guitar… I never had a great connection with the piano. So for me to be able to travel with this acoustic thing, and feel like, “oh, these little gifts are coming to me, and if I have 15 minutes somewhere as we travel along…” You never know. So I always like to keep it with me, and even if I get a fragment of an idea, who knows? It might develop quickly. But at least I was there to receive it.
Did any of the tunes on Season of Changes stem from guitar explorations?
Absolutely. “Rubylou’s” and “Stoner Hill”. The one song that I wrote at the piano is entitled “Alpha and Omega.” John and Myron do this amazing improvisation that precedes it, and then connects to that little piece of music. I’m proud of that one. I fancied myself in my room, the electricity had gone off, and I’m at my little piano, and Laura Nyro kind of came into the room a little bit in spirit!
When you played at the Village Vanguard with Fellowship last spring [2008], the distinctive sound of Kurt Rosenwinkel was prominent within the mix. Jon Cowherd sat stage left at the piano, Rosenwinkel stood stage right, and, as I believe you mentioned at the time, their sounds comprised the pillars through which you navigated. Speak a bit about the band’s texture, the sound you’re hearing from the unit in your mind’s ear.
Obviously, Kurt’s brilliance and expressive power and eloquence comes from this core love of harmony. Also John, the same thing. This interweaving conversation is happening within every beat. They’re constructing these, I guess, monoliths! As a band, when it all comes together, the lines move in a linear way, but then also move in blocks, as these stacks. I often write that way. Not so much long lines, but more sung, shorter phrases perhaps. Jon and Kurt are able to make those two chordal instruments not collide with each other, but create a sort of fabric, and we all are able to stand on and jump from these posts.
Kurt Rosenwinkel was one of so many consequential musicians who developed their musical ideas at Smalls from the mid ‘90s on, as is well-documented. At that time, you played there regularly on Wednesday nights with Sam Yahel—the ambiance was more a straight-ahead, kicking drum thing, signifying on the approaches of some of the drummers you mentioned before. Can you talk about those years?
I miss it. To go down to Smalls with Sam and Peter Bernstein, for a while, every Wednesday, helped me. In our development as people, but specifically as musicians, you hit these plateaus, where you feel, “okay, I’ve been able to express these things, but I’m stuck there now.” So you have to place yourself in situations where you’re going to be challenged. With Sam and Peter, it was always a feeling, “wow, I have to raise the bar,” because they were really talking on a high level. It helped me so much. And it was fun. You’d walk out of there at six in the morning, and it was as if, “Okay, we had an experience tonight.”
But it seems that towards the latter ‘90s, leading up to Wayne, you started to move from “blowing” drumming to longer-form sorts of things. Now, this is a gross generalization, since everything goes on at the same time. But I’m wondering if there’s a kernel of truth to this observation.
I suppose so. I feel my writing became much more compact on Season of Changes—little 3-minute statements, very short sentiments. But we’re also able to balance that with, say, Jon’s writing, “Return of the Prodigal Son” or “Season of Changes,” that are much more of a trip, much more of a landscape through the mountains and valleys. I don’t know. It’s ever-changing. Maybe I’ve got another suite in me somewhere around the bend.
You mentioned that you started playing snare drum in junior high school.
I started playing drums when I was 13. My brother, Brady, who is five years older than me, was playing in church. At the time, he was leaving for college, so it just seemed it was my time to step into the seat in church once he left. It was an unconscious move, really. It just felt like, “Oh, that’s your duty.” “You want to play? Oh, great.”
You once mentioned to me that when you started playing drums in church, you were directly next to the chorus.
Yes. But particularly the organist—or piano, depending on which side and which church we were in. There’s been three locations of our church, Zion Baptist. We started in one part of Shreveport when I was very young, and for most of my life we were in a second location. Once I moved away to college, we moved to yet another location. So it was a different arrangement within each church, but very similar. The choir is always behind the pulpit, and the piano and organ are always behind the left and right, and the drums could have been on either side.
That’s a very dramatic context in which to play drums every week. Did those early experiences have a big impact on the way you think about playing drums now?
It is definitely the ground on which everything stands for me. Every situation which I’m a part of, that initial experience of serving the song, where it’s about praise and not some show or entertainment, but the rhetoric and being in worship service…I feel like every time I play, I’m in that place, even in an unconscious way. I think it gave me a certain focus to hopefully get out of the way! Obviously, there’s a lot of practice that we all have to do to get better at playing and expressing ourselves. But those lessons and that experience is where I come from, I think, in every other situation.
Can you speculate similarly on whatever impact your father’s sermons or rhetoric may have had on the way you express yourself and tell stories?
Yes. Actually, I’m writing a song for my dad right now, because we’re going to make a record for him later this year. I guess a lot of times, people don’t necessarily see Biblical stories as being connected to their lives. But my father had this great ability to break down parables. Often in church, when something speaks to people, they say, “Make it plain!” By “making it plain,” it’s like, “ok, I see what you’re saying; it’s real to me in this moment, in my life.” I’m trying to do that with songs. My dad definitely has inspired me and influenced me so much in trying to make it plain, these things that sometimes can be heavier thoughts or seemingly abstract.
Does the “Make it plain” notion have anything to do with the way you approach playing drums in the flow of things?
Perhaps it does. I remember my brother, when I was starting to play in church, would say, “It’s all about the train.” Keep the train moving. Just the simple thought of CHUG-CHUG-CHUG, seeing my role as being the train, so to speak, or the engine of the thing. Then you find yourself in that description. Ok, maybe the train is a colorful train. Maybe the train makes little stops on its route. So I try obviously to express myself, but at the same time not lose my sense of responsibility in a situation.
Eight years ago, you told me, “Jazz definitely is predominantly what I do play. I am not offended by the word ‘jazz.’”
Yeah!
Then you followed up with a remark that we get caught up too much in terminology.
I think so. Perhaps it’s so loose… I wouldn’t say it’s impossible to define what jazz is. But maybe it was something much clearer to folks when it was somewhat popular music, say, from the turn of the last century til as late as the ‘60s. You could look to Miles Davis or Louis Armstrong, and just say, “Ok, this is jazz.” But as things became much more combined and influences started to come together, those lines started to disappear as to clear definitions. But when I think about jazz, certain folks come to mind. Thelonious Monk. Duke Ellington. Or hopefully what the Fellowship Band is doing I would call jazz—but other elements and feelings come into our music as well.
Hopefully, what we provide for each other is this trust, the confidence to take chances. We don’t want to rely on what we played last night, or any automatic rote actions. We want to be in the moment as well, and surprise ourselves, and surprise each other, to have that mutual connection and know that everyone is completely submitting themselves to the whole idea. I think the audience feeds off of that. I’m not comparing us to the John Coltrane Quartet, but they are the example of what great group interplay is and the power that comes from that. Each individual is so virtuosic and delivering such emotional power on their instrument, but then there’s even something higher that we can reach together, something unseen, something that is a grace that’s been given.
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/body-and-shadow-brian-blade-blue-note-records-review-by-mark-sullivan.php
SF Jazz
With his unfailing ability to raise the level of the music and musicians around him, drummer Brian Blade is one of the most treasured collaborators in jazz. A founding member of the SFJAZZ Collective in 2004 and leader of the Brian Blade Fellowship, he has amassed a staggering list of credits as a session and touring player for the likes of Norah Jones, Brad Mehldau, Charlie Haden, Bob Dylan, Kenny Barron, SFJAZZ Collective pianist Edward Simon, Wolfgang Muthspiel, and dozens of others. Additionally, the Shreveport, Louisiana native has had long-term associations with a number of artists from the worlds of both jazz and pop. Fresh from his four-night run with Chick Corea and Eddie Gomez, the first of five appearances in Season 5, we take a look at several of his most notable partnerships.
Recommended CDs Featuring Brian Blade:
Kenny Garrett Pursuance: The Music of John Coltrane (Warner Bros.)
Mark Turner: Ballad Session (Warner Bros.)
Joni Mitchell: Taming the Tiger (Reprise)
Elvis Costello & Bill Frisell: The Sweetest Punch: The Songs of Costello and Bacharach (Polygram)
Brad Mehldau: Introducing Brad Mehldau (Warner Bros.)
Joshua Redman: Spirit of the Moment: Live at the Village Vanguard (Warner Bros.)
Wally: Brian, I don't know if you're computer literate or not. Are you familiar with the web site?
Brian: I've heard of the web site but, unfortunately, I haven't actually visited because I don't have a computer.
Wally: Well, I've been hearing a great deal about you the last couple of years and I'm excited to talk to you, especially about the making of Joni's new album,Taming the Tiger. But I want to start back just a bit. Tell me about your musical background. Were drums your first instrument?
Brian: Violin was my first instrument. From when I was in elementary into junior high. But I have an older brother, Brady Jr., who played drums, so I sort of followed in his footsteps. My father's a minister. My mother's a kindergarten teacher. Well, she was for over twenty-five years and then she retired and now she's teaching as a part of our church where my father's a minister. And so my brother played drums in church and then when he went away to college, I moved into the chair. That was kind of how I started playing. In hindsight, it was an amazing lesson learned being in that environment so regularly with such a great community of folk.
Wally: Right.
Brian: I think so many great singers, you know, Aretha, Donny Hathaway, you know, those voices, they resonate of sort of a church family. So, being in that situation I think taught me so much about how I approach every musical situation today. So that's how I started playing.
Wally: I would think the style of drums that you played in church were not very rock 'n roll or pop, though.
Brian: Well, it's difficult to say. I think the beats, they're rooted -- I think the evolution of pop or rock music also came from that. Gospel music roots and sort of blues roots and all, I think it all evolved into, no matter whether you like most of what you hear today, it all has to come from something. So maybe we're kind of far away from it at this point, but I definitely think it comes from that.
Wally: So you continued to play drums in the church until you were 18?
Brian: Exactly, until I moved from my hometown of Shreveport to New Orleans to go to college.
Wally: When you were growing up, who were your musical likes and influences?
Brian: Definitely I liked Earth, Wind and Fire --
Wally: Oh yeah.
Brian: Stevie Wonder's music.
Wally: Stevie's a genius.
Brian: Oh man, no question. You know, just before I left I had started buying a lot of records. Friends, and people in Shreveport, you know, great musicians, were turning me on to John Coltrane's music and Miles Davis' music, and I started buying a lot of records. And a friend gave me Hejira when I was 16 and I was listening to that every day on my way to school in my Bug. It just seeped, seeped, inside, so far beneath the skin. That record was a beginning for me.
Wally: It's my favorite Joni record. It's difficult to pick just one, but that would be the one if I had to choose.
Brian: Yeah. I mean, it's funny that it was the first one that I heard. Then I went on to sort of buy all the others.
Wally: The ones before Hejira?
Brian: Exactly.
Wally: What year were you born?
Brian: 1970.
Wally: Oh! So you didn't get into Hejira until the mid 1980s then?
Brian: Exactly.
Wally: So you had the albums before and after Hejira to catch up on?
Brian: Yeah, exactly.
Wally: Lucky you.
Brian: It's bizarre. But, man, I think I'm caught up now. They're still teaching me so much.
Wally: Now wasn't it Bobbye Hall who played percussion on Hejira?
Brian: John Guerin, as well.
Wally: Were you introduced to Don Juan's Reckless Daughter after that?
Brian: No, actually. Just after "Hejira," the same friend gave me "Mingus."
Wally: Since you're more of a jazz guy, I think, than a pop or rock guy, that must have been an important album for you to hear.
Brian: Yeah. I don't know. On Hejira, the story telling is so great. "The Wolf that Lives in Lindsey" from Mingus struck me the most from that album.
Wally: The guitar on that track is so weird. I have a friend who I introduced to Joni recently with Hits and Misses. And he said, "I love the Misses album, except for that wolf song, I have to skip that every time."
Brian: Because it's scary? (Laughs)
Wally: Yeah, well, you know, considering what the story is about, it makes sense that the guitars would be so jarring and everything.
Brian: No kidding. Boy, certain songs like that they should re-release on the public. They're relevant in so many ways. I hear you, so heavy. It's kind of like the first time I heard Blind Willie. You know, I think I bought it one night late in New Orleans at Tower just before they closed and I got home and put it on. Boy, it scared the hell out of me, I had to turn it off. It was too heavy, man. I can relate.
Wally: So who were your musical influences after 18? Did you get into mostly jazz?
Brian: Well, yeah, definitely moving to New Orleans, I didn't go to study music there, per se, at Loyola, the school that I attended, but just moving to that town, you're going to study music in a way, you know what I mean? The environment is so rich and the jazz musicians that were there whom I admired and revered, they were the reason that I moved there- Bill Huntington, and so on, they played all kinds of music, you know. New Orleans is such a mixed up soup.
Wally: A hodgepodge of styles, yeah.
Brian: The whole street culture, the cross and mixture is amazing. So I was getting into everything, you know, R&B, etc. Well, I had played that music growing up, obviously, in Shreveport. I had been in a punk band. For me it all blended together even from my earliest experiences, like the little festival in my hometown- the Annual Red River Revel. I was hearing Chuck Rainey there and all these gospel choirs, and Asleep at the Wheel, the Neville Brothers. I guess they were all my influences, you know, the New Orleans music.
Wally: You said you were in a punk band when you were, I guess, a teenager?
Brian: Yeah.
Wally: So you played in the church but you also played in outside bands?
Brian: Yeah, I played in all kinds of groups. My teacher, Dorsey Summerfield Jr., who taught at the high school I went to, my brother played in his band. He'd had a professional band for over 20 years, but he invited me to play in the band and they were professionals, you know, just amazing singers. He was a saxophonist, too. We played just R&B. And then, of course, just being the age that I was, we had a lot of energy, so we had this band of just two guitars and a singer and we were playing like Bad Brain songs, you know, just like having fun. It was ridiculous. Butchering Everly Brothers' songs, doing thrash versions, so there were no sacred cows. It was some fun.
Wally: So after you went to Loyola U., did you get into a band there?
Brian: It was more so the meeting of one particular friend, a friend of mine named John Coward who plays piano in a group that we've now just started.
Wally: The Brian Blade Fellowship?
Brian: Exactly. Hopefully my name will get dropped off of it eventually. It will just be Fellowship. That's my aim. I guess there's two worlds. There's the business and then there's the music making. When it comes to the business, if I have to be, Brian Blade of the Fellowship, the leader, then that's cool. But then when it comes to the music and performing it and making it, it's just one thing. So John and I, we started playing together all the time, just the two of us most times even if there wasn't a bass player or anyone else who wanted to play. Then I met Chris Thomas a year later. I had a great group of peers who were just amazing musicians. You need that reflection, I think. You know, no matter what you do, it helps to have someone who understands and can kind of get in on it with you.
Wally: Was it after college that you hooked up with Joshua Redman?
Brian: No, it was during college. He was in a band with a trombonist named Delfeayo Marsalis. Chris and I were playing with Victor Atkins, this other pianist, and Joshua was the saxophonist in that band. He was in school in Boston at the time. The band only stayed together for maybe a year or two and then we all went our separate ways. And then I guess when things sort of started for him, he kept in touch with me and we started going on the road quite a bit. But I think before that I started playing with this guy, this alto-saxophonist named Kenny Garrett, who played with Miles' band up until he passed. So, there were a lot of experiences then. Ellis Marsalis, who is my teacher there in New Orleans, I also started playing with him. Chris and I did.
Wally: Have you ever had any other type of job or have you always been able to make a living at music?
Brian: I worked at a record store in Shreveport. Yeah.
Wally: Great gig. Discount records for yourself.
Brian: Yeah! Old records. And then, briefly, while I was in college I worked at this little cafe on Decatur Street, you know, just bussing tables. More so to watch the band who was playing. It was like, you know, traditional jazz, New Orleans jazz, so it was so great. To be in the room, you know, six hours a night. We also played coffee shops for tips. Fortunately, the living was pretty easy. We didn't need much, so it was great, you know. I can't say that we were poor. I felt rich because every day was so full of stuff.
Wally: Was Joshua Redman the first recording that you did?
Brian: No, it would have been with one of my friends and teachers in New Orleans named Victor Goynes. A record called "Genesis," which would have been in 1991 or so. And I think I did the Kenny Garrett record a year later, 1992, maybe?
Wally: And then Joshua came along?
Brian: Yeah. He was making records already. I've been on three or four records now with Josh.
Wally: When did you hook up with Daniel Lanois?
Brian: That was while I was in New Orleans. Mark Howard, this amazing engineer friend, knew Dan. I guess he saw me at one of the coffee shops that we used to play at, and during that time "For the Beauty of Wynona," Dan's second record was just about to come out. And he was rehearsing to go on the road across the river in Algiers at a theater there and Mark invited me to come over and jam. So I met him and the bassist, Darryl Johnson, and we started jamming. And then we went on the road for four months. You know, we got to know each other on buses and vans across Europe, Canada and the States. So that's how I met Dan.
Wally: So you haven't actually recorded on any of his albums yet?
Brian: We've recorded quite a bit of music that has not been released. We're still working on a lot of his music.
Wally: I don't think he's had an album out since "Wynona," has he? A solo album, I mean?
Brian: The next one, hopefully, is around the corner. There's so much on tape. But I think he's making decisions and that sort of thing.
Wally: Well, he's riding high with Dylan's Time Out of Mind album winning all those Grammy's this year.
Brian: Oh yeah. It's great, you know.
Wally: What about Emmy Lou Harris? Where did you work with her?
Brian: Actually that was at the studio in New Orleans, Dan's place there. Dan got me in on that. I wish I'd have been able to be around for more of it, you know, but...
Wally: Was that for the "Wrecking Ball" album?
Brian: Exactly.
Wally: That is the best album. Such a wonderful record.
Brian: Yeah. She's so great, man. God, it was great to watch it all happen and to be around and watch the recording process. Because with jazz, it's quite different. It usually happens in one or two days, or three days at the most. It's funny, you rarely see things change so much as you do within other types of music.
Wally: I guess recording pop music consists of a lot of over dubbing and doing sort of the same thing over and over until they have it right.
Brian: Yeah.
Wally: Less spontaneous, maybe.
Brian: Yeah. I wish I could relate them both to some visual arts, you know, maybe like jazz kind of comes off as a sand painting, maybe, you know, you sort of, okay, that was it, we improvised and we don't want to alter it. But then, with Dan, it was almost like sculpting, you know. So it was a lot of chipping away and getting the right curve. So it was great.
Wally: So would you say that you play not just jazz drums, but you bring in funk, rhythm and blues and pop, and all the varied influences which you picked up during your youth?
Brian: It just kind of all boiled down to making music for me. I've been asked that a couple of times, like, "How do I approach things differently, you know, say with Joni or with, you know, playing instrumental music," -- I don't know, for me, I'm trying to serve the song, whatever the song might be.
Wally: Right. I've noticed you don't push your drums way up front like some drummers do. You don't try to take over. It's like sometimes you almost disappear. You're there, but it's so subtle.
Brian: Thank you. Thanks very much.
Wally: Now I've read that you met Joni at the 1995 New Orleans Jazz Fest?
Brian: Well, not really. We were talking on the phone for maybe six months to a year by that time. I was in LA, I think Dan and I were, recording. Dan knew I was in a band and I think he was going to go over and visit her and he took a tape of some things that we had been recording, you know, some of his music, over to her place as sort of a show and tell, like she'd play some things for him and she liked the tone of it, you know. But I had to go back to New Orleans. I couldn't stay. I was so mad. But I got back to New Orleans and then she called. I spoke to her on the phone for the first time and it was amazing, what was I going to say? I feel like I owed her this debt. But, anyway, we talked on the phone for like a year and then that New Orleans Jazz Fest came up and she was calling it her swan song at the time. And I thought "God, are you kidding?" But I couldn't be there for her, unfortunately. I was going on the road. But then she finally had me out to LA and we started recording. I think the first night I got there we put "Harlem in Havana" on tape. At that time it didn't have a name.
Wally: "Zulu Tango," I think she was calling it then.
Brian: Yeah. "Zulu Tango." It was just an instrumental. So it was great just to play.
Wally: So you actually started recording very quickly then. Do you see it as a collaborative thing?
Brian: Not in my eyes. I'm glad that she let me in on it, you know, because realistically she didn't -- it's kind of like her paintings, she doesn't need anyone to paint with her. I'm glad that she wanted me to be a part of it. Kind of part of the orchestration. That's the way I see it. Yeah, I still owe her. She's given to me and I hope I can give back something, maybe just playing for as long as she'll have me.
Wally: The first I became aware of you working with Joni was in November of 1995 when you went with her on a promotional trip to New York City?
Brian: Oh right. It was for a benefit.
Wally: The Gary Trudeau salute. Is that the one, at the Waldorf Astoria? A benefit for People for the American Way?
Brian: Exactly.
Wally: Do you have any memories of the event?
Brian: Well, I met Norman Lear there. I think he may have been the man who got Joni to be a part of it. I'm not sure. And Maya Angelou was there.
Wally: Oh, wonderful.
Brian: Yeah. I remember after the performance I was going up in the elevator and Chevy Chase was asking me questions about Elvin Jones. It was funny, you know. It was great that all these people, you know, were probably fans of Joni and music listeners. Because I've seen Chevy Chase in so many films.
Wally: And, of course, Saturday Night Live.
Brian: Yeah. The fact that he started talking about Elvin Jones to me was great. I was like, oh yeah, sure.
Wally: That was a short set, wasn't it? Just a few songs?
Brian: Yeah. I think we played "Hejira." We played "Three Great Stimulants." We maybe played "Moon At the Window." And "Just Like This Train." And the next day was her birthday...
Wally: And you played at the Fez.
Brian: Exactly. They invited Joni. They said if she wanted to play, she could. So we did it and it was so much fun. We played just song after song.
Wally: You know there's been a much-reported incident in the audience between Chrissie Hynde and Carly Simon. Were you aware of that?
Brian: Well, you know, I definitely could distinguish Chrissie's voice. She was saying things to Joni, you know, like "Rock, Joni!" But I didn't know there was some turbulent stuff happening between her and Carly.
Wally: I don't know if you've heard this story, but a few nights before the Fez show, Joni went to see The Pretenders show in NYC, and Chrissie, who was in a bad mood and complaining because all these women in her audience that night and the show before that in LA, were screaming out to her. And she said it was distracting. Yet there she was, a couple nights later, doing the same thing at Joni's show.
Brian: That's funny. Wow. I've become what I hate, you know. I don't know. It was all kind of going over my head. I was just so concerned with, okay, wow, okay, "Just Like This Train," okay, you know, I'm ready. What are we going to play next?
Wally: How much rehearsal did you have?
Brian: Well, we rehearsed up a few songs for the benefit that we had played the day before. But that was it. It wasn't a lot. We were just winging it. And she was going through her songs and I knew them all. But it was good to try and reinterpret what I thought I knew. I say I knew them all, but only because I have the records and I listen to all of them. What am I going to do if I have to play them live? That's another story. That never crossed my mind until that incident. It was so much fun, though.
Wally: I have the set list from that show, and one of the songs is referred to as "A Rocking Instrumental Work in Progress." Was that "Harlem in Havana?"
Brian: No, that was the roots of "Lead Balloon."
Wally: Oh. The song about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
Brian: Exactly.
Wally: I haven't heard that one yet.
Brian: She launched into it, then she just stopped and laughed. I think we played it for like, maybe, thirty seconds. It was still just an instrumental sketch. She didn't have any words or story to it yet.
Wally: It's so interesting when I hear that. Because Joni's words are so wonderful, better than anybody's in my opinion, I would think the words come first.
Brian: Well, in some instances they do. Like "Stay in Touch," for instance. Have you heard that off the record?
Wally: No, haven't heard that one yet.
Brian: Well, that's probably something that she wrote on paper first.
Wally: Then in early December you and Joni did some T.V.- CBS This Morning and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Do you remember those two shows?
Brian: Yeah. On CBS This Morning we played, I think, it was "Happiness is the Best Face Lift." You know, it was great because the audience, they were such great fans of Joni and it was a good feeling in the room. Especially for something that happened in the morning, because that's usually kind of a strange time for everyone.
Wally: I heard that they moved the taping ahead for Joni, so it was like at noon or something, wasn't it?
Brian: That was still early. (Laughs)
Wally: For Joni, yeah, that's true.
Brian: But it was good, you know. And the Leno show, I guess we only played one song.
Wally: Yeah, and I haven't heard that one since, "Love Has Many Faces."
Brian: Yeah, yeah. Just one song but I guess you know, every chance, every opportunity to play, is great.
Wally: And you all reached a big audience by appearing on the tube, of course.
Brian: Oh yeah. Hopefully, people were watching. It was nice just to be playing anytime we could, you know, for me.
Wally: I guess during all this time you were playing with her at home and recording?
Brian: We did it in chunks of time over a year, whenever she was able to because she's busy with just life. Just so much happening in her life. When I could come out to L.A., she'd schedule time. So it was great to not really be too rushed, so that new songs could come up.
Wally: Did you work together on creating any of the songs on the album?
Brian: No, no.
Wally: She had the basic tracks first?
Brian: Yeah, sure. The songs on my first trip there were "Zulu Tango," and I think we were playing "No Apologies." I can't remember if that had words already or not. But I think it was just an instrumental at the time as well.
Wally: And I guess she had "Love's Cries," or as she calls it now, "The Crazy Cries of Love."
Brian: Right. Don Freed. I think that's his words.
Wally: Yeah. He wrote all the verses and she did the chorus. That's a great track, by the way. I've heard five or six of the tracks because Joni appeared on Chris Douridas' "Morning Becomes Eclectic" radio show a couple of weeks ago and previewed some of the songs from the album.
Brian: Oh, yeah
Wally: You went with Joni to Stockholm where she received the Polar Music Prize. I understand you were on tour with Joshua at the time but you had the day off, so you flew in just for the day?
Brian: Absolutely, yeah.
Wally: How was that? I've seen some of it on video and it looks like it was a really wonderful tribute.
Brian: Yeah, it was a great day and I think just the whole idea of kingship, you know, the protocol and all that. She had to go through it, I didn't. I just sort of tooled in through the back door. I just wanted to be there for her. Stockholm was a beautiful city. One of the most enjoyable things, aside from the playing we did, was when we went over to Stig Anderson's place. He's an amazing songwriter. Are you familiar with him?
Wally: Oh, sure. ABBA and all that. He's dead now, I guess you know?
Brian: Really?
Wally: Yeah. He died within the last year.
Brian: That's right.
Wally: I think it was in September.
Brian: Wow, man, it was so bizarre, because I talk about me coming in the back door but they treated me beautifully. It was like because it was the music award, and the whole country was sort of acknowledging it. So I didn't even need a passport to come in. It was beautiful. They met me there and sort of made me feel special and just to know that I was going to see Joni was so great. But afterwards there was a party at Stigs. Everybody was all gussied up, tuxedos and the whole bit. And he was in the kitchen with me in his slippers. It was funny, you know, it was like, man, he didn't care. All these people in his house eating hotdogs or whatever and dressed up and he was just, like, chilled, you know. So it was fun. It was beautiful. Everybody was really open. And Pierre Boulez, he was honored as well. So I met some nice folk there on that trip.
Wally: And you and Joni performed two songs?
Brian: That was during the honorarium. I forget what songs we played. I think we played "The Train" and I can't remember what else. Maybe you remember better.
Wally: Yeah, I do. I have it written here. You did "The Magdalene Laundries" and "Just Like This Train."
Brian: Got heavy. Yeah, "Magdalene Laundries."
Wally: Joni always wants to do those light ones, right? (Laughs)
Brian: (Laughs) I love it, don't pull any punches. Great, you know. It was fun.
Wally: So Joni refers to you as her musical partner on "Taming the Tiger."
Brian: Wow.
Wally: She told me recently that you recorded your drums on all ten of the tracks, but in her final mixes she cut out the drums on five cuts.
Brian: Yeah.
Wally: I guess you've heard the final mixes by now?
Brian: Yeah, definitely. Mostly, the only one I was sort of upset about was "Stay in Touch." Ooh, I wanted to be on that one so bad. Because I felt great about what was happening. And usually I don't, usually I'm sort of, oh, man, am I even serving the song right here? But that was cool. You know, I totally trust her judgment on every level. And orchestral choices that she made, like the way the record flows -- and I love when she comes out so clearly, like alone, just a guitar and her voice. It's beautiful.
Wally: Oh, absolutely.
Brian: And I thought even if she took me off the whole thing, the experience would have still happened.
Wally: Joni told me that on "My Best to You," the old Sons of the Pioneers song, she took your drums off on at least the first part of the song. She said that they were played excellently, but they were too jazzy and took away from the emotion she wanted on that last tune.
Brian: Right.
Wally: As a matter of fact, she said, with the drums off, a few of her men friends have cried during the song.
Brian: Right, well, jeez, hopefully, if you're in on something, you don't eclipse it. So if that's what she felt, it's definitely important that it be taken off. I mean, that song "My Best to You," is definitely that sentiment. And it's needed so much now.
Wally: She said that people were coming up to her and saying, you know, "What are you writing?" and she'd tell them, "Well, I'm kind of blocked now. What can I write about?" And they usually told her, "Well, we want you to write about something hopeful." And she's like, "Well, you know, they shoot people who give hope."
Brian: Yeah, right. Well, somebody's got to be the messenger. I think she's definitely that.
Wally: So what do you think of the final mix for Taming the Tiger?
Brian: I love it. It's tightly banded, so the record moves. It's just a very little time between songs, and the story unfolds and you're at the end, and wanting to go back to the beginning. It's a beautiful and, I think, hopeful record. Of course, there are some heavy moments, too. "No Apologies" and things that are sad in reality, but then, also in reality there's a lot of joy.
Wally: And there's beauty in sadness, too.
Brian: Right. Exactly.
Wally: Or as Joni says, "There's comfort in melancholy."
Brian: Yeah, totally. But there's also a lot of laughing on there and, gosh, it's great.
Wally: I want to go through the ten tracks on TTT and have you tell me what your memories or impressions are of each of them. Let's start with "Lead Balloon."
Brian: "Lead Balloon." Wow. Joni's guitar playing on that one is really different from what people are accustomed to. And just the way it comes in, the first words are "Kiss my ass." So it's like, whew, it's going to be great to hear people's response to that song. Yeah, it was fun making that. We were sweating in the studio playing that song. It's funny. She was up dancing.
Wally: And how about "Crazy Cries of Love?"
Brian: Well, I was sort of the last element to come into that song. I think it was an older piece of music that she had maybe cut a year or so ago.
Wally: Yeah. I think she said she first cut it in 1994 with Wayne Shorter and Larry Klein.
Brian: Right. Well, Wayne's still on it, of course. And Klein. And she redid the vocal, I think. And then she wanted me to play on it. So, it was a little strange. I'd prefer to do things the way we did for "Harlem in Havana," just playing it live off the floor, just together. It helps me to feed from her energy, be right in the present, you know. But it came off okay. I love the story. You definitely get the image of lovers, so I love that.
Wally: It's a really great track. I think it's because of your drum work, actually, which makes it chug along.
Brian: I put the Union Pacific on it.
Wally: I think it could actually be a single. I mean, not that Joni needs a single, but...
Brian: I hear you.
Wally: Well she does need one, but, you know.
Brian: It would be nice for as many people as possible to get in on a lot or all of the songs. I know what you mean. Absolutely.
Wally: How about the song "Love Has Many Faces?"
Brian: That's killer, too, because we played that just live off the floor but, unfortunately, my drums aren't on that now. But it's so beautiful.
Wally: And of course there's always the live version from Jay Leno with you playing drums on it.
Brian: Oh, yeah, right. (Laughs) I think that's a hopeful song. Definitely makes you think.
Wally: It's amazing. "Happiness is the Best Facelift," or I guess she just calls it "Facelift" now. How about that one?
Brian: Oh, "Facelift." Well, I guess we all go through stuff with our parents. There's going to be tough times, you know. You're going to be butting heads sometimes, but it's heavy to document it as some piece of history. Wow, it's a great song. Probably a huge hurdle to overcome, I would think. In terms of a relationship with her mom. I think they're so tight now because Joni's like, you know, she's a mom. And a granny. So, it's like you get some of your own medicine there, kid. It's interesting.
Wally: How has finding her daughter, Kilauren and the extra gift of a grandson, changed Joni, do you think?
Brian: I don't know. It just definitely confirms the circle that we're in, you know, like this life. I mean, 30 years, that's a long time.
Wally: Yeah, it really is.
Brian: So I think it's given her quite a bit of light. I don't know how it has necessarily changed her, aside from the fact that it's definitely made her happy.
Wally: So maybe it's like a second facelift?
Brian: (Laughs) Yeah, exactly. Totally. Just, like happy.
Wally: Have you met Kilauren and Marlin?
Brian: Yeah, they're beautiful.
Wally: The next song is "Taming the Tiger." I don't think you're on that mix, are you?
Brian: On the song, "Taming the Tiger," unfortunately, I'm not.
Wally: That's a wonderful and witty song.
Brian: Yeah. I love that. For me, that sums up the record.
Wally: I like the way she kind of gently takes on the tiger, which represents, I guess, show business. And she goes, "be nice, kitty, kitty."
Brian: Yeah, terrific. "You can't tame the tiger." It's such a beautiful piece. I hope a lot of people get to hear that song.
Wally: That one and "Harlem in Havana" are my two favorites of the tracks I've heard. "Harlem in Havana," I mean, my God, it's got all those magical carnival sounds. It's so cinematic, it's almost like you're coming in in a helicopter and you get closer and closer, and first you hear the wooden planks with the roller coaster running over, then you hear the calliope, then you hear the crowds screaming.
Brian: Yeah. Well, man, when I arrived to play on that one, you know, Joni's kind of a night owl. I was fading when we were making that. When we were putting it on tape, I was like unconscious practically. Of all the things that she kept my drums on, I can't believe she's going to keep me on that. But once it was done, once she had orchestrated the whole thing, then the picture was clear to me. It wasn't before, but obviously her foresight is much more intense than mine, so she could see what was happening. Or maybe she didn't. Maybe she was discovering, too. But something in her gut told her that the drummer was okay on it. So, yeah, what a great story.
Wally: And it's jazzy again, for her.
Brian: That might be some of the best singing I've ever heard.
Wally: It is, you're right. The way she sings that line, "It's Harlem in Havana time."
Brian: Wow, man, there's so much swaying and, ooh, yeah, give on those lines. It's amazing. I love hearing that. And the curve of the range that she's covering. She comes in so high and she dips down so low. "Step right up," but then it's like, whew, it's so beautiful, man.
Wally: How about the song "No Apologies?"
Brian: We were talking about, I forget the tribe, they have like a whispering tradition, I forget what African group this is, but that song almost comes off as a whisper. As it should, in a way, because it's such heavy subject matter. You don't want to rub anybody the wrong way, just tell the story.
Wally: Now are you on that final mix?
Brian: Yeah, and, boy, that was so much fun to play. Wow. Yeah. It seems like my memory of it is almost as if it went down in like one time. I guess she did work on the vocal, but I think we did it all at one time. I don't know what else was put on to it in the final mix. Maybe Greg Leisz on petal steel. It went down so effortlessly.
Wally: I haven't had a chance to hear that one yet.
Brian: It's really kind of slow, you know, and languid. It's a beautiful piece of music.
Wally: How about "Stay in Touch?"
Brian: I love that piece of music, too. That was the one where the words came first.
Wally: That's the one where your drums were taken off and you wish they hadn't been, right?
Brian: Yeah. But, you know, I can understand that.
Wally: How about "Man from Mars?" Are you involved on that one?
Brian: Wow. Yeah, yeah. That's amazing because, well, maybe I should leave off the history for Joni to tell you herself, about how certain songs are born or written.
Wally: Well, she mentioned that it was written because her cat Nietzsche ran away.
Brian: Yeah. That's so heavy, you know, the things that she can put into words. That's what amazes me. And it means so much on a human level just hopefully, another aide for us, another helping hand to try and understand things. But, yeah, that was great. That's the one song she played piano on. It's not a guitar song. It was fun to put down to tape, too. She played it for me. Oh, man, talk about wishing I had a tape player in my sleeve or something. It was used in the film "Grace of My Heart." She wrote it for that. But, man, when she initially played it for me, she had a little Wurlitzer in her room and I think I had just gotten there. I forget, this was just another period of recording, and she played it for me, almost rubato, not really in time, just as it went down. Whew. It's like, okay, that's it, you know. It should have been on the record just like that. It was so heavy. So I wish I had taped that.
Wally: And the final mix on "Man From Mars" is so dense, I mean, there's so much happening on it.
Brian: Yeah. I think it's still got that float though, that I heard that first time that she played it for me by herself. The version on the record is great.
Wally: And the last song on the album is the old Sons the Pioneer Song, "My Best to You." Were you familiar with the Sons of the Pioneers?
Brian: Well, not really. She kind of introduced me to them. I know I'd heard them maybe in some movies or things like that. A cowboy song that makes you feel like there's still some moral code, you know. Hopefully, we haven't lost all of that wanting to wish people good.
Wally: Yeah, it's a nice song. I guess Joni's always thinking that maybe an album's going to be her last album, you know. If this one's going to be her last release, that song would be a very hopeful place to leave it, I think.
Brian: Wow, yeah.
Wally: Now, you're going to be accompanying Joni on her seven-date west coast tour this coming May. What are you thinking about that?
Brian: Well, it's going to be great. I'm totally excited. We're going to start rehearsing soon. We've been talking about songs. I'll throw in my two cents, "Ooh, let's do that." You know, I think she's doing a lot of practicing at home, now, by herself, and then once we all get together, it'll be so much fun.
Wally: Now, who from the Fellowship is going to be coming with you?
Brian: Well, unfortunately, some wrench fell in the machine, so only me, you know. I think Greg Leisz is playing pedal steel and guitar. And Larry Klein's going (Bass). It'll just be the four of us. Maybe it was more feasible for this short time, because there's seven members in the Fellowship. And, you know, it's a missed opportunity for me. I'd love to hear us interpret her music because we're our own little orchestra, that's the way I see it. And I think that's the way she hears things, the thick and thin of music, you know. We're capable of building quite a bit of texture and then also if need be, there's just me and her. It can be as sparse or thick as need be. But, maybe some shows with the Fellowship could happen in the not-so-distant future.
Wally: Well, if Joni has a picnic on these seven dates, maybe she'll want to do some more.
Brian: Yeah, I hope so, man. Hopefully, it will be okay traveling, you know.
Wally: I'm concerned, because she, you know, she's always talking about how her health can be affected by things like this and I hope she can handle it.
Brian: I don't think it'll be too strenuous.
Wally: Yeah, it's only ten days or so.
Brian: Yeah. I think it will be fine. Plus it'll be nice to see Bob and Van Morrison. Those two bands.
Wally: Joni will be sandwiched in the middle.
Brian: Yeah, rolling. So it will be fun.
Wally: So she'll be playing her VG-8, then?
Brian: Yeah. As far as I can tell at this point.
Wally: When do you start rehearsals?
Brian: Towards the end of this month.
Wally: Well, you know, I'm going to be following the tour in my role as web site reporter.
Brian: Alright! I'll talk to you anytime, if I can help you with any details.
Wally: Oh, thank you.
Brian: But it sounds like you've got it all covered.
Wally: Well, you know, I do have lots of contacts and I try to keep up on things. That's my job. Not my paid job, but my self-appointed job, you know, to get information to the fans. There's like 30,000 Joni fans who come to the site each month. So I feel like my job is to keep them informed on what's happening as quick as possible, you know, with her career and stuff. So I'll be there at every show. I've also invited Joni to talk to me during the tour if she'd like to give any reports to her fans.
Brian: Alright, Wally. On stage, here -- Wally!
Wally: This is going to be real exciting for me, Brian. This is like a dream come true.
Brian: Me, too, man. I'm with you, totally.
Wally: I really appreciate your talking with me today and we'll speak again soon.
Brian: Yeah. Thanks for calling. Bye.
Wally: Bye.
My thanks to Beverly Wolfe, David Sholemson and Brian Blade.
https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/brianblade
Brian Blade
”I remember when I first read the words hanging in a frame on my grandma Rosa's wall. The serenity prayer was something I couldn't understand until almost thirty years later, but now after experiencing some peaks and valleys of life, those words ring in my ears with clarity.”
Brian Blade has set those words to music for his first recording as a singer, guitarist and songwriter: Mama Rosa is a revealing journey through thirteen songs about family, loved ones, travels and a sense that these things that shape and inspire us have to be shared with others to complete a circle. He has been writing and recording material with words for as long as he's been making music. In fact, Mama Rosa grew naturally from the four-track home demos that he's recorded over the years and several of the original performances from those tapes can be heard on this album. Initially, Blade felt that these songs would never be heard by anyone else, but after encouragement from longtime friend Daniel Lanois, these home recordings became the cornerstones for the album. There is an initial spark close to the moment of inspiration and that intimate vibe is felt throughout Mama Rosa.
“For some time now, these songs have existed in the solitude of my room, and I got a lot of joy and satisfaction from just knowing that they existed,” Blade says. “But at a certain point I questioned whether it was fear or selfishness that kept me quiet. Facing the music and the mirror, I began to ask if this was the end of the process? What does God expect of me? Maybe someone else might find some inspiration in the songs.”
The lyrical themes of home, memories and loved ones, and how they shape who we are, are reflected in Blade naming the album after his grandmother. Rosa is the subject of the album's vivid opening track “After The Revival.” Sung from the perspective of his mother Dorothy Blade, expecting the birth of her first son, Brian's older brother, Brady, Jr. “After the Revival” also alludes to Blade's early years at the Zion Baptist Church in Shreveport, Louisiana, where his father is pastor, and where Brian first started singing and playing the drums.
The multi-talented young veteran is already widely respected in the jazz world as drummer/composer/leader of Brian Blade and The Fellowship Band, with whom he has released three albums. He is also known as the drummer for many heroes of the music world, including Daniel Lanois, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Wayne Shorter, Seal, Bill Frisell and Emmylou Harris. Blade is always searching for the balance that gives a song a personal story with an outward reaching resonance. One such song of memories is entitled, “Second Home,” a tribute to his teacher, John Vidacovich, and the city of New Orleans where Brian met Fellowship band mates Jon Cowherd and Chris Thomas. He lived in the crescent city for seven years while studying with musical masters Ellis Marsalis, David Lee, Jr. Bill Huntington, Mike Pellera, George French, Germaine Bazzle, Steve Masakowski and John Mahoney. Mama Rosa marks a new endeavor for Blade: a lovingly crafted, emotionally affecting song cycle that's deeply rooted in a rich vein of personal experience. “All That Was Yesterday”, “You'll Always Be My Baby” and “Nature's Law” show Blade to be a soulful and expressive vocalist and a songwriter capable of rendering evocative stories that resonate with insight and empathy. “Revealing more of ourselves is always daunting,” says Blade, “but I feel like I need to keep challenging myself and peeling away layers to get to the core of who I am and what I have to offer.”
Mama Rosa's organic musical palette showcases Blade's diverse talents on acoustic guitar and drums, and one of the people who has inspired Blade for many years now, longtime friend and music maker champion, Daniel Lanois. Lanois is the featured soloist on Mama Rosa, offering perfectly formed and spiritually elevating Firebird guitar improvisations on the songs “At The Centerline,” “Mercy Angel,” “All That Was Yesterday” and “Her Song.” In addition, guitarist Goffrey Moore, steel guitar virtuoso Greg Leisz, bassist Jenny lee Lindberg (Warpaint), singer/songwriters Aaron Embry (Amnion), John Bigham (The Soul of John Black), Rocco Deluca and Daryl Johnson, and the Fellowship Band members Jon Cowherd, Chris Thomas and Kurt Rosenwinkel all help to serve the songs brilliantly. A deep sense of brotherhood echoes throughout the entire recording. Kelly Jones, a truly gifted songstress, blends beautifully with Blade on “Mercy Angel” and “Get There.” Hearing them together brings to mind the inspiration and long history of touching duos, including Fred and Annie Mae Macdowell, George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton, Johnny and June Carter Cash, Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack and Sullivan and Iola Pugh (The Consolers). In addition to Blade's original compositions, the album features a memorable adaptation of Brazilian music icon Milton Nascimento's “Faithful Brother,” as well as the pair of atmospheric instrumentals, “All Gospel Radio” and “Psalm 100.”
“I hope that people will find some personal joy in these songs from Mama Rosa. The real challenge is to be honest with myself and to let more of who we are be seen and heard as the songs reveal themselves.”
Brian Blade was born on July 25, 1970 in Shreveport, Louisiana. His mother, Dorothy Blade is a retired kindergarten teacher and his father, Brady L. Blade, Sr. is the pastor of the Zion Baptist Church in Shreveport. During his childhood, Brian would hear Gospel music in his everyday life, as well as the music of Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind and Fire, and the Staple Singers. In elementary school, his music appreciation teacher, Lucy Bond, introduced her students to the music of Maurice Ravel and in this class, Brian would play the recorder and various melodic percussion instruments associated with the Carl Orff pedagogy.
From about age nine to age thirteen, Brian played violin in the school orchestra and continued to play until following in the footsteps of his older brother, Brady l. Blade, Jr. who played the drums in the Zion church.
During high school, both Brady, Jr. and Brian were students of Dorsey Summerfield, Jr. and performed as part of Dorsey’s professional group, the Polyphonics. During this time and through his experience with Mr. Summerfield, Brian began listening to the music of John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Thelonious Monk, Elvin Jones, and Joni Mitchell.
In 1988, Brian moved to New Orleans to attend Loyola University. It was at this time that Brian would become friends with Jon Cowherd. Both Brian and Jon were able to study and play with most of the master musicians living in New Orleans, including: John Vidacovich, Ellis Marsalis, Steve Masakowski, Bill Huntington, Mike Pellera, John Mahoney, George French, Germaine Bazzle, David Lee, Jr., Alvin Red Tyler, Tony Dagradi and Harold Battiste.
There were many inspiring musicians living and visiting New Orleans who helped Brian in his development. Some of these friends are Chris Thomas, Peter Martin, Nicholas Payton, Antoine Drye, Martin Butler, Delfeayo Marsalis, Joshua Redman, Harry Connick, Jr., Gray Mayfield, Marcus Roberts, Victor Goines and Daniel Lanois.
In 1998, Brian and Jon Cowherd began recording their own music with the group Fellowship. The band members are Chris Thomas, Myron Walden, Kurt Rosenwinkel and Melvin Butler. They have released 3 albums together – Fellowship and Perceptual, both on Blue Note, and the 2008 Verve recording, Season of Changes.
Since 2000, Brian has been part of the Wayne Shorter Quartet with Danilo Perez and John Patitucci.
Awards
2008 Modern Drummer readers poll award for best contemporary jazz drummerhttp://www.bluenote.com/news/brian-blade-the-fellowship-band-celebrate-a-2
BRIAN BLADE & THE FELLOWSHIP BAND CELEBRATE A 20 YEAR MUSICAL BOND WITH "BODY AND SHADOW" OUT NOVEMBER 10
October 13, 2017
Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band marks its 20th anniversary with the release of their sublime fifth album, Body and Shadow, a succinct nine-track meditation on lightness/darkness that arrives like a balm for the soul, ebbing and flowing with grace, subtlety and no shortness of beauty. The album will be released on vinyl and CD, and will be available on all digital retailers and streaming services, on November 10. The lead track “Broken Leg Days” is available today to stream, download, or receive immediately with album download pre-order.
Formed in 1997, the Fellowship released their eponymous Blue Note debut in 1998, but the bond among the musicians goes back even further. Brian Blade, the band’s namesake and drummer, first met pianist Jon Cowherd in 1988 while attending Loyola University in New Orleans, and they met bassist Chris Thomas in the Crescent City a year later. With Myron Walden (alto saxophone and bass clarinet) and Melvin Butler (tenor saxophone), the Fellowship Band’s sturdy unified bond (“we think of the band as a collective instrument,” Cowherd says) has evolved with every album, and Body and Shadow, which also features Denver-based guitarist Dave Devine, is an extension of that evolution.
Blade and Cowherd wrote, arranged and produced the songs for Body and Shadow, which was recorded at the historic Columbus Theatre in Providence, Rhode Island. The experience reminded Blade of recording the band’s debut with producer Daniel Lanois at the Teatro, a former movie theater in Oxnard, California.
“It is always great to be in the moment and in process with the band,” says Blade. “We come in with all our grand plans and then there’s this yielding to, ‘Okay, here’s what’s actually being captured.’ Maybe not what I thought but another feeling, another energy, which is unpredictable. There’s joy in the whole mystery of what we are hoping to create. You step into the process to see what you’re made of, individually and together. Since we’ve shared so much time together, that trust and the sort of inherent knowing of what’s needed for each other kicks in pretty quick.”
“I think we have a lot of hope for the world and ourselves and the desire to create something which will move or touch people,” Cowherd adds. “There’s a spiritual background to the band. We come from a foundation of playing music that is inspirational and I think we all want it to be intellectually interesting, too.”
2017 ALBUM RELEASE SHOWS:
November 10 – Scullers – Boston, MA
November 11 – Exit Zero Festival – Cape May, NJ
November 12 – Bethesda Blues & Jazz Supper Club – Bethesda, MD
November 14-19 – Jazz Standard – New York, NY
http://www.drummerworld.com/drummers/Brian_Blade.html
BRIAN BLADE
Louisiana-born, Brian Blade grew up in Shreveport, then New Orleans, where he distilled the unique drumming styles and musical heritage of the nation's spiritual underbelly into a powerfully swinging percussive trademark. Nurtured under the watchful eyes of Ellis Marsalis and New Orleans Dixie-drum masters Johnny Vidacovich and Herlin Riley, Blade learned to find his 'knit in the blanket' of sounds and styles.
From albums and tours with Joshua Redman and Kenny Garrett, to recent recordings with Bob Dylan (Time Out Of Mind), Emmylou Harris (Wrecking Ball), Daniel Lanois (Sling Blade) and hero Joni Mitchell, Brian has shown deep musical instincts and a phenomenal gift for playing music texturally -- both thick and thin -- on the drums. His evolution continues on his astounding, highly acclaimed Blue Note debut, Brian Blade Fellowship. The line-up of Fellowship, Brian's band, is as potent as its leader's musical skills: Jon Cowherd, piano and Wurlitzer, Christopher Thomas on bass, Melvin Butler, tenor and soprano sax, Myron Walden, alto sax, Jeff Parker, guitar; and Dave Easley, pedal steel guitar. This self-titled album was produced by Daniel Lanois who also guested on the album playing mando-guitar and Fender Mustang guitar; Mark Howard recorded and mixed at The Teatro in Oxnard, California.
Brian Blade makes music that exists beyond borders. Spirituality, sensitivity, honesty, loyalty, all these traits feed the theme of the Brian Blade Fellowship. "I want the music to be a fellowship. That's what you want from the world as a whole. I want the music to project that kind of togetherness. This ideal of fellowship is something I grew up with. I just want to extend the good memories."
https://www.moderndrummer.com/2008/05/brian-blade/
Drummers
by Ken Micallef
May, 2008
Brian Blade has performed and recorded with some of the greatest musicians of this or any era. His explosive jazz drumming with tenor saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter is documented on two amazing live albums, Footprints Live! and Beyond The Sound Barrier. Meanwhile, Blade’s more groove-based work with everyone from Joni Mitchell (Shine) and Bob Dylan (Time Out of Mind) to Daniel Lanois (Belladonna) and Norah Jones (Feels Like Home) further prove his chameleon bona fides.
But while Blade currently mans stage and recording studios with the upper echelon of music royalty, he cites an ordinary hotel gig as the real turning point in his passionate style. “I was fired,” Blade recalls from the New York offices of Verve Records. “I cancelled one night of a six-night engagement with my hero George French [bass, vocals] and Emile Vinette [piano], playing at the Sheraton on Canal Street in New Orleans. It was 1990; I was nineteen. I wanted to be downtown playing ‘modern jazz’ at Snug Harbor. In that instant when George said, ‘We’re going to get somebody else,’ I realized what the deal was. People would make requests, from ‘Green Green Grass Of Home’ to Monk tunes to Lee Dorsey’s ‘Working In A Coal Mine,’ and George and Emile could play it all and everything else. I was trying to play those songs and I realized I wasn’t prepared. These guys were teaching me and I didn’t see it then as something that I really needed. But looking back at it, I know now that it was special, that all-encompassing view of how to make music. No matter what it might be, it’s about serving the song.”
Blade got that gig back, but in that instant of rejection he learned a truism that has served him throughout his still burgeoning career. On Seasons Of Change, the drummer’s third release as a leader with his band, Brian Blade Fellowship, he’s all about the songs, from brooding grooves to high-flying Americana to sublime straight-ahead. Following the band’s 1998 self-titled debut and 2000’s Perceptual, Seasons Of Change continues to position Blade as drummer-cum-leader, maneuvering his large ensemble with majestic drumming and passionate songs. Blade’s more explosive, kinetic style can be heard with a wide variety of artists, including organist Sam Yahel, saxophonist Joshua Redman, guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel, and producer Daniel Lanois.
Blade’s amazing drumming on Wayne Shorter’s Beyond The Sound Barrier shows him to be ferocious, quick-witted, pliant, and always reacting. Like Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross shouting “ABC! Always be closing!”, Blade’s motto seems to be “ABR! Always be reacting!” At times, barely able to compose himself, Blade will abruptly stand up to smash a cymbal or “round robin” his toms. He can as quickly lay way back in the cut to propel a groove, or tip his ride cymbal at triple-time to cut the edge of a jazz improvisation. Blade’s drumming conversation is as animated as Tony Williams’, as expansive as Elvin Jones’, and as magically quirky as Jim Keltner’s.
Blade never discusses the drums in isolation. The groove is always part of the music, part of the interplay between musicians, never a separate element existing in its own lonely space. With a vocal album in the works, the Shreveport native describes its music as a “Sunday record…maybe if you didn’t pray all week you might think about it today. It’s where I’m standing now, where I’ve been, and where I think I’m going.”
If you love Blade’s beautiful “ABR” drumming, you know where he’s going. In his second feature as a Modern Drummer cover artist, we attempt to trace Brian Blade’s future trajectory while understanding his everyday approach.
MD: In live performance, you’re often all over the kit: arms flying in different directions, your body leaning into or around the drums–you even get up from the throne to crash cymbals. You do things that a lot of drummers wouldn’t or couldn’t do. What does that kind of full-body drumming give you?
Brian: Hopefully it gives me flexibility and interpretation. It’s hard for me to see it any other way. As I’ve developed I’ve come to my own processes of how to get a sound. When I would watch my teacher, Johnny Vidacovich, play, I watched his whole physicality and animation. His sound was connected with the way he would move his arms and the way he would sit. I had to come to it on my own.
Watching Elvin Jones was the same thing. His economy of motion…. I feel like I have to sometimes stand up to get that sound that Elvin got, because there was so much power and density and beauty in his playing. He almost looked like he was sitting in an easy chair; he flowed. So I’m just trying to achieve a sound, and that’s what happens.
MD: So jumping up to crash a cymbal gives you a different sound as opposed to if you were sitting down?
Brian: I couldn’t see it any other way. I feel like I’m all wrapped up in it. I never practiced posture so much…or how to economize my movements. It’s more like I saw a video of myself and noticed that my shoulders were up by my ears for fifteen minutes and I had to think about that. Okay, relax! Don’t tense up, even though you want to be intense. I’m finding a way to let myself be free and not tied to a stool. If I have to get up to hit the cymbal, at that moment it must be needed.
MD: So you’re feeling so passionate that you have to really smack it.
Brian: I’m so amazed at the privilege of playing with someone like Danilo Perez or Wayne Shorter–not thinking that consciously at the moment. It really drives you to move in a way. It makes me emote something that isn’t tame.
The drums naturally embody this wild element. Not that I’m trying to be provocative, but the nature of hitting things must go way back. Just the primal aspect or sensibility in that and how to achieve a sound by hitting something, there are so many degrees within the subtlety. I’m always trying to get closer to what’s needed at that instant as the music moves.
There’s more to this interview in the July 2008 issue. Pick it up at your favorite newsstand, book store, or music store now!
Posted in Drummers, On the Beat
https://www.moderndrummer.com/2008/05/brian-blade/
Drummers
Brian Blade: Always Be Reacting
by Ken Micallef
May, 2008
“I’m always trying to tune in to what the other musicians are sending out, and then reacting to that as quickly as possible. If I’m thinking when I’m on the bandstand, I know I’m in trouble.”
Brian Blade has performed and recorded with some of the greatest musicians of this or any era. His explosive jazz drumming with tenor saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter is documented on two amazing live albums, Footprints Live! and Beyond The Sound Barrier. Meanwhile, Blade’s more groove-based work with everyone from Joni Mitchell (Shine) and Bob Dylan (Time Out of Mind) to Daniel Lanois (Belladonna) and Norah Jones (Feels Like Home) further prove his chameleon bona fides.
But while Blade currently mans stage and recording studios with the upper echelon of music royalty, he cites an ordinary hotel gig as the real turning point in his passionate style. “I was fired,” Blade recalls from the New York offices of Verve Records. “I cancelled one night of a six-night engagement with my hero George French [bass, vocals] and Emile Vinette [piano], playing at the Sheraton on Canal Street in New Orleans. It was 1990; I was nineteen. I wanted to be downtown playing ‘modern jazz’ at Snug Harbor. In that instant when George said, ‘We’re going to get somebody else,’ I realized what the deal was. People would make requests, from ‘Green Green Grass Of Home’ to Monk tunes to Lee Dorsey’s ‘Working In A Coal Mine,’ and George and Emile could play it all and everything else. I was trying to play those songs and I realized I wasn’t prepared. These guys were teaching me and I didn’t see it then as something that I really needed. But looking back at it, I know now that it was special, that all-encompassing view of how to make music. No matter what it might be, it’s about serving the song.”
Blade got that gig back, but in that instant of rejection he learned a truism that has served him throughout his still burgeoning career. On Seasons Of Change, the drummer’s third release as a leader with his band, Brian Blade Fellowship, he’s all about the songs, from brooding grooves to high-flying Americana to sublime straight-ahead. Following the band’s 1998 self-titled debut and 2000’s Perceptual, Seasons Of Change continues to position Blade as drummer-cum-leader, maneuvering his large ensemble with majestic drumming and passionate songs. Blade’s more explosive, kinetic style can be heard with a wide variety of artists, including organist Sam Yahel, saxophonist Joshua Redman, guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel, and producer Daniel Lanois.
Blade’s amazing drumming on Wayne Shorter’s Beyond The Sound Barrier shows him to be ferocious, quick-witted, pliant, and always reacting. Like Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross shouting “ABC! Always be closing!”, Blade’s motto seems to be “ABR! Always be reacting!” At times, barely able to compose himself, Blade will abruptly stand up to smash a cymbal or “round robin” his toms. He can as quickly lay way back in the cut to propel a groove, or tip his ride cymbal at triple-time to cut the edge of a jazz improvisation. Blade’s drumming conversation is as animated as Tony Williams’, as expansive as Elvin Jones’, and as magically quirky as Jim Keltner’s.
Blade never discusses the drums in isolation. The groove is always part of the music, part of the interplay between musicians, never a separate element existing in its own lonely space. With a vocal album in the works, the Shreveport native describes its music as a “Sunday record…maybe if you didn’t pray all week you might think about it today. It’s where I’m standing now, where I’ve been, and where I think I’m going.”
If you love Blade’s beautiful “ABR” drumming, you know where he’s going. In his second feature as a Modern Drummer cover artist, we attempt to trace Brian Blade’s future trajectory while understanding his everyday approach.
MD: In live performance, you’re often all over the kit: arms flying in different directions, your body leaning into or around the drums–you even get up from the throne to crash cymbals. You do things that a lot of drummers wouldn’t or couldn’t do. What does that kind of full-body drumming give you?
Brian: Hopefully it gives me flexibility and interpretation. It’s hard for me to see it any other way. As I’ve developed I’ve come to my own processes of how to get a sound. When I would watch my teacher, Johnny Vidacovich, play, I watched his whole physicality and animation. His sound was connected with the way he would move his arms and the way he would sit. I had to come to it on my own.
Watching Elvin Jones was the same thing. His economy of motion…. I feel like I have to sometimes stand up to get that sound that Elvin got, because there was so much power and density and beauty in his playing. He almost looked like he was sitting in an easy chair; he flowed. So I’m just trying to achieve a sound, and that’s what happens.
MD: So jumping up to crash a cymbal gives you a different sound as opposed to if you were sitting down?
Brian: I couldn’t see it any other way. I feel like I’m all wrapped up in it. I never practiced posture so much…or how to economize my movements. It’s more like I saw a video of myself and noticed that my shoulders were up by my ears for fifteen minutes and I had to think about that. Okay, relax! Don’t tense up, even though you want to be intense. I’m finding a way to let myself be free and not tied to a stool. If I have to get up to hit the cymbal, at that moment it must be needed.
MD: So you’re feeling so passionate that you have to really smack it.
Brian: I’m so amazed at the privilege of playing with someone like Danilo Perez or Wayne Shorter–not thinking that consciously at the moment. It really drives you to move in a way. It makes me emote something that isn’t tame.
The drums naturally embody this wild element. Not that I’m trying to be provocative, but the nature of hitting things must go way back. Just the primal aspect or sensibility in that and how to achieve a sound by hitting something, there are so many degrees within the subtlety. I’m always trying to get closer to what’s needed at that instant as the music moves.
There’s more to this interview in the July 2008 issue. Pick it up at your favorite newsstand, book store, or music store now!
Two Interviews with Drummer Brian Blade
July 28, 2011
BRIAN BLADE
Continuing our mini-series on drummers informed by the Afro-diasporic elements of New Orleans culture, here are a pair of interviews with Brian Blade, who turned 41 on July 25th. The first conversation, which originally ran on http://www.musician.com, comes from 2001, not long after Blade had joined the then newly-formed Wayne Shorter Quartet with Danilo Perez and John Patitucci. The second, which ran on the now-dormant webzine, http://www.jazz.com, is a composite of a June 2008 interview on WKCR and a phone conversation in the spring of 2009. Most of the expository text comes from my introduction to the jazz.com piece.
As I wrote in my preface to the earlier piece, Blade, then 30, was “one of the few drummers with a distinct personality in hardcore jazz—credits include Kenny Garrett, Joshua Redman, Pat Metheny, and Mark Turner—who also has stamped his imprint on popular music through stadium gigs and recordings with Joni Mitchell, Daniel Lanois, Seal, Emmylou Harris, and Bob Dylan.”
At the time, Blade had just released Perceptual [Blue Note], the second release by Fellowship Band, on which the leader and his unit—Kurt Rosenwinkel, guitar; Myron Walden, alto saxophone; Melvin Butler, tenor saxophone; Jon Cowherd, piano; Christopher Thomas, bass—interpreted original tunes by Blade and Cowherd that drew on a range of heartland folk styles, with guest turns by Lanois and Mitchell punctuating the flow.
What were your earliest musical influences?
The way I was brought up, boundary lines were never laid on the ground between people or the music. I always felt comfortable trying to surrender to the situation, no matter what banner may fly above it. You’re always trying to serve the song. My father is a minister and a great singer. My brother, Brady, Jr., who is five years older, is also a drummer. He left for college when I was around 13. He had been playing drums in church all this time, and when he left it was like everyone turned to me and said, “Okay, it’s your turn.” It was my duty, in a way. I never thought about it in terms of continuing into the next decade.
So you were just plunged into the waters of drumming, as it were.
[laughs] In a way, in the church environment, but there it was okay, because there’s tolerance there.
What was the sound of that music?
My father would tell me of his memories, and how there wasn’t even a piano; when he was coming up, people would clap their hands and sing and stomp their feet. I played right behind a great organist named Colette Murdoch, and there was piano and, of course, myself and the voices. Hindsight reveals that it taught me the essentials needed to be a part of a group, not only as a musician, but as a human being.
You mean beyond technique, in terms of the spiritual aspect of participating in a collective.
Absolutely. These people who would sing these songs didn’t come to music in a methodical way. They didn’t study it. They just sang, because it was praise! Hopefully, that’s what you’re trying to reach for. People get used to structure and chord progression. But when you’re not aware of these things, the spirit has to move you. So you surrender to that. I think it means a lot. Of course, it’s good to have balance. Now that I am playing music and making recordings, I want to know more and more.
Was Shreveport anything like New Orleans in microcosm, a smaller version with a lot of cultural influences coming in?
Not really. In a way, you could split the state of Louisiana in half culturally. Where I grew up, at the northwestern tip, there is this triangularity. Texas and Arkansas and Louisiana collide there. So it’s quite different from New Orleans, being this port of entry for so many cultures. It’s more inland, so you don’t have such a thick soup, so to speak, on the streets.
Was there a lot of blues?
Oh, absolutely.
A lot of country music?
Absolutely. Bands from the South and from across the globe would come to Shreveport. I saw the Modern Jazz Quartet there, Dizzy Gillespie was my first concert, the Neville Brothers would come through… So the Diaspora was presented to me.
Did it all seem like a continuum to you?
It absolutely did. That’s another wall that never came up for me, the sacred and secular. I’m still trying to do the same thing, and hopefully project the same feeling. I was always playing in high school, different music. When I went to New Orleans it just became more of a concentration on instrumental and vocal jazz music.
It’s interesting, because your teenage years coincide with the trend toward compartmentalization of music in the broader media – more compartmentalized radio, MTV is beginning. Maybe in Shreveport it wouldn’t have hit quite so strongly.
Yes. I’m thankful for the folks I grew up around in Shreveport, because everybody was open to so many different things. Even the ones who weren’t had a certain discipline that they wanted to share with me, and I am thankful for that, too. But I always knew, no matter what, that playing the music was always a joy, whether it was jazz or an R&B gig, or playing with a country band. It was always the joy of it. I try to carry that into every situation.
How do you prepare for the different feels of, say, swinging on the ride cymbal in jazz vis-a-vis, say, laying down a rock backbeat?
I think it’s important that you realize what the situation requires. No matter what your strong suit may be, hopefully you can find that singular thread that knits the music together, rhythmically. Again, for me, it all boils down to serving the song. Technically, I draw on the things that I’ve practiced, that I still practice, listening to recordings and trying to learn how Elvin Jones might execute something, or Art Blakey, or John Bonham for that matter — people who have created a sound, possess such an amazing groove and a great sense of tone and projection. When you analyze and absorb as much as you possibly can, it sets you up for any situation.
Let’s talk about some of your major influences. You’ve mentioned Elvin Jones as your hero.
Yes. Fortunately, I’ve been able to see Elvin several times over the last ten years actually, and God, it gets better and better every time. A Love Supreme was one of the first records that sticks in my consciousness. It’s an ideal that you aspire to. Also the things that Elvin plays on “Ballads” with only the snare drum, bass drum, cymbals and hi-hat. It sounds like a village of folks playing rhythm! He can create such a wide dynamic.
I should also refer to my teachers in New Orleans. John Vidacovich was and still is important. Sometimes when I hear him I think, “Oh God, I’ve stolen everything from Johnny V.” But hopefully that’s not the case. Aside from having always the deepest sense of groove, Johnny is always concerned with this sort of melodic motion coming from the drums. He moves the music and shapes it, and kind of gets inside of it. He’s more of a philosophical teacher than one that taught in a methodical way.
He did that great book with Herlin Riley.
Yeah, New Orleans Drumming. Totally. Herlin is another from New Orleans, and David Lee, Jr., who used to play with Sonny Rollins. Herlin to me almost embodies what New Orleans is. It’s like a perpetually modern approach. When you hear brass bands in New Orleans, the arrangements are like turn-of-the-century, coming into 1900! But the grooves and approaches are still evolving. So Herlin somehow takes these street rhythms, and breathes into them a new perspective from a New Orleans viewpoint.
I used to hear David Lee play trio all the time with the alto saxophonist Earl Turbinton and the bassist James Singleton, and also in a piano trio with Ellis Marsalis. He always moved the music forward, kind of an unwavering force, totally swinging all the time, never losing sense of that motion. As a teacher he had me learning the names of certain beats — “This is a Merengue, this is a Calypso.” It was very specific. He had me playing out of books. A very methodical way of approaching the drums. He and Johnny Vidacovich had very different ideas of what they felt they needed to impart to me, and I kind of got the whole picture. It was good to have both perspectives; each is valid, and I don’t think you can have one without the other.
Was Ed Blackwell’s sound universe a big influence on you?
Absolutely. In Ed Blackwell there’s this Africanism, moreso like a Western African playing a drumset, in a way. He’s always playing these sort of little conversations within this four-legged instrument! It’s interesting how many ideas can come from one place.
Which emanates pretty directly from the fact that New Orleans historically was a place where drums could be played.
Totally. I used to go to Congo Square. From what I’ve learned, a slave would walk from Mississippi just to be there for a day, you know, to have this vigil, this drum… There is storytelling in the instrument and what you put into it — but only what you put into it, I think. You have to go to it wanting to tell people something. If you’re only playing beats, then what is it for?
In New Orleans there are certain idiomatic things that you have to do in playing certain functions that traverse the whole timeline. Was that part of your experience there?
Well, I did march in a few parades during Mardi Gras. For me, the most fun thing is to see the brass bands, and how the past, present and future all collide at that very moment when you’re listening to them. I listened to Paul Barbarin records at the suggestion of Ernie Ely, who is another hero of mine down there. I was a busboy at a little place on Decatur Street called the Palm Court, where a guy named Greg Stafford played trumpet and Ernie was the drummer. The way they played the swing beat was real! They were playing these songs the way I felt they should be played, with the sensitivity but the passion for it. It wasn’t as if it was something relegated to olden times.
Have you studied in any systematic way African music, Afro-Cuban music?
Only as a music fan. I love to listen to music, and I buy a lot of recordings. Most recently I’ve gotten into this singer who I think is from Mali; her name is Oumou Sangare. The drums are very soft on these recordings, but the rhythm is so strong. I think that’s what creates a groove, the interplay, and realizing that you may not have to do so much as the drummer to create something quite intense.
Is the science of rhythm in those cultures a different perspective than the trapset philosophy?
I think using all four limbs, perhaps it’s easy to get wrapped up in that, like the fact that you can create quite a complex landscape of rhythm. But to find that singular thread that makes the music live, that’s always the challenge. I’m a big fan of Paul Motian, and particularly Elvin Jones. Just one strike of the cymbal, there’s something transcendent in the sound.
You also mentioned John Bonham. Who are some of the people who influence the approach you take in your Rock life?
Well, for me John Bonham stands as one of the great drummers of any time. This density that comes from his sound and his sense of groove is unbelievable. So laid back, too, but at the same time moving the music forward. I always admired him. As well as Levon Helm of the Band records. He has this feeling that comes from a certain part of America, like Tennessee…
Shreveport!
[LAUGHS] Well, there’s this thing that happens, like all these musics, Country and Bluegrass and R&B, they all kind of collide, and out of it comes someone like Levon Helm. You hear the Motown sound and you hear these Stax records; all of these grooves kind of come out in his playing, but it’s uniquely him at the same time.
What’s the attraction of Paul Motian’s sound?
Johnny Vidacovich introduced me to Bill Evans records, because he liked Paul Motian so much. He possesses this amazing looseness that is so lyrical, but also at the same time the pulse. People sometimes miss that Motian really moves and gets inside of the music. It’s quite a different approach from records where you hear Art Blakey or Philly Joe Jones play the drums. But at the same time there is this swing and, like I say, this pulsation that injects the music with a good feeling.
You were talking about David Lee being extremely specific and almost pedagogical in his teachings. Tell me about practice — what you practice now, and how much you practice? Or is it more bandstand-oriented?
Since I have been on the road quite a bit for the last six or seven years, it has been difficult to practice regularly, and it’s important to take advantage of the time you have. On the road a lot of it happens mentally. I play the guitar every day regardless of where I am, because I can take it into hotel rooms! It’s good to have that musical connection, no matter what.
When I’m at home and do get to practice, I like to sit at the drumset and play time for periods of ten minutes at a time. Sometimes I play song forms, but sometimes I just play time, make this continuous line of different things so that hopefully, in live situations which are so unpredictable and when all this stuff goes out the window, your physical instinct will kick in. I try to get around the drums comfortably and play things that I hear, challenging myself to execute things. Usually it’s the distance from your head to your hands that’s the problem; you slow things down and speed it up again, that sort of thing.
What was your practice like when you were younger and forming?
In New Orleans I spent a lot of time playing with my friend Christopher Thomas, the bass player, in bands with Peter Martin or Nicholas Payton, or just the two of us for an hour or two on different tempos, playing blues or song forms or just quarter-notes together to see how disciplined we could be, to see where each of us felt the pulse and if the groove was together. I think it’s important to have companionship with someone, to try to find your place in a group. Because you’re going to be playing with people hopefully! There won’t be many solo drum concerts coming in the future for me.
So as important as it is to tell narratives and so forth on the drums, it isn’t going to happen without extensive preparation.
I don’t think so. Some folks just have this ability to tell a story, but I don’t think anyone can bypass these fundamental things. I don’t think anyone wants to really! Most times it’s lonely, like spending time in your room, listening and trying to see how things are played and how to get a certain sound, so then you can hopefully be free of it once you play more and more with every experience.
A final point. Rather uniquely among drummers of your generation you’ve made a mark in the Pop and Jazz worlds. But your imperatives seem to come out of jazz in a very profound way, and to inflect your stance towards the other areas.
Well, jazz definitely is predominantly what I do play. I’m not offended by the word “Jazz.”
Some people are.
Yes. Well, I think we get caught up in terminology too much. Maybe it’s just where I grew up, but for me the music was this singular thing. I never put up too many walls between genres and all this. Maybe that’s presumptuous or puffed-up to say, I don’t know, but…
That said, what does jazz mean to you?
There’s the improvisatory freedom that you don’t really experience in other musics. Within the forms and constructions you play, it gives you the opportunity to take flight and create your own picture with each performance of maybe the same piece, or with a different group of people, or with the same group of people — you challenge each other to tell a story every time. It’s the improvisatory freedom which makes it magical. It’s unseen. Hopefully you go with no preconceptions, so that it truly is of the moment. That’s the beauty of jazz music. Not to say that you aren’t playing songs, because that’s also the challenge: With that freedom, can you really create this narrative and take the listener as well as the people playing together on a journey that completes a sort of circle.
* * * *
In 2008, after an eight-year gap, Fellowship—comprising the same core personnel stated above—performed on Season of Changes [Verve], a succinct, streamlined suite on which Blade shaped the flow through subtle permutations of groove and drum timbre.
During that interim, Blade had toured extensively with Shorter, Redman, Garrett, Herbie Hancock, Bill Frisell, David Binney, Edward Simon, and other upper echelon improvisers from different points on the stylistic spectrum. In the process, he burnished his stature among his generational peer group. In a Downbeat Blindfold Test a few years back, after remarking on Blade’s “real old-school sound,” drummer Jeff Ballard said: “Brian’s choices are amazing. What he plays is all for the composition. His mix of texture and tonality is perfect for that moment in the whole tune. So is his matching of sound to what’s going on in the placement. Also, he’s got patience with the biggest P on the planet. He forces things not to be automatic.”
Shortly before the jazz.com piece appeared, Chick Corea had hired Blade to play the second half of a long tour by his Five Peace Band project with John McLaughlin, Garrett, and Christian McBride, made a similar point. “After working with Brian for a couple of tours, he’s become one of my favorite drummers of all time,” Corea stated. “He thinks as a composer, and he’s very expressive. He carries the tradition not only of Philly Joe Jones and Roy Haynes and Tony Williams—in my mind, he kind of holds the torch of the creation of jazz drumming—but he also does what might be considered, in more conservative music, radical things. Like playing very quietly, Or not playing at all, or playing very edgy and bombastically, all within the same framework. He came in and the whole set turned around.”
This interview was framed around the release of Mama Rosa [Verve], on which Blade plays not a single beat on drums, but instead communicates with his voice and his guitar, revealing himself to be a first-class singer-songwriter. The 13-tune recital includes 10 Blade-penned songs that comprise a quasi-autobiography, touching on themes of faith, family, love, loss, and remembrance. Blade sings them without affect, allowing the power of his words to come through with phrasing and nuanced articulation. Lanois, the date’s producer, counterstates Blade’s message on guitar, Kelly Jones provides eloquent vocal harmony, and Fellowship colleagues Cowherd and Rosenwinkel also contribute to the proceedings.
“Revealing more of ourselves is always daunting,” Blade stated in the publicity materials attendant to the release. “But I feel like I need to keep challenging myself and peeling away layers to get to the core of who I am and what I have to offer.”
On Mama Rosa you reveal a side of yourself that you haven’t previously offered to the public. It’s a suite of music that includes ten songs you wrote while touring over the years. Can you tell me how the recording took shape? Is there an overall narrative arc, and did the songs fit cleanly into it? Was a lot of production involved?
As you say, it has been running parallel to my writing for the Fellowship Band, but in a very private way. Everything on the record was recorded at home on my 4-track, and it gave me enough satisfaction just to know, ok, they exist, and I’m fine with that. I’m thankful that I’ve had a little bit of time to write down my memories and experiences, and thoughts about my family, and life in general, and connect them with music. Some of those original four-track recordings are on the record as I did them in my little room, or various rooms around the world. But then it got to the point where I’d share them with my friend Daniel Lanois, and he encouraged me to try and make an entire record of it. As we went through the process he’d say, “Ok, I don’t think we can better this version from your home recording, so that’s on the record.”
Which of these songs is the first that you wrote, and when did you write it?
I guess “After the Revival.” Yes, that first song. I want to say on guitar, at least 12-13 years ago, even before Fellowship music started to come to me. It was a song written from the perspective of my mother, say, 1964, when she’s about to have my first child, my brother Brady. I was trying to think of what she might have been feeling at that time. My father is a pastor, so he often used to go out to preach at revivals when we were growing up. He was trying to build a home and take care of his family, but also go forth with his own mission as a minister. It’s really all about my grandmother Rosa, who is my mother’s mother, and also my mother and brother.
Can you tell me something about Rosa? Is she from Shreveport?
Yes, she is. Basically, she always took care of people’s houses, like a housekeeper her entire life, and she ran several kitchens at Southern University and places like that around Shreveport, Louisiana. Actually, the cover photograph is from the Jaguar Grille, which is the Southern University kitchen there. She’s a sweetheart! So I felt it was fitting to dedicate the record to her, and what she means to me, and hopefully the songs embody the joy she brought to my life and to so many other folks.
I gather you’ve recently moved back to Shreveport.
I’ve been spending more time there since I gave up my place in New York, just to connect with them more than just Christmas every year, as I get older and they get a little older.
This happened about two years ago. Has living there had any impact on your musical production? You remarked in conjunction with this recording (and I’m paraphrasing) that in a certain way you feel it’s time to be more open about who you are.
Well, maybe so. I don’t think I was ever concealing anything necessarily. But particularly with this Mama Rosa music, they almost feel like diary entries to me. It’s kind of like, “well, do I want the world to read my diary?” No, not really. But at the same time, it’s my music, too, which is something I love to share. So I felt, well, I have to let it go in order to move forward and feel like I’m doing the right thing not only for myself, but for the grand scheme of things.
When did you start writing songs?
I want to say ‘96-‘97, just before the first Fellowship record came out.
So the process begins during or right after the time you’d been on the road with master singer-songwriters—Emmy Lou Harris, Dylan, Joni Mitchell.
Exactly. And Daniel Lanois.
Who you met in New Orleans. Was writing something that always had interested you? Did it start to emerge for you at that time?
It did, particularly from being around my friend Daniel Lanois, and watching him in the process, how he would write down ideas and form them into poetry and connect them with music. Obviously, Joni Mitchell, too. She’s my hero and my greatest inspiration for this way of seeing a story unfold, and putting down your observances and experiences in some way that might strike against someone else’s life and experience. That’s why I think her music endures and keeps getting deeper and deeper, the more I listen to it. It’s always a privilege to be around her and to be around Daniel or Emmy-Lou or Dylan, and to see the attention they place on all the elements of storytelling.
Are you or have you been a big reader? I noticed in an old interview that you majored in anthropology at Loyola University in New Orleans.
Yeah. I always sort of wanted to be Alan Lomax in this life, just go around finding cultural significance through people’s music. In a way, I’m doing it as a musician, strangely enough, not necessarily documenting other people’s music, but trying to take in as much as I can, and having it distill itself in me. It’s a constant research, a constant study, and you’re never there—you’re just on the trip, I think.
You moved to New Orleans in ‘88. How soon after arriving did you meet Daniel Lanois?
It would have been around ‘91-‘92. Maybe a little later.
By then, he’d already produced Dylan.
Yes. The second record, For the Beauty of Wynona, was about to come out, and he was going to go on tour with Darrell Johnson, who played bass with the Neville Brothers at the time. Daniel made a record with them called Yellow Moon. But we met and rehearsed at a little theater in Algiers where he was holed up, and became fast friends. We went on the road for three months, and we haven’t stopped since. We’re bound as brothers.
Was he the person who led you to Joni Mitchell and Dylan and Emmy-Lou Harris?
I was already very aware of their music and a fan.
I meant personally.
To Joni…yes, I guess to Emmy and Bob as well.
Songwriting. Apart from the inspiration and the message behind the words, it involves a specific craft. Did it take a long time for you to develop the craft?
It’s a good thing that in my time off from the road, or even on the road, I put down every little fragment, or thought, or word, or chord that might be an inkling to something whole, something larger, a full song, a full idea. In those times, it’s almost like a meditation. You just try to stay in it as long as you can, to focus on the thought. Hopefully, I’m getting better and better at that. Same with the Fellowship Band music. I’m trying to write specifically for the guys in the band and for myself to hopefully get in on this story, to be able to deliver it and know it well. I guess the challenge is to do that…well, not necessarily quickly, because you can’t rush it. The process is still a mystery to me. You’re still almost grabbing…reaching out into the darkness for these little points of light, and you’re not sure where they’re coming from. But if you can just be in the moment and hold onto it as long as you can… It’s hopefully getting better.
But from what you’re saying, storytelling has always been an abiding interest for you.
Absolutely.
I’d imagine that your time in New Orleans perhaps influenced you to apply the notion of storytelling to the way you think about drumming.
New Orleans was my first time away from my family, starting college in a whole new community, one of the greatest places in the world, so unique in feeling and just the emotional vibe on the streets and the beat that lives there—and my teachers. John Vidacovich was very important. There’s a deep sense of groove, but also a deep concern with creating melodic motion from the drums, with moving and shaping the music. He’s more of a philosophical teacher than one that taught in a methodical way. David Lee had me play out of books, and placed names on certain beats—one is a calypso, another is a Merengue.
I guess along the way, my experience in New Orleans finds its way into all my music. Unconsciously, it’s just a part of how I go about making music.
Your creativity emerged on this very solid foundation. It sounds like a similar process was at play in your songwriting.
I must say that my teachers definitely gave me that foundation. You’re always grappling with that place between your head and your hands that you want to connect, and not have a gap between what you hear and what you execute. I used to go to Congo Square, where a slave would walk from Mississippi just to be there for a day, to do this vigil and play the drum… There is storytelling in the instrument, but you have to go to it wanting to tell people something. If you’re only playing beats, then what is it for?
Now, with the songwriting, I felt I was a little on my own. But the thing is, even before I met Daniel or Joni or Bob Dylan or Emmy-Lou, their records existed. What I definitely know is that when I hear something that touches me, then I go into the analytical process after it touches me, to say, “Ok, what is it that touches me about it? And can I put it into words? What makes it so emotionally powerful?” So I try to step away from my own writing and hopefully have that objectivity as well. “After the Revival.” What is this song trying to tell you? Who’s involved? Where are we? Is it in a specific place? Is it literal or is it more metaphorical? When you start to put words on things, too, perhaps it gets a little closer to the bone. Joni Mitchell’s influence also infuses the instrumental music, the Fellowship Band music, and it’s just as close to my heart as the Mama Rosa songs, but when the words enter the picture it’s maybe a slightly different trip, a more personal trip.
A lot of the songs on Fellowship Band’s Season of Changes sound like they could very well have lyrics, and for all I know, they do and you haven’t recorded them.
Some of the songs do begin with a lyrical idea, but then they end up living in the instrumental world. I guess I’m never so sure as to where a song is going to end up living. The process is that either I end up develoing this one sentence into a full lyrical idea, or else that idea is just a starting point that will give me the instrumental story. I’m never sure. Maybe that’s the great thing about the mystery, too. It throws you into the process, and you just have to take the trip.
When did you form Fellowship Band? You’ve had a fairly stable personnel.
It starts with Jon Cowherd. Jon was already at Loyola when I arrived in New Orleans in 1988, and we became fast friends and played all the time. That was the genesis of the band, actually—not knowing it, of course, until a decade later, when we made our first recording. A year or so after I met Jon, in 1989 or 1990, Chris Thomas moved to New Orleans to attend the University of New Orleans, to study with Ellis Marsalis. So there was this trio core in New Orleans that was the beginning of the band.
You must have met Myron Walden after moving to New York in the ‘90s.
Yes. I met Myron at Manhattan School of Music. I was playing with Doug Weiss and Kevin Hays, and Myron was there.
It’s hard to think of too many other bands in which I’ve heard the excellent tenor saxophonist, Melvin Butler. His sound seems perfect for what you’re trying to do.
It is. Melvin’s tenor voice, and how he delivers melody and emotes the feeling, the essence of what I feel the music is… He’s just a gifted person. It’s in his heart and in his soul. He went to Berklee, and had relationships with Kurt Rosenwinkel and musicians in New York, like Debbie Dean and Seamus Blake, who were all at Berklee during that same period of time. I met Melvin through Betty Carter, when she hosted her first Jazz Ahead at BAM. At the time, Chris Thomas and Clarence Penn were in her band. Peter Martin, too. Melvin is a very studious man, very much on a mission. He’s a professor now. Ethnomusicology. He’s busy writing, but he’s got a dedication to the band, which I’m thankful for.
Do you hear the drumkit differently playing with Fellowship than with other people?
I don’t necessarily think it’s different. The vocabulary is all the same. Within each situation, I’m primarily trying to do the same thing—serve the moment, serve the song. Thankfully, I’ve been given that liberty in almost every situation I’ve been a part of. Sometimes I’m amazed. I’m back there, I’m looking at Wayne Shorter, and thinking, “God, this is what I do!” There he is, the very man himself. When you encounter your heroes, it becomes even deeper and greater to you in terms of your reverence and respect for them, and love, just as people.
Are you composing or thinking of the overall sound of the Fellowship Band from the drums? Or are you thinking in a similar way as you would as a sideman, reacting to the flow around you?
That’s interesting, because obviously, I have a connection with Jon Cowherd… Whatever Jon brings to the table musically, I know I’m going to—hopefully—give the right thing for it. Myself, after I’ve written something, I then have to leave the guitar and sit by the drums, and it’s really kind of new for me at that moment, as if I’m playing someone else’s music. Especially when it’s in the hands of the people in my band, all of a sudden it becomes alive to me. So I have to create a part for myself in the moment. I suppose I’m always doing that. Insofar as how it fleshes out in terms of the group dynamic, I think everyone is sensitive to finding their thread and fabric, so to speak. That’s what I’m always trying to do.
As a working drummer in live situations, you always have to play the room. One week you might be playing the Village Vanguard, after spending a month playing concert halls with Wayne Shorter.
True. I think a lot of it comes from my earlier experiences, firstly playing in church in Shreveport, and doing many, many gigs in ballrooms and hotels and lounges, all these different environments, different musics. That has informed my ability to adjust, to adapt to the environment quickly and say, “Okay, this is the sound,” and be able to fill it but not overwhelm it. It’s always a challenge. Every day is a different experience.
Can you speak to the band’s name, Fellowship?
I guess the big idea is what I hope to present with the music itself, this bond and this solidarity, not separatism or things that place boundary-lines between us. The music is perhaps not always easily defined, but I would call it our folk music, and it’s based on our relationships.
In a previous conversation, we spoke about the role of location being crucial to your broad conception of music—American heartland music. Shreveport is situated more or less equidistantly between the Delta, the Bayou, and the Ozarks, which is the confluence of a lot of streams, I suppose you absorbed a lot of them as a kid.
I suppose I did. Gospel, of course, being at the core of it. But then, I heard so much music. Chuck Rainey and the Neville Brothers, Asleep at the Wheel, this kind of cross-section of Soul and Country and roots music, as well as all the recordings I was trying to listen to. So yes, it is a curious place, right at that point in Louisiana.
Have your experiences with Wayne Shorter modified-morphed your views on presentation, or forms of tunes, or how you tell a story on the drums?
It’s definitely given me a greater degree of courage, to take chances. That’s what I love about Wayne. He’s such a master, such a genius composer, such a funny man. So for him not to rest on what he’s already established, absolutely the bedrock of this music, his unrivaled compositions… He’s still searching for new pathways and a different direction every night. So I try to do that myself. There is that unknown, which Wayne embraces wholeheartedly, and he’s brought us into that, like, “Okay, flashlights on—let’s adventure.” But then also, Wayne is always writing and bringing things in, and often, as a trio, Danilo and John and I will go through things at soundchecks. We may not get to them for a while. But Wayne is always planting seeds, and the growth comes slowly but surely.
The concerts give the impression of being 60 minutes of collective improvising, with occasional references to the tunes. How does it function? Are there cues? Is it just that you’ve been playing together for so long that you have that mutual intuition?
Right. After nine years, that unspoken language develops, just from that immeasurable amount of time together. But beginning from nothing, there are points at which someone might actually play something that we are familiar with. “Oh, I know that melody.” “Oh, do you want to play that?” “Okay.” You might agree, and everyone goes there, but sometimes four threads of thoughts are intertwining. So somehow, within all that variance, comes a singularity as well. Wayne loves that. He loves for you to make your choice and stick with it.
There’s a quality of real sound-painting, almost as though he’s seeing the sounds as colors and shapes as he’s creating them.
His imagination is so incredible, and you can hear it in his tone and his improvising. I think of it as always this cinematic view running. There’s also the symphonic aspect of everyone’s vision. It always seemed to exist in Wayne’s music, all the records I bought while I was in college, all of his Blue Note recordings, and later his Columbia recordings, and obviously Miles’ quintet with him, and also Weather Report. He always projects some other idea somehow, something bigger, something out of this world. Wayne is such a pictorial thinker, and he has such a cinematic, descriptive eye, and it’s great to feel like we’re part of that vision that can make his music. It’s perfect on paper. As far as I’m concerned, we just have to play what’s on the page and I would be so satisfied with that. But he wants to break out of that form almost immediately, before we even get to it, to create something that’s all of ours, so to speak. It’s been such a privilege with him to hear and just play one note, and what’s in that note is so profound and beautiful. But it’s also been great for me and for Danilo and for John to have played together for so many years now where we can walk out on the wire, so to speak, with no script, and improvise, compose together for the moment. It requires a great deal of trust, and also simultaneously, ambitiousness, and patience to put yourself in a vulnerable place, and hopefully have your instincts kick in and deliver the goods.
You mentioned how important the recordings that Wayne Shorter was on were to you as a young guy. Parenthetically, I once presented a track of yours to a veteran drummer in a Blindfold Test, and he mistook you for Tony Williams, which indicates your command of that vocabulary. Could you speak of the drummers you studied early on?
As to Wayne’s recordings, of course his Blue Note recordings with Elvin Jones, but I also initially tried to absorb Art Blakey as much as I could. Max Roach as well. Definitely Tony Williams. After I met Greg Hutchinson and Clarence Penn, they said, “Man, you need to check out Philly Joe Jones, you need to check out Papa Jo Jones.” So obviously every thread connects. Then you start to look at the progression. You can hear Papa Jo in Elvin. You can hear Art Blakey in Tony. Even Tony at 17, you’re talking about a fully formed genius. He set the bar so high, and you can hear that he absorbed the history of not only swing, but how to command a sound at the instrument. I guess I’m trying to do the same thing. Those are my pillars.
Were you an emulative drummer as a kid? What I mean is, would you try to play as much like Elvin Jones as you could, or as much like Art Blakey as you could, or as much like Tony Williams as you could, and then form your own conclusions out of that to become Brian Blade? Or was it more an osmosis thing?
Well, at home, in practice, I would try to. I did a little bit of transcription, but also less writing of it and just sitting at the drums and trying to learn how to execute these things that I liked. But when you’re playing in a situation with people, you make music in the now and not play something that you… It becomes a part of you, hopefully, and you can transmit it, but I know where it came from. I had so many opportunities to play all kinds of music. I was always listening to Steve Wonder, and Earth, Wind and Fire, or Todo! Again, these connections. Like, I’d hear Jeff Porcaro play a beat, and then later I would come to hear Bernard Purdie, and say, “Oh. Bernard Purdie!” I’d start to go deeper into the roots of where things come from. Sometimes when I listen back to things and hear myself, I think, “Wow, there’s New Orleans!” It’s always there, that pulse and memory of that place, my teachers and heroes there. It all has formed my way of playing music and seeing the world to a certain degree as well.
Did guitar precede the drums for you?
No. Violin did, however. But after, I guess, junior high, the line got blurry—I started playing snare drum in the sort of symphonic band. But for me, the guitar… I never had a great connection with the piano. So for me to be able to travel with this acoustic thing, and feel like, “oh, these little gifts are coming to me, and if I have 15 minutes somewhere as we travel along…” You never know. So I always like to keep it with me, and even if I get a fragment of an idea, who knows? It might develop quickly. But at least I was there to receive it.
Did any of the tunes on Season of Changes stem from guitar explorations?
Absolutely. “Rubylou’s” and “Stoner Hill”. The one song that I wrote at the piano is entitled “Alpha and Omega.” John and Myron do this amazing improvisation that precedes it, and then connects to that little piece of music. I’m proud of that one. I fancied myself in my room, the electricity had gone off, and I’m at my little piano, and Laura Nyro kind of came into the room a little bit in spirit!
When you played at the Village Vanguard with Fellowship last spring [2008], the distinctive sound of Kurt Rosenwinkel was prominent within the mix. Jon Cowherd sat stage left at the piano, Rosenwinkel stood stage right, and, as I believe you mentioned at the time, their sounds comprised the pillars through which you navigated. Speak a bit about the band’s texture, the sound you’re hearing from the unit in your mind’s ear.
Obviously, Kurt’s brilliance and expressive power and eloquence comes from this core love of harmony. Also John, the same thing. This interweaving conversation is happening within every beat. They’re constructing these, I guess, monoliths! As a band, when it all comes together, the lines move in a linear way, but then also move in blocks, as these stacks. I often write that way. Not so much long lines, but more sung, shorter phrases perhaps. Jon and Kurt are able to make those two chordal instruments not collide with each other, but create a sort of fabric, and we all are able to stand on and jump from these posts.
Kurt Rosenwinkel was one of so many consequential musicians who developed their musical ideas at Smalls from the mid ‘90s on, as is well-documented. At that time, you played there regularly on Wednesday nights with Sam Yahel—the ambiance was more a straight-ahead, kicking drum thing, signifying on the approaches of some of the drummers you mentioned before. Can you talk about those years?
I miss it. To go down to Smalls with Sam and Peter Bernstein, for a while, every Wednesday, helped me. In our development as people, but specifically as musicians, you hit these plateaus, where you feel, “okay, I’ve been able to express these things, but I’m stuck there now.” So you have to place yourself in situations where you’re going to be challenged. With Sam and Peter, it was always a feeling, “wow, I have to raise the bar,” because they were really talking on a high level. It helped me so much. And it was fun. You’d walk out of there at six in the morning, and it was as if, “Okay, we had an experience tonight.”
But it seems that towards the latter ‘90s, leading up to Wayne, you started to move from “blowing” drumming to longer-form sorts of things. Now, this is a gross generalization, since everything goes on at the same time. But I’m wondering if there’s a kernel of truth to this observation.
I suppose so. I feel my writing became much more compact on Season of Changes—little 3-minute statements, very short sentiments. But we’re also able to balance that with, say, Jon’s writing, “Return of the Prodigal Son” or “Season of Changes,” that are much more of a trip, much more of a landscape through the mountains and valleys. I don’t know. It’s ever-changing. Maybe I’ve got another suite in me somewhere around the bend.
You mentioned that you started playing snare drum in junior high school.
I started playing drums when I was 13. My brother, Brady, who is five years older than me, was playing in church. At the time, he was leaving for college, so it just seemed it was my time to step into the seat in church once he left. It was an unconscious move, really. It just felt like, “Oh, that’s your duty.” “You want to play? Oh, great.”
You once mentioned to me that when you started playing drums in church, you were directly next to the chorus.
Yes. But particularly the organist—or piano, depending on which side and which church we were in. There’s been three locations of our church, Zion Baptist. We started in one part of Shreveport when I was very young, and for most of my life we were in a second location. Once I moved away to college, we moved to yet another location. So it was a different arrangement within each church, but very similar. The choir is always behind the pulpit, and the piano and organ are always behind the left and right, and the drums could have been on either side.
That’s a very dramatic context in which to play drums every week. Did those early experiences have a big impact on the way you think about playing drums now?
It is definitely the ground on which everything stands for me. Every situation which I’m a part of, that initial experience of serving the song, where it’s about praise and not some show or entertainment, but the rhetoric and being in worship service…I feel like every time I play, I’m in that place, even in an unconscious way. I think it gave me a certain focus to hopefully get out of the way! Obviously, there’s a lot of practice that we all have to do to get better at playing and expressing ourselves. But those lessons and that experience is where I come from, I think, in every other situation.
Can you speculate similarly on whatever impact your father’s sermons or rhetoric may have had on the way you express yourself and tell stories?
Yes. Actually, I’m writing a song for my dad right now, because we’re going to make a record for him later this year. I guess a lot of times, people don’t necessarily see Biblical stories as being connected to their lives. But my father had this great ability to break down parables. Often in church, when something speaks to people, they say, “Make it plain!” By “making it plain,” it’s like, “ok, I see what you’re saying; it’s real to me in this moment, in my life.” I’m trying to do that with songs. My dad definitely has inspired me and influenced me so much in trying to make it plain, these things that sometimes can be heavier thoughts or seemingly abstract.
Does the “Make it plain” notion have anything to do with the way you approach playing drums in the flow of things?
Perhaps it does. I remember my brother, when I was starting to play in church, would say, “It’s all about the train.” Keep the train moving. Just the simple thought of CHUG-CHUG-CHUG, seeing my role as being the train, so to speak, or the engine of the thing. Then you find yourself in that description. Ok, maybe the train is a colorful train. Maybe the train makes little stops on its route. So I try obviously to express myself, but at the same time not lose my sense of responsibility in a situation.
Eight years ago, you told me, “Jazz definitely is predominantly what I do play. I am not offended by the word ‘jazz.’”
Yeah!
Then you followed up with a remark that we get caught up too much in terminology.
I think so. Perhaps it’s so loose… I wouldn’t say it’s impossible to define what jazz is. But maybe it was something much clearer to folks when it was somewhat popular music, say, from the turn of the last century til as late as the ‘60s. You could look to Miles Davis or Louis Armstrong, and just say, “Ok, this is jazz.” But as things became much more combined and influences started to come together, those lines started to disappear as to clear definitions. But when I think about jazz, certain folks come to mind. Thelonious Monk. Duke Ellington. Or hopefully what the Fellowship Band is doing I would call jazz—but other elements and feelings come into our music as well.
Hopefully, what we provide for each other is this trust, the confidence to take chances. We don’t want to rely on what we played last night, or any automatic rote actions. We want to be in the moment as well, and surprise ourselves, and surprise each other, to have that mutual connection and know that everyone is completely submitting themselves to the whole idea. I think the audience feeds off of that. I’m not comparing us to the John Coltrane Quartet, but they are the example of what great group interplay is and the power that comes from that. Each individual is so virtuosic and delivering such emotional power on their instrument, but then there’s even something higher that we can reach together, something unseen, something that is a grace that’s been given.
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/body-and-shadow-brian-blade-blue-note-records-review-by-mark-sullivan.php
Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band:
Body and Shadow
by
Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2017. Body and Shadow
is only their fifth album: they have not recorded prolifically, but
each one has been worth the wait. The group occupies a unique space: the
sound of Americana (chiefly folk music) is dominant, but played with a
jazz sensibility. Despite the considerable technical firepower in the
band, it has always kept the focus on the ensemble sound rather than on
soloists. For this outing drummer Brian Blade and keyboardist Jon Cowherd have nearly equal compositional input, and the group welcomes a new member in Denver-based guitarist Dave Devine.
Blade gets the first word with "Within Everything," an elegiac slow tune with a haunting melody. The first of the "Body and Shadow" entries is next—Noon, later followed by Morning and Night. These are gentle explorations of similar material, rather minimal until a theme finally appears in the last one. Cowherd's first contribution is "Traveling Mercies," another folksong-like tune which nonetheless includes a dramatic, contrasting bridge. The feeling of contrast is even stronger in the aptly-titled "Duality," which is made up of two contrasting sections. The longest selection by far, it also has the most pronounced jazz feel. The first half features a long, joyful piano solo by the composer; the second half spotlights alto saxophonist Myron Walden in an electrifying solo turn.
The group's previous album Landmarks (Blue Note, 2014) featured a rare cover, a hymn-like treatment of the traditional song "Shenandoah." This time they up the ante with an actual hymn: "Have Thine Own Way, Lord." Cowherd plays it solo on harmonium first, then the entire band continues the feeling with Blade's arrangement. That it fits in with the original music so well is a testament to the deep traditional roots of the Fellowship Band's music. They have never been a long-winded bunch, but this is an especially succinct collection: the nine tracks run only a little over half an hour. Not a minute is wasted.
Blade gets the first word with "Within Everything," an elegiac slow tune with a haunting melody. The first of the "Body and Shadow" entries is next—Noon, later followed by Morning and Night. These are gentle explorations of similar material, rather minimal until a theme finally appears in the last one. Cowherd's first contribution is "Traveling Mercies," another folksong-like tune which nonetheless includes a dramatic, contrasting bridge. The feeling of contrast is even stronger in the aptly-titled "Duality," which is made up of two contrasting sections. The longest selection by far, it also has the most pronounced jazz feel. The first half features a long, joyful piano solo by the composer; the second half spotlights alto saxophonist Myron Walden in an electrifying solo turn.
The group's previous album Landmarks (Blue Note, 2014) featured a rare cover, a hymn-like treatment of the traditional song "Shenandoah." This time they up the ante with an actual hymn: "Have Thine Own Way, Lord." Cowherd plays it solo on harmonium first, then the entire band continues the feeling with Blade's arrangement. That it fits in with the original music so well is a testament to the deep traditional roots of the Fellowship Band's music. They have never been a long-winded bunch, but this is an especially succinct collection: the nine tracks run only a little over half an hour. Not a minute is wasted.
Track Listing: Within Everything; Body and Shadow (Noon);
Traveling Mercies; Have Thine Own Way, Lord (Solo); Have Thine Own Way,
Lord (Band); Body and Shadow (Morning); Duality; Body and Shadow
(Night); Broken Leg Days.
Personnel: Brian Blade: drums; Jon Cowherd: piano, harmonium, mellotron; Chris Thomas: bass; Melvin Butler: tenor saxophone; Myron Walden: alto saxophone, bass clarinet; Dave Devine: guitar.
Title: Body and Shadow | Year Released: 2017 | Record Label: Blue Note Records
Personnel: Brian Blade: drums; Jon Cowherd: piano, harmonium, mellotron; Chris Thomas: bass; Melvin Butler: tenor saxophone; Myron Walden: alto saxophone, bass clarinet; Dave Devine: guitar.
Title: Body and Shadow | Year Released: 2017 | Record Label: Blue Note Records
October 3, 2016
A PORTRAIT OF BRIAN BLADE
PROJECTS & COLLABORATIONS
by Rusty AcevesPROJECTS & COLLABORATIONS
SF Jazz
Brain Blade | photo by Ronald Davis
With his unfailing ability to raise the level of the music and musicians around him, drummer Brian Blade is one of the most treasured collaborators in jazz. A founding member of the SFJAZZ Collective in 2004 and leader of the Brian Blade Fellowship, he has amassed a staggering list of credits as a session and touring player for the likes of Norah Jones, Brad Mehldau, Charlie Haden, Bob Dylan, Kenny Barron, SFJAZZ Collective pianist Edward Simon, Wolfgang Muthspiel, and dozens of others. Additionally, the Shreveport, Louisiana native has had long-term associations with a number of artists from the worlds of both jazz and pop. Fresh from his four-night run with Chick Corea and Eddie Gomez, the first of five appearances in Season 5, we take a look at several of his most notable partnerships.
Kenny Garrett
Blade’s first real
exposure to an international audience was as part of saxophonist Kenny
Garrett’s early 90s bands, making his recorded debut on Garrett’s 1992
Atlantic release Black Hope. Blade appeared on Garrett’s sessions Triologyand Persuance: The Music of John Coltrane in the mid-90s and returned for the saxophonist’s expansive, GRAMMY-nominated 2006 Nonesuch album Beyond the Wall.
Here’s an explosive 21-year-old Blade in 1991 with Garrett’s quartet at
the Blue Note in Tokyo along with pianist Junko Onishi and future Brian
Blade Fellowship bassist Chris Thomas:
Joshua Redman
One of Blade’s most
enduring partnerships has been with Bay Area-born saxophone giant Joshua
Redman, a multi-faceted collaboration that cemented Blade’s reputation
as a world-class artist. Beginning with the 1994 effort MoodSwing,
featuring a monstrous quartet including Brad Mehldau and Christian
McBride, Blade provided the backbone for nearly a dozen of Redman’s
exploratory albums in settings including his working quartet, the
funk-infused Elastic Band, and the collective trio Yaya3 with organist
Sam Yahel. Blade reunites with Redman in Season 5 with his Still
Dreaming project in tribute to the Ornette Coleman alumni band Old and
New Dreams. In this clip, Blade performs the tune “Jazz Crimes” with
Redman’s Elastic trio:
Joni Mitchell
One of the first
artists to resonate deeply for Blade after the gospel he absorbed as a
youth, Joni Mitchell employed Blade’s deep grooves and sympathetic
accompaniment on albums from the 1990s forward, including 1998’s
landmark Taming the Tiger and 2002’s Travelogue. Blade participated in
most of Mitchell’s live performances from the period, and served as
musical director for SFJAZZ’s Gala Tribute to Mitchell in 2015. In this
video Blade appears in duet with Mitchell on the Tonight Show in 1995,
performing “Love Puts on a New Face,” a song that would later be
recorded for Taming the Tiger.
Daniel Lanois
Best known as a
GRAMMY-winning producer of blockbuster albums by U2, Bob Dylan, Peter
Gabriel, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, and Neil Young, Lanois is also
an accomplished composer, guitarist, and vocalist. Blade has
participated in most of Lanois’ projects as a solo artist, including his
score to Billy Bob Thornton’s breakout film Sling Blade and his recent
rock/blues project Black Dub. Here Blade performs the song “Fire” with
Lanois to celebrate his induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.
Wayne Shorter
Easily the most
prominent collaboration of Blade’s career has been his role as part of
saxophone legend Wayne Shorter’s telepathic working quartet with pianist
Danilo Perez and bassist John Patitucci – a partnership Blade has
maintained since 2000. A relentless performance schedule and four
spectacular recordings culminating in the GRAMMY-winning 2013 Blue Note
release Without a Net have reinforced the band’s distinction as arguably
the greatest small group in jazz. The quartet minus Shorter has
recently become an active trio under the name Children of the Light.
This clip features the quartet in full flight at a performance in Bonn,
Germany:
Chick Corea
Begun in 2010, Blade’s
newest affiliation is one of his most visible, as part of the all-star
trio led by piano genius Chick Corea featuring bassist and SFJAZZ
Resident Artistic Director Christian McBride. Their blockbuster 3-CD
Concord release Trilogy was recorded live in the U.S., Europe, and
Japan, and won the 2014 GRAMMY for Best Jazz Instrumental Album. Blade
performs with Corea and bass legend Eddie Gomez during Season 5 in a
tribute to the great Bill Evans, revisiting material from Corea’s 2012
album Further Explorations – a session featuring Evans trio members
Gomez and the late Paul Motian. Corea’s trio with McBride and Blade
perform in 2012 at the Tbilisi Jazz Festival.
Brian Blade: The Sharpest Blade
Brian Blade belongs to that category of musicians of whom it
could be said if they didn’t exist someone would have had to invent
them. In an increasingly category-driven and clique-ridden music world,
he is a musician who is quietly going about the business of destroying
effete musical boundaries. He has been first-call drummer for leaders
as disparate as Harry Connick Jr., Kenny Garrett, Daniel Lanois, Joni
Mitchell and, currently, Wayne Shorter; his own passions move freely
from Laura Nyro to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. If these
associations have brought him name recognition in the jazz and avant-pop
worlds, it is through his own seven-man project, Brian Blade
Fellowship, that he has been most concertedly contesting the notion that
all working musicians must squeeze into their heavily policed boxes.
As evidenced on The Fellowship’s two Blue Note CDs-1998’s self-titled
release and this year’s Perceptual-the line-up dares to propose that a
blazing alto saxophonist and an atmospheric pedal-steel guitarist can
share the improvising stage; that there is room in modern jazz for
country twang and Copland’s wide-open spaces, that the Columbine
massacre might be as pivotal a topic for instrumental requiem as racial
injustice and the nuclear threat were for Charles Mingus in the 1960s.
Born in Shreveport, La., Blade came up playing in his father’s Baptist church and studying with serious master teachers simultaneously. These parallel lines of development seem to have given him a pronounced affinity for the place of outpoured feeling and pure form in music. They also undoubtedly account for his ability to move inside of diverse musical circles where consummate technical mastery and fervent lyricism are de rigueur.
Born in Shreveport, La., Blade came up playing in his father’s Baptist church and studying with serious master teachers simultaneously. These parallel lines of development seem to have given him a pronounced affinity for the place of outpoured feeling and pure form in music. They also undoubtedly account for his ability to move inside of diverse musical circles where consummate technical mastery and fervent lyricism are de rigueur.
JazzTimes: What’s the relationship between family and music for you?
Perhaps it’s the nurturing. My family and community were always there for me. Never pushed me one way or the other. It was just, find your path and we’ll be there for you. That sort of thing. For me, the music is just a reflection of that. My older brother is a musician, a drummer, five years older. He’s great. And my father’s a preacher and a great singer. He plays a little bass around the house and an occasional blues. They naturally had a love for music and trusted enough in my strivings to say, “Get him a teacher.” I started in the church. My brother went to college when I was about 13 and everybody looked at me like, “Hey, it’s your turn.” I don’t remember really choosing it. It was like, “Here’s the sticks, this is the deal.” But thankfully it unconsciously taught me the essentials about playing in a group. Taught me what you need to serve a musical situation.
Perhaps it’s the nurturing. My family and community were always there for me. Never pushed me one way or the other. It was just, find your path and we’ll be there for you. That sort of thing. For me, the music is just a reflection of that. My older brother is a musician, a drummer, five years older. He’s great. And my father’s a preacher and a great singer. He plays a little bass around the house and an occasional blues. They naturally had a love for music and trusted enough in my strivings to say, “Get him a teacher.” I started in the church. My brother went to college when I was about 13 and everybody looked at me like, “Hey, it’s your turn.” I don’t remember really choosing it. It was like, “Here’s the sticks, this is the deal.” But thankfully it unconsciously taught me the essentials about playing in a group. Taught me what you need to serve a musical situation.
JazzTimes: What kind of stuff did you play outside of the church?
Oh, all kinds of bands. My teachers primarily played jazz and R&B. I was in little punk bands in high school with my friends. Some youthful releases of energy where we were writing our little rock-and-roll songs. It was good to grow up with that sense of making music in the different little camps. In a way it’s still what I’m doing.
Oh, all kinds of bands. My teachers primarily played jazz and R&B. I was in little punk bands in high school with my friends. Some youthful releases of energy where we were writing our little rock-and-roll songs. It was good to grow up with that sense of making music in the different little camps. In a way it’s still what I’m doing.
JazzTimes: What do you think you would be doing if you weren’t a musician?
It’s weird, man. Like all of a sudden I feel like I’ve been living on the road and making records and I’m thankful for it but, like I said, I don’t really remember really choosing this lifestyle. It’s evolving into this moment, but I was studying anthropology in college and had these cultural ideas of traveling that way. It was always based on a musical yearning or a spiritual yearning to see how these things connected across the globe. Of course, I got sidetracked. I never got to study so much in that field, I was going over to Kenny Garrett’s. And that was the beginning of a whole other chapter.
It’s weird, man. Like all of a sudden I feel like I’ve been living on the road and making records and I’m thankful for it but, like I said, I don’t really remember really choosing this lifestyle. It’s evolving into this moment, but I was studying anthropology in college and had these cultural ideas of traveling that way. It was always based on a musical yearning or a spiritual yearning to see how these things connected across the globe. Of course, I got sidetracked. I never got to study so much in that field, I was going over to Kenny Garrett’s. And that was the beginning of a whole other chapter.
JazzTimes: I’ve read that you were a pretty good amateur tennis player.
Yeah, man. I had eyes of going to Wimbledon. I was playing regionally, but after the drums came in I had to dedicate myself to one or the other for eight hours every day. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do both and the drums just sort of took over.
Yeah, man. I had eyes of going to Wimbledon. I was playing regionally, but after the drums came in I had to dedicate myself to one or the other for eight hours every day. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do both and the drums just sort of took over.
JazzTimes: When did jazz come into it as something you were intensely curious about?
My teacher in high school and my brother were always talking about Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Miles Davis. I didn’t know these records yet because I didn’t grow up with jazz in the house-it was mostly gospel and what I heard on the radio. Then a friend came back from college and turned me on to some records. I remember hearing Giant Steps for the first time and thinking, “This is inspiring to me.” I started buying records from the names I’d been hearing. I remember buying Miles at the Plugged Nickel and hearing Tony [Williams] for the first time. It got me to thinking, “How much more could they express on their instruments or as a group?” When I moved to New Orleans, almost every day I’d go to the store with eight dollars and think, “Either I’ll eat or I’ll buy this Wayne Shorter record.” I was less concerned with eating than [getting] records at that point.
My teacher in high school and my brother were always talking about Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Miles Davis. I didn’t know these records yet because I didn’t grow up with jazz in the house-it was mostly gospel and what I heard on the radio. Then a friend came back from college and turned me on to some records. I remember hearing Giant Steps for the first time and thinking, “This is inspiring to me.” I started buying records from the names I’d been hearing. I remember buying Miles at the Plugged Nickel and hearing Tony [Williams] for the first time. It got me to thinking, “How much more could they express on their instruments or as a group?” When I moved to New Orleans, almost every day I’d go to the store with eight dollars and think, “Either I’ll eat or I’ll buy this Wayne Shorter record.” I was less concerned with eating than [getting] records at that point.
JazzTimes: What were some of the things that stayed stuck on the turntable at that point?
A Love Supreme. Joni Mitchell’s Hejira, which a friend gave to me after I’d just started driving. Unconsciously, I learned it all. To this day it reveals something new. Heavy Weather by Weather Report, and then Wayne’s albums like Night Dreamer and Juju.
A Love Supreme. Joni Mitchell’s Hejira, which a friend gave to me after I’d just started driving. Unconsciously, I learned it all. To this day it reveals something new. Heavy Weather by Weather Report, and then Wayne’s albums like Night Dreamer and Juju.
JazzTimes: Did you listen more as a fan or dissect them musically, too?
Initially as a fan, but then I realized I had to learn how to execute some of these things I was hearing. It happened gradually with Art Blakey and Max Roach, and then Elvin Jones and Joe Chambers. I tried to learn a lot of those things just to extend my vocabulary. If I didn’t nail them exactly in terms of technicality, I got close in terms of the spirit and feeling and having my own sense of the sound come through. I think it’s important when you focus on something pure that you have it in your vision to hopefully become yourself out of that.
Initially as a fan, but then I realized I had to learn how to execute some of these things I was hearing. It happened gradually with Art Blakey and Max Roach, and then Elvin Jones and Joe Chambers. I tried to learn a lot of those things just to extend my vocabulary. If I didn’t nail them exactly in terms of technicality, I got close in terms of the spirit and feeling and having my own sense of the sound come through. I think it’s important when you focus on something pure that you have it in your vision to hopefully become yourself out of that.
JazzTimes: Drummers think about sound and tone and tuning as much as
other instrumentalists do. When did that come into it for you-tuning
and cymbal colors and the kind of sound you wanted to project?
Always. From the time I heard John Coltrane’s Ballads album and the closer you listen you realize Elvin [Jones] is only playing the snare drum and the bass drum and the hi-hat and all this music is coming out of the speakers. And then you sit down to that same configuration of drums and you wonder, “Man, how did he get all of this depth and tonality and swirl and groove out of just a minimal amount of things?” There was a long period in New Orleans that I only played snare drum and bass drum on gigs. Partly it was out of discipline and partly it was necessity because we were only playing for tips and I couldn’t afford to bring everything. But out of these adverse situations came a lot of learning. It’s important for drummers to recognize that within all those rhythms there is a harmonic influence. It’s important, I think, to hook into the aurality of the instrument. In terms of your approach to learning, how much knowledge derived from your analytical side and how much from the feeling side.
Always. From the time I heard John Coltrane’s Ballads album and the closer you listen you realize Elvin [Jones] is only playing the snare drum and the bass drum and the hi-hat and all this music is coming out of the speakers. And then you sit down to that same configuration of drums and you wonder, “Man, how did he get all of this depth and tonality and swirl and groove out of just a minimal amount of things?” There was a long period in New Orleans that I only played snare drum and bass drum on gigs. Partly it was out of discipline and partly it was necessity because we were only playing for tips and I couldn’t afford to bring everything. But out of these adverse situations came a lot of learning. It’s important for drummers to recognize that within all those rhythms there is a harmonic influence. It’s important, I think, to hook into the aurality of the instrument. In terms of your approach to learning, how much knowledge derived from your analytical side and how much from the feeling side.
JazzTimes: With a cat like Elvin do you break his kit and his patterns, that sort of thing?
The equipment I maybe knew about initially. But the more I got into these recordings I realized that 99 percent of it, 100 percent of it even, is in their hands-how they strike the cymbal or the drum and how they pull sound out. One time in New Orleans it occurred to me when Jeff Watts sat in on a gig at the same drum kit as one of my teachers, Dave Lee. It was unbelievable. They both sounded so great but so different. Absolutely different. When Jeff sat down at the same drum kit it was his sound. There was that individuality. I think it’s in the back of your mind if you’re an artist or a human being that you want to blaze a path that has a uniqueness, especially if you’re going to write songs and offer these recordings to folks. But to get back to your question, I think there has to be a balance struck between the analytical and what I was doing when I was playing in church-that is, to serve the situation. Back then I wasn’t consciously thinking about what I was playing but trying to follow the organist and the words-just paying attention to the moment, which is what I still do every time now. Of course, I still try to put in that practice time alone, too. It’s a necessity-trying to confront deficiencies and get better at expressing things so that you’re not onstage struggling with the physical demands of playing an instrument. But the struggle is a part of it, too. There’ll always be something that you want to execute and can’t or find the distance between the unseen and your hands can be a long way. Jimi Hendrix used to talk about the gap between the sound he heard in his head and what he was playing.
The equipment I maybe knew about initially. But the more I got into these recordings I realized that 99 percent of it, 100 percent of it even, is in their hands-how they strike the cymbal or the drum and how they pull sound out. One time in New Orleans it occurred to me when Jeff Watts sat in on a gig at the same drum kit as one of my teachers, Dave Lee. It was unbelievable. They both sounded so great but so different. Absolutely different. When Jeff sat down at the same drum kit it was his sound. There was that individuality. I think it’s in the back of your mind if you’re an artist or a human being that you want to blaze a path that has a uniqueness, especially if you’re going to write songs and offer these recordings to folks. But to get back to your question, I think there has to be a balance struck between the analytical and what I was doing when I was playing in church-that is, to serve the situation. Back then I wasn’t consciously thinking about what I was playing but trying to follow the organist and the words-just paying attention to the moment, which is what I still do every time now. Of course, I still try to put in that practice time alone, too. It’s a necessity-trying to confront deficiencies and get better at expressing things so that you’re not onstage struggling with the physical demands of playing an instrument. But the struggle is a part of it, too. There’ll always be something that you want to execute and can’t or find the distance between the unseen and your hands can be a long way. Jimi Hendrix used to talk about the gap between the sound he heard in his head and what he was playing.
JazzTimes: Does that gap occur for you, too?
Yeah, quite a bit. Hopefully it’s not miles away. Hopefully it’s something that’s just out of your grasp. Hopefully. I hit a crossroads recently. I was wanting to get better faster like I did 10 years ago. Ten years ago I was aware that I was getting better, but now that I’m older I really have to push myself to get to the next plateau, to not feel like I’m standing still. I can’t imagine Jimi saying something like that, you know what I mean? God! It’s amazing to think of someone making a sound that stands as an archetype feeling that way.
Yeah, quite a bit. Hopefully it’s not miles away. Hopefully it’s something that’s just out of your grasp. Hopefully. I hit a crossroads recently. I was wanting to get better faster like I did 10 years ago. Ten years ago I was aware that I was getting better, but now that I’m older I really have to push myself to get to the next plateau, to not feel like I’m standing still. I can’t imagine Jimi saying something like that, you know what I mean? God! It’s amazing to think of someone making a sound that stands as an archetype feeling that way.
JazzTimes: When did you and Kenny Garrett meet?
I was playing at the Village Vanguard with Harry Connick Jr. and Kenny came down and the next day we went out to his place and just played all day. We became fast friends. We don’t play enough now. Doing that Coltrane recording was daunting. I thought, “How can I safely approach this music that I revere so much?” We can’t possibly be thinking about trying to play this. But we tried to approach it as honestly as possible.
I was playing at the Village Vanguard with Harry Connick Jr. and Kenny came down and the next day we went out to his place and just played all day. We became fast friends. We don’t play enough now. Doing that Coltrane recording was daunting. I thought, “How can I safely approach this music that I revere so much?” We can’t possibly be thinking about trying to play this. But we tried to approach it as honestly as possible.
JazzTimes: Did everyone have that trepidation?
Oh, how could you not if you are truly a fan of music and were a fan of Coltrane’s music even more? So it was intimidating. Because the whole idea is to not only have your own personal interpretation of those songs-well hopefully it can only be that-but to not have it be a bunch of thievery and to hopefully breathe a new life into them. I trust Kenny though, and when I listen to that record I can almost remove myself from it. It was inspiring to hear him and Pat [Metheny] because they have such strong sounds and hopefully we did present a new take on these songs that are so familiar to so many people. Quite a challenge.
Oh, how could you not if you are truly a fan of music and were a fan of Coltrane’s music even more? So it was intimidating. Because the whole idea is to not only have your own personal interpretation of those songs-well hopefully it can only be that-but to not have it be a bunch of thievery and to hopefully breathe a new life into them. I trust Kenny though, and when I listen to that record I can almost remove myself from it. It was inspiring to hear him and Pat [Metheny] because they have such strong sounds and hopefully we did present a new take on these songs that are so familiar to so many people. Quite a challenge.
JazzTimes: When you were studying, did symphonic training have an impact on your development?
It had a great effect. I was in the symphonic band all through junior high school and all through college. I think it’s good to have all of these musical experiences because they all reveal something to you. I was still playing in a group and there wasn’t this improvisatory platform that presents itself in jazz music, but within the interpretation of what was on the page there’s a lot of sympathy and focus required. The thick and thin of it is what I love. All that textured stuff. I think that’s why there are seven people in this Fellowship group. If there were 17, I’d be happy. Somehow you want the quality of sound to thicken without losing that quickness of communication like you’d have in a trio where the exchange of ideas goes around so fast. If you can balance those things with seven people, where everyone is making decisions conscious of the group and the total sum of the sound, then magic occurs and you take flight.
It had a great effect. I was in the symphonic band all through junior high school and all through college. I think it’s good to have all of these musical experiences because they all reveal something to you. I was still playing in a group and there wasn’t this improvisatory platform that presents itself in jazz music, but within the interpretation of what was on the page there’s a lot of sympathy and focus required. The thick and thin of it is what I love. All that textured stuff. I think that’s why there are seven people in this Fellowship group. If there were 17, I’d be happy. Somehow you want the quality of sound to thicken without losing that quickness of communication like you’d have in a trio where the exchange of ideas goes around so fast. If you can balance those things with seven people, where everyone is making decisions conscious of the group and the total sum of the sound, then magic occurs and you take flight.
JazzTimes: When the Fellowship rehearses, what sort of things do you focus on and how long generally is a rehearsal?
Initially we spent several days together. My instinct was to write and to get people I trust musically and on a human level. I knew what everybody was going to bring was going to be powerful. So it was just a matter of trying to get to the emotional center of a song and finding what that might mean to each individual at any moment. So getting to know each other musically was the whole thing-we didn’t really spend a lot of time rehearsing. It all came together pretty quickly.
Initially we spent several days together. My instinct was to write and to get people I trust musically and on a human level. I knew what everybody was going to bring was going to be powerful. So it was just a matter of trying to get to the emotional center of a song and finding what that might mean to each individual at any moment. So getting to know each other musically was the whole thing-we didn’t really spend a lot of time rehearsing. It all came together pretty quickly.
JazzTimes: It’s interesting to hear you talk about the emotional
center being the focus because that’s more how somebody in a rock thing
or a soul thing would approach a song. It’s rather atypical of the way
people think about approaching jazz stuff today.
Not to deny that it is a thinking people’s music, but when I listen to music if I ever catch myself thinking, I’m in trouble-I know something is wrong. If I ever go to hear live music and something is on my mind, I’m in trouble. If I’m not feeling it from my gut but I think about it later, then I know it’s right. Hopefully the music that comes through me or this band isn’t just cerebral.
Not to deny that it is a thinking people’s music, but when I listen to music if I ever catch myself thinking, I’m in trouble-I know something is wrong. If I ever go to hear live music and something is on my mind, I’m in trouble. If I’m not feeling it from my gut but I think about it later, then I know it’s right. Hopefully the music that comes through me or this band isn’t just cerebral.
JazzTimes: How did the Fellowship’s instrumentation evolve?
Well, since I write on guitar I love the simpatico of piano and guitar-the chordal soup that comes up when they congeal. And with pedal steel I love this arc of color that comes in and out on an instrument that some people have confined to one world of music. It’s a little orchestra. Not in any way to compare myself to Duke Ellington, but I feel like I have a Johnny Hodges to write for in [the Fellowship’s multi-reedist] Myron Walden.
Well, since I write on guitar I love the simpatico of piano and guitar-the chordal soup that comes up when they congeal. And with pedal steel I love this arc of color that comes in and out on an instrument that some people have confined to one world of music. It’s a little orchestra. Not in any way to compare myself to Duke Ellington, but I feel like I have a Johnny Hodges to write for in [the Fellowship’s multi-reedist] Myron Walden.
JazzTimes: The Fellowship’s music is set up in a way that’s very open
and yet has a series of movements and little suites in there, too.
I definitely think that’s where symphonic and orchestral experiences come in. Or maybe it’s just my mindscape; I don’t know. I just feel like it ought to have this ebb and flow about it. Maybe my favorite music always had that somehow. Things I could cite like A Love Supreme or even Electric Ladyland and Rites of Spring, where a journey takes place or a season unfolds. That’s what I’ve always loved about music-the depiction of something natural.
I definitely think that’s where symphonic and orchestral experiences come in. Or maybe it’s just my mindscape; I don’t know. I just feel like it ought to have this ebb and flow about it. Maybe my favorite music always had that somehow. Things I could cite like A Love Supreme or even Electric Ladyland and Rites of Spring, where a journey takes place or a season unfolds. That’s what I’ve always loved about music-the depiction of something natural.
JazzTimes: Some of the writing on the new record was provoked by the
Columbine incident and the relationship of that sort of social
inspiration to some of Mingus’ music. That challenge of creating
abstract forms that speak to weighty social realities.
To think about there being any kind of social commentary in instrumental music can seem ridiculous, sometimes. Basically, in terms of point of reference, you only have a title and a series of tones and rhythms that you hear. You don’t hear a libretto or a song in words. It is kind of a stretch to get people to look at things that inspire your songs and attempt to shed a little light on human conditions. But hopefully in the end you get some joy from those grooves and tones and they touch folks, you know? I know that with the name Fellowship there’s an idealism to live in a place where there’s a circularity of energy between the band and the audience. Trying to effect the social condition is a grand idea, but the idea of people coming together on stage is symbolic of what you’d like to see happen on the street, in life. My father was a minister in a church called Zion Baptist and those folks who raised me stick in my memory. Thanks to them, I always do the right thing as a man because I know what the right thing is. I know what I hold as a high ideal and that’s what the name of the band is for me.
To think about there being any kind of social commentary in instrumental music can seem ridiculous, sometimes. Basically, in terms of point of reference, you only have a title and a series of tones and rhythms that you hear. You don’t hear a libretto or a song in words. It is kind of a stretch to get people to look at things that inspire your songs and attempt to shed a little light on human conditions. But hopefully in the end you get some joy from those grooves and tones and they touch folks, you know? I know that with the name Fellowship there’s an idealism to live in a place where there’s a circularity of energy between the band and the audience. Trying to effect the social condition is a grand idea, but the idea of people coming together on stage is symbolic of what you’d like to see happen on the street, in life. My father was a minister in a church called Zion Baptist and those folks who raised me stick in my memory. Thanks to them, I always do the right thing as a man because I know what the right thing is. I know what I hold as a high ideal and that’s what the name of the band is for me.
Gearbox
This is hairy because I play a lot of different stuff. The one thing that does stay the same are my cymbals. They’re predominantly old, but I do play this one new Zildjian Constantinople. A very light 22-inch cymbal. I usually play just three cymbals. My others are two 22-inch from the ’50s. My hi-hats are 16-inch ‘A’s and probably not a matching set of ‘A’s, but they were in the pawn shop like that. I love what the Zildjian cymbals do and I like dealing with that family of folks. With Joni I chose to play a larger set-bass drum was 24-inch with a 12-inch tom and a 16-inch floor tom-they were these beautifully crafted Ayotte drums. With Kenny and the Fellowship I mostly play my Sonors from 1971, with a little 18-inch bass drum or my Gretsch made in ’63, which consists of a 20-inch and 13-inch tom and a 16-inch floor tom. My brother recently had me check out this company called Mapex. They sent me two snare drums, which I really like. My sticks are John Riley Zildjian, Vic Firth mallets and a series of different brushes-Ludwig and Regal Tip and Cannon. The first guitar I bought to write on was a Gibson LG3, a little acoustic honeytone from the ’40s. I don’t travel with it anymore because I bought this Gibson from the late ’30s, a mail-order guitar they made during the war. It’s a Cromwell archtop. I also have this 175T Gibson, hollow, very shallow electric guitar. My amp is an old Gibson Invader-long since faded out of production. A very warm sounding amp, great for songwriting. I don’t need effects. I only need a tone and I’m off. My piano is a turn-of-the-century Mason & Hamlin, a large upright piano with no pinblock. It’s interesting the way you tune it. The strings actually hang on hooks. Kind of bizarre, cool little instrument.
This is hairy because I play a lot of different stuff. The one thing that does stay the same are my cymbals. They’re predominantly old, but I do play this one new Zildjian Constantinople. A very light 22-inch cymbal. I usually play just three cymbals. My others are two 22-inch from the ’50s. My hi-hats are 16-inch ‘A’s and probably not a matching set of ‘A’s, but they were in the pawn shop like that. I love what the Zildjian cymbals do and I like dealing with that family of folks. With Joni I chose to play a larger set-bass drum was 24-inch with a 12-inch tom and a 16-inch floor tom-they were these beautifully crafted Ayotte drums. With Kenny and the Fellowship I mostly play my Sonors from 1971, with a little 18-inch bass drum or my Gretsch made in ’63, which consists of a 20-inch and 13-inch tom and a 16-inch floor tom. My brother recently had me check out this company called Mapex. They sent me two snare drums, which I really like. My sticks are John Riley Zildjian, Vic Firth mallets and a series of different brushes-Ludwig and Regal Tip and Cannon. The first guitar I bought to write on was a Gibson LG3, a little acoustic honeytone from the ’40s. I don’t travel with it anymore because I bought this Gibson from the late ’30s, a mail-order guitar they made during the war. It’s a Cromwell archtop. I also have this 175T Gibson, hollow, very shallow electric guitar. My amp is an old Gibson Invader-long since faded out of production. A very warm sounding amp, great for songwriting. I don’t need effects. I only need a tone and I’m off. My piano is a turn-of-the-century Mason & Hamlin, a large upright piano with no pinblock. It’s interesting the way you tune it. The strings actually hang on hooks. Kind of bizarre, cool little instrument.
Listening Pleasures
I just came out of a period of listening to a lot of Laura Nyro. I totally got into New York Tendaberry and Eli and the Thirteenth Confession. There’s so much bravery on her recordings. She’ll start in such a subtle manner, so plaintive, and then all of a sudden there’ll be the most brave outcry, like Ohhhhhh. I love the sort of challenge that comes out-this destruction of form that comes out in her music that’s [still] so accessible on a pop level.
Son House comes back to my listening more than anything, maybe. There’s just something so emotionally high and raw and untamed. It possesses this bizarre duality for me. Like an absolute perfection where you wouldn’t change a thing but also where your analytical mind shouldn’t come into it because if you thought about it you’d think all of this is wrong on a technical level.
I’ve been in a Miles phase again because I started playing with Wayne. He’s one of those people who reveals so much and who achieves that ideal of telling a story through instrumental music. He can do it with one note. So I’ve been listening to the Plugged Nickel box set and some bootleg things, too.
I’ve been wanting to write some music for a string octet. I loved the collaboration of [strings arranger] Eumir Deodato and Björk on Homogenic and so I’ve been listening a lot to Bartok’s string quartet. Just to think that there are only four elements to this equation and all this music is coming out is staggering to me.
I just came out of a period of listening to a lot of Laura Nyro. I totally got into New York Tendaberry and Eli and the Thirteenth Confession. There’s so much bravery on her recordings. She’ll start in such a subtle manner, so plaintive, and then all of a sudden there’ll be the most brave outcry, like Ohhhhhh. I love the sort of challenge that comes out-this destruction of form that comes out in her music that’s [still] so accessible on a pop level.
Son House comes back to my listening more than anything, maybe. There’s just something so emotionally high and raw and untamed. It possesses this bizarre duality for me. Like an absolute perfection where you wouldn’t change a thing but also where your analytical mind shouldn’t come into it because if you thought about it you’d think all of this is wrong on a technical level.
I’ve been in a Miles phase again because I started playing with Wayne. He’s one of those people who reveals so much and who achieves that ideal of telling a story through instrumental music. He can do it with one note. So I’ve been listening to the Plugged Nickel box set and some bootleg things, too.
I’ve been wanting to write some music for a string octet. I loved the collaboration of [strings arranger] Eumir Deodato and Björk on Homogenic and so I’ve been listening a lot to Bartok’s string quartet. Just to think that there are only four elements to this equation and all this music is coming out is staggering to me.
Kenny Garrett Pursuance: The Music of John Coltrane (Warner Bros.)
Mark Turner: Ballad Session (Warner Bros.)
Joni Mitchell: Taming the Tiger (Reprise)
Elvis Costello & Bill Frisell: The Sweetest Punch: The Songs of Costello and Bacharach (Polygram)
Brad Mehldau: Introducing Brad Mehldau (Warner Bros.)
Joshua Redman: Spirit of the Moment: Live at the Village Vanguard (Warner Bros.)
Brian Blade talks back
“Sometimes
I think New Orleans might as well be Paris,” says Brian Blade, 46, a
Shreveport native who moved back to his hometown some three and a half
years ago. The master drummer, who has been a member of the legendary
saxophonist Wayne Shorter’s quartet since its inception in 2000 and has
been leading his own ensemble, Brian Blade & the Fellowship Band,
for 20 years, admits that he doesn’t get down to New Orleans very often.
Despite his demanding schedule, Blade promises his neglect of New Orleans will change starting in February. On Friday, February 10, he and the Fellowship will collaborate with the Loyola University Symphony Orchestra conducted by Dr. Jean Montès. On Saturday, February 11 and Sunday, February 12, at the Old U.S. Mint and Snug Harbor, respectively, Blade will be behind the drums with Davy Mooney’s band in celebration of guitarist’s new album, Hope of Home.
“I really have to stay in touch with my friends like [guitarist Steve] Masakowski and I need to get in touch with Mr. Marsalis and just start arranging things,” says Blade, who moved to New Orleans in his teens to study first with drummer Johnny Vidacovich at Loyola and then with drummer David Lee at the University of New Orleans. It wasn’t long before he was off to New York.
“It was time, it seems for us, my wife and I, to move back to where we were from,” Blade offers, adding that his wife, who he met when they were 16, grew up across the Red River in Bossier City.
The meeting between the Fellowship Band and Loyola’s Symphony stands as a first-time experience for both ensembles.
“This is new territory for us,” says Blade of performing with an orchestra of some 60 pieces. “I’m thankful that there are still some firsts in life and that this is happening where [at Loyola] I met [pianist] Jon Cowherd. So we’re returning to a certain root for us, New Orleans being the place where people let us in on the secret.”
“The bulk of the experience will be the fusion of the two ensembles that usually perform separately with different repertoires,” Dr. Montès explains, adding that the theme of the night is “Becoming One.” “It will be pushing both groups to listen differently and interact differently in a setting that is basically fusing classically based music into jazz and vice versa. We like that because it stretches us to think in terms of improvisation so it will be a work that is evolving. It’s very gratifying and terrifying because they [the orchestra members] usually have a sheet of music in front of them.”
With Blade’s recent appearance at the knockout tribute to Vidacovich at the Best of the Beat Awards and these two upcoming performances, now seemed the right time to do a little catching up with the drum master about being back in Louisiana and a few of his many experiences since he left decades ago.
Now that you’ve returned to Shreveport, do you play in church as you did in your youth?
Always, whenever I’m home and not on the road. Every Wednesday and Sunday I’m back in the seat I was in when I was 13. It’s a different church building but the same congregation. My dad is still the pastor [at Zion Baptist Church]—54 years now I think. It’s incredible. Ever since I left at 17, it turned into playing maybe on Easter or that annual visit at Christmas. It got to be too little. I was getting older and folks were getting older. Thankfully that thread is unbroken. I’m so grateful for that. It’s great to restore.
How did playing drums in church influence you?
It just gave me the hearing and the listening. These singers were so great but they weren’t professionals so to speak. They were neighborhood people and they just wanted to give God praise. If they would move in a certain way that didn’t necessarily follow some harmonic progression you didn’t run past what was being sung. You stayed there because they are delivering something for you to hear. It heightened my sensitivity to that movement and hopefully strengthened my own musical flow.
How important is your spiritual background in your career as a musician? Even the name of your band, the Fellowship, seems to reflect a certain humanity.
It’s the bedrock really that holds everything up. This is praise for me—the music, the sound itself. It’s the gift you’ve been given being turned back towards whoever is there to receive it.
The band name represents that in some holistic way but it also really is born from my friendship with [pianist] Jon Cowherd who I met in 1988 when I moved to New Orleans to study at Loyola. Then a year later, [bassist] Chris Thomas moved to New Orleans to study with Mr. Marsalis at the University of New Orleans. Years passed and I met [saxophonists] Myron Walden and Melvin Butler [in New York]. Everything started coming into focus and I said, ‘Okay, I want to build something with these guys.’ In 1997 we recorded our first album and we’ve been able to stay together. It’s a gift.
As a composer does spirituality enter the way you write?
Yes, absolutely. It all kind of wells up from my spirit—my spirit man so to speak. That’s true inspiration and then the spark of joy that comes with finding a sound and knowing that this writing, this melody is for Myron or Melvin or Chris or Jon. It all sort of mixes together all at once during the composing—imagining how they are going to bring something dormant on paper to life.
Your appearances here—with the Fellowship/Symphony collaboration and guitarist Davy Mooney—will be stylistically very different. Does that change your approach?
The situation and music dictates how I act and react and it’s never the same. I’m still me somehow and hopefully I’m bringing what’s needed to the situation. There’s no automatic pilot. I can’t go like, ‘This is my thing.’ I hate that mentality. I’d like to almost be broken and start from zero and not know what I’m doing—not relying on my chops or whatever is a default setting in a mindset that keeps you from not reaching for something. When I play with people I want to serve the song. I want to serve the mission and make it go higher and reach people with what I’m doing and what we’re trying to do together.
What has your experience been like performing with the legendary saxophonist Wayne Shorter?
He’s such an original, man. He’s so unique. There are some good songs and good solos and good records and then there’s this other level when you start using that word genius. With Wayne, I just have to say he’s so genius and such a gas. The light is on through it all. He’s walking in his purpose in such a beautiful way. He’s not resting on what he did yesterday or 30 years ago, he’s like, ‘Okay, what can we create right now together?’ So he’s instilled this in myself and [bassist] John Patitucci and [pianist] Danilo Pérez and shared it with us for the last 17 years.
He represents a lot of what I grew up with and my respect for elders who had wisdom—you just knew it. And there was this ‘fear not’ about them. That’s what Wayne placed inside our hearts. So I try to take it back to the Fellowship Band and to every situation that I’m a part of. Hopefully there’s that spirit of taking a chance.
Considering his stature, were you nervous the first time you played with Wayne?
Yes, absolutely. Initially, we didn’t know if we were making something together or we were off the tracks. It took a while for us to really come into what his vision was for this collective composition that he wanted to be a part of and seeing it unfold with us. Once we got a little bit of a clue and stepped into that confidence, and realized, ‘Okay he may be silent for a while but he’s giving a lot to the process even in his silence.’ He puts the spire on the building.
You came to New Orleans to study with Johnny Vidacovich. What did you learn about the city itself?
New Orleans is its own country. It’s just where so many cultural crosses meet. That mixing and mingling and that beat on the street is what makes life have that joy. A different influx of spirit comes in and you step into it and you feel it immediately. It changes the way you look at things and feel things in a great way. The time that I spent there was a very special time in my life. I was just supposed to have been there. Now it’s in everything that I play and write. I may not even realize it. There are pieces of it that manifest themselves. I might hear a song we recorded five years ago and think, ‘Oh, wow, that’s just a second line really!’
Despite his demanding schedule, Blade promises his neglect of New Orleans will change starting in February. On Friday, February 10, he and the Fellowship will collaborate with the Loyola University Symphony Orchestra conducted by Dr. Jean Montès. On Saturday, February 11 and Sunday, February 12, at the Old U.S. Mint and Snug Harbor, respectively, Blade will be behind the drums with Davy Mooney’s band in celebration of guitarist’s new album, Hope of Home.
“I really have to stay in touch with my friends like [guitarist Steve] Masakowski and I need to get in touch with Mr. Marsalis and just start arranging things,” says Blade, who moved to New Orleans in his teens to study first with drummer Johnny Vidacovich at Loyola and then with drummer David Lee at the University of New Orleans. It wasn’t long before he was off to New York.
“It was time, it seems for us, my wife and I, to move back to where we were from,” Blade offers, adding that his wife, who he met when they were 16, grew up across the Red River in Bossier City.
The meeting between the Fellowship Band and Loyola’s Symphony stands as a first-time experience for both ensembles.
“This is new territory for us,” says Blade of performing with an orchestra of some 60 pieces. “I’m thankful that there are still some firsts in life and that this is happening where [at Loyola] I met [pianist] Jon Cowherd. So we’re returning to a certain root for us, New Orleans being the place where people let us in on the secret.”
“The bulk of the experience will be the fusion of the two ensembles that usually perform separately with different repertoires,” Dr. Montès explains, adding that the theme of the night is “Becoming One.” “It will be pushing both groups to listen differently and interact differently in a setting that is basically fusing classically based music into jazz and vice versa. We like that because it stretches us to think in terms of improvisation so it will be a work that is evolving. It’s very gratifying and terrifying because they [the orchestra members] usually have a sheet of music in front of them.”
With Blade’s recent appearance at the knockout tribute to Vidacovich at the Best of the Beat Awards and these two upcoming performances, now seemed the right time to do a little catching up with the drum master about being back in Louisiana and a few of his many experiences since he left decades ago.
Now that you’ve returned to Shreveport, do you play in church as you did in your youth?
Always, whenever I’m home and not on the road. Every Wednesday and Sunday I’m back in the seat I was in when I was 13. It’s a different church building but the same congregation. My dad is still the pastor [at Zion Baptist Church]—54 years now I think. It’s incredible. Ever since I left at 17, it turned into playing maybe on Easter or that annual visit at Christmas. It got to be too little. I was getting older and folks were getting older. Thankfully that thread is unbroken. I’m so grateful for that. It’s great to restore.
How did playing drums in church influence you?
It just gave me the hearing and the listening. These singers were so great but they weren’t professionals so to speak. They were neighborhood people and they just wanted to give God praise. If they would move in a certain way that didn’t necessarily follow some harmonic progression you didn’t run past what was being sung. You stayed there because they are delivering something for you to hear. It heightened my sensitivity to that movement and hopefully strengthened my own musical flow.
How important is your spiritual background in your career as a musician? Even the name of your band, the Fellowship, seems to reflect a certain humanity.
It’s the bedrock really that holds everything up. This is praise for me—the music, the sound itself. It’s the gift you’ve been given being turned back towards whoever is there to receive it.
The band name represents that in some holistic way but it also really is born from my friendship with [pianist] Jon Cowherd who I met in 1988 when I moved to New Orleans to study at Loyola. Then a year later, [bassist] Chris Thomas moved to New Orleans to study with Mr. Marsalis at the University of New Orleans. Years passed and I met [saxophonists] Myron Walden and Melvin Butler [in New York]. Everything started coming into focus and I said, ‘Okay, I want to build something with these guys.’ In 1997 we recorded our first album and we’ve been able to stay together. It’s a gift.
As a composer does spirituality enter the way you write?
Yes, absolutely. It all kind of wells up from my spirit—my spirit man so to speak. That’s true inspiration and then the spark of joy that comes with finding a sound and knowing that this writing, this melody is for Myron or Melvin or Chris or Jon. It all sort of mixes together all at once during the composing—imagining how they are going to bring something dormant on paper to life.
Your appearances here—with the Fellowship/Symphony collaboration and guitarist Davy Mooney—will be stylistically very different. Does that change your approach?
The situation and music dictates how I act and react and it’s never the same. I’m still me somehow and hopefully I’m bringing what’s needed to the situation. There’s no automatic pilot. I can’t go like, ‘This is my thing.’ I hate that mentality. I’d like to almost be broken and start from zero and not know what I’m doing—not relying on my chops or whatever is a default setting in a mindset that keeps you from not reaching for something. When I play with people I want to serve the song. I want to serve the mission and make it go higher and reach people with what I’m doing and what we’re trying to do together.
What has your experience been like performing with the legendary saxophonist Wayne Shorter?
He’s such an original, man. He’s so unique. There are some good songs and good solos and good records and then there’s this other level when you start using that word genius. With Wayne, I just have to say he’s so genius and such a gas. The light is on through it all. He’s walking in his purpose in such a beautiful way. He’s not resting on what he did yesterday or 30 years ago, he’s like, ‘Okay, what can we create right now together?’ So he’s instilled this in myself and [bassist] John Patitucci and [pianist] Danilo Pérez and shared it with us for the last 17 years.
He represents a lot of what I grew up with and my respect for elders who had wisdom—you just knew it. And there was this ‘fear not’ about them. That’s what Wayne placed inside our hearts. So I try to take it back to the Fellowship Band and to every situation that I’m a part of. Hopefully there’s that spirit of taking a chance.
Considering his stature, were you nervous the first time you played with Wayne?
Yes, absolutely. Initially, we didn’t know if we were making something together or we were off the tracks. It took a while for us to really come into what his vision was for this collective composition that he wanted to be a part of and seeing it unfold with us. Once we got a little bit of a clue and stepped into that confidence, and realized, ‘Okay he may be silent for a while but he’s giving a lot to the process even in his silence.’ He puts the spire on the building.
You came to New Orleans to study with Johnny Vidacovich. What did you learn about the city itself?
New Orleans is its own country. It’s just where so many cultural crosses meet. That mixing and mingling and that beat on the street is what makes life have that joy. A different influx of spirit comes in and you step into it and you feel it immediately. It changes the way you look at things and feel things in a great way. The time that I spent there was a very special time in my life. I was just supposed to have been there. Now it’s in everything that I play and write. I may not even realize it. There are pieces of it that manifest themselves. I might hear a song we recorded five years ago and think, ‘Oh, wow, that’s just a second line really!’
A Conversation with Brian Blade
by Wally Breese
JoniMitchell.com
April 11, 1998
JoniMitchell.com
April 11, 1998
Brian: I've heard of the web site but, unfortunately, I haven't actually visited because I don't have a computer.
Wally: Well, I've been hearing a great deal about you the last couple of years and I'm excited to talk to you, especially about the making of Joni's new album,Taming the Tiger. But I want to start back just a bit. Tell me about your musical background. Were drums your first instrument?
Brian: Violin was my first instrument. From when I was in elementary into junior high. But I have an older brother, Brady Jr., who played drums, so I sort of followed in his footsteps. My father's a minister. My mother's a kindergarten teacher. Well, she was for over twenty-five years and then she retired and now she's teaching as a part of our church where my father's a minister. And so my brother played drums in church and then when he went away to college, I moved into the chair. That was kind of how I started playing. In hindsight, it was an amazing lesson learned being in that environment so regularly with such a great community of folk.
Wally: Right.
Brian: I think so many great singers, you know, Aretha, Donny Hathaway, you know, those voices, they resonate of sort of a church family. So, being in that situation I think taught me so much about how I approach every musical situation today. So that's how I started playing.
Wally: I would think the style of drums that you played in church were not very rock 'n roll or pop, though.
Brian: Well, it's difficult to say. I think the beats, they're rooted -- I think the evolution of pop or rock music also came from that. Gospel music roots and sort of blues roots and all, I think it all evolved into, no matter whether you like most of what you hear today, it all has to come from something. So maybe we're kind of far away from it at this point, but I definitely think it comes from that.
Wally: So you continued to play drums in the church until you were 18?
Brian: Exactly, until I moved from my hometown of Shreveport to New Orleans to go to college.
Wally: When you were growing up, who were your musical likes and influences?
Brian: Definitely I liked Earth, Wind and Fire --
Wally: Oh yeah.
Brian: Stevie Wonder's music.
Wally: Stevie's a genius.
Brian: Oh man, no question. You know, just before I left I had started buying a lot of records. Friends, and people in Shreveport, you know, great musicians, were turning me on to John Coltrane's music and Miles Davis' music, and I started buying a lot of records. And a friend gave me Hejira when I was 16 and I was listening to that every day on my way to school in my Bug. It just seeped, seeped, inside, so far beneath the skin. That record was a beginning for me.
Wally: It's my favorite Joni record. It's difficult to pick just one, but that would be the one if I had to choose.
Brian: Yeah. I mean, it's funny that it was the first one that I heard. Then I went on to sort of buy all the others.
Wally: The ones before Hejira?
Brian: Exactly.
Wally: What year were you born?
Brian: 1970.
Wally: Oh! So you didn't get into Hejira until the mid 1980s then?
Brian: Exactly.
Wally: So you had the albums before and after Hejira to catch up on?
Brian: Yeah, exactly.
Wally: Lucky you.
Brian: It's bizarre. But, man, I think I'm caught up now. They're still teaching me so much.
Wally: Now wasn't it Bobbye Hall who played percussion on Hejira?
Brian: John Guerin, as well.
Wally: Were you introduced to Don Juan's Reckless Daughter after that?
Brian: No, actually. Just after "Hejira," the same friend gave me "Mingus."
Wally: Since you're more of a jazz guy, I think, than a pop or rock guy, that must have been an important album for you to hear.
Brian: Yeah. I don't know. On Hejira, the story telling is so great. "The Wolf that Lives in Lindsey" from Mingus struck me the most from that album.
Wally: The guitar on that track is so weird. I have a friend who I introduced to Joni recently with Hits and Misses. And he said, "I love the Misses album, except for that wolf song, I have to skip that every time."
Brian: Because it's scary? (Laughs)
Wally: Yeah, well, you know, considering what the story is about, it makes sense that the guitars would be so jarring and everything.
Brian: No kidding. Boy, certain songs like that they should re-release on the public. They're relevant in so many ways. I hear you, so heavy. It's kind of like the first time I heard Blind Willie. You know, I think I bought it one night late in New Orleans at Tower just before they closed and I got home and put it on. Boy, it scared the hell out of me, I had to turn it off. It was too heavy, man. I can relate.
Wally: So who were your musical influences after 18? Did you get into mostly jazz?
Brian: Well, yeah, definitely moving to New Orleans, I didn't go to study music there, per se, at Loyola, the school that I attended, but just moving to that town, you're going to study music in a way, you know what I mean? The environment is so rich and the jazz musicians that were there whom I admired and revered, they were the reason that I moved there- Bill Huntington, and so on, they played all kinds of music, you know. New Orleans is such a mixed up soup.
Wally: A hodgepodge of styles, yeah.
Brian: The whole street culture, the cross and mixture is amazing. So I was getting into everything, you know, R&B, etc. Well, I had played that music growing up, obviously, in Shreveport. I had been in a punk band. For me it all blended together even from my earliest experiences, like the little festival in my hometown- the Annual Red River Revel. I was hearing Chuck Rainey there and all these gospel choirs, and Asleep at the Wheel, the Neville Brothers. I guess they were all my influences, you know, the New Orleans music.
Wally: You said you were in a punk band when you were, I guess, a teenager?
Brian: Yeah.
Wally: So you played in the church but you also played in outside bands?
Brian: Yeah, I played in all kinds of groups. My teacher, Dorsey Summerfield Jr., who taught at the high school I went to, my brother played in his band. He'd had a professional band for over 20 years, but he invited me to play in the band and they were professionals, you know, just amazing singers. He was a saxophonist, too. We played just R&B. And then, of course, just being the age that I was, we had a lot of energy, so we had this band of just two guitars and a singer and we were playing like Bad Brain songs, you know, just like having fun. It was ridiculous. Butchering Everly Brothers' songs, doing thrash versions, so there were no sacred cows. It was some fun.
Wally: So after you went to Loyola U., did you get into a band there?
Brian: It was more so the meeting of one particular friend, a friend of mine named John Coward who plays piano in a group that we've now just started.
Wally: The Brian Blade Fellowship?
Brian: Exactly. Hopefully my name will get dropped off of it eventually. It will just be Fellowship. That's my aim. I guess there's two worlds. There's the business and then there's the music making. When it comes to the business, if I have to be, Brian Blade of the Fellowship, the leader, then that's cool. But then when it comes to the music and performing it and making it, it's just one thing. So John and I, we started playing together all the time, just the two of us most times even if there wasn't a bass player or anyone else who wanted to play. Then I met Chris Thomas a year later. I had a great group of peers who were just amazing musicians. You need that reflection, I think. You know, no matter what you do, it helps to have someone who understands and can kind of get in on it with you.
Wally: Was it after college that you hooked up with Joshua Redman?
Brian: No, it was during college. He was in a band with a trombonist named Delfeayo Marsalis. Chris and I were playing with Victor Atkins, this other pianist, and Joshua was the saxophonist in that band. He was in school in Boston at the time. The band only stayed together for maybe a year or two and then we all went our separate ways. And then I guess when things sort of started for him, he kept in touch with me and we started going on the road quite a bit. But I think before that I started playing with this guy, this alto-saxophonist named Kenny Garrett, who played with Miles' band up until he passed. So, there were a lot of experiences then. Ellis Marsalis, who is my teacher there in New Orleans, I also started playing with him. Chris and I did.
Wally: Have you ever had any other type of job or have you always been able to make a living at music?
Brian: I worked at a record store in Shreveport. Yeah.
Wally: Great gig. Discount records for yourself.
Brian: Yeah! Old records. And then, briefly, while I was in college I worked at this little cafe on Decatur Street, you know, just bussing tables. More so to watch the band who was playing. It was like, you know, traditional jazz, New Orleans jazz, so it was so great. To be in the room, you know, six hours a night. We also played coffee shops for tips. Fortunately, the living was pretty easy. We didn't need much, so it was great, you know. I can't say that we were poor. I felt rich because every day was so full of stuff.
Wally: Was Joshua Redman the first recording that you did?
Brian: No, it would have been with one of my friends and teachers in New Orleans named Victor Goynes. A record called "Genesis," which would have been in 1991 or so. And I think I did the Kenny Garrett record a year later, 1992, maybe?
Wally: And then Joshua came along?
Brian: Yeah. He was making records already. I've been on three or four records now with Josh.
Wally: When did you hook up with Daniel Lanois?
Brian: That was while I was in New Orleans. Mark Howard, this amazing engineer friend, knew Dan. I guess he saw me at one of the coffee shops that we used to play at, and during that time "For the Beauty of Wynona," Dan's second record was just about to come out. And he was rehearsing to go on the road across the river in Algiers at a theater there and Mark invited me to come over and jam. So I met him and the bassist, Darryl Johnson, and we started jamming. And then we went on the road for four months. You know, we got to know each other on buses and vans across Europe, Canada and the States. So that's how I met Dan.
Wally: So you haven't actually recorded on any of his albums yet?
Brian: We've recorded quite a bit of music that has not been released. We're still working on a lot of his music.
Wally: I don't think he's had an album out since "Wynona," has he? A solo album, I mean?
Brian: The next one, hopefully, is around the corner. There's so much on tape. But I think he's making decisions and that sort of thing.
Wally: Well, he's riding high with Dylan's Time Out of Mind album winning all those Grammy's this year.
Brian: Oh yeah. It's great, you know.
Wally: What about Emmy Lou Harris? Where did you work with her?
Brian: Actually that was at the studio in New Orleans, Dan's place there. Dan got me in on that. I wish I'd have been able to be around for more of it, you know, but...
Wally: Was that for the "Wrecking Ball" album?
Brian: Exactly.
Wally: That is the best album. Such a wonderful record.
Brian: Yeah. She's so great, man. God, it was great to watch it all happen and to be around and watch the recording process. Because with jazz, it's quite different. It usually happens in one or two days, or three days at the most. It's funny, you rarely see things change so much as you do within other types of music.
Wally: I guess recording pop music consists of a lot of over dubbing and doing sort of the same thing over and over until they have it right.
Brian: Yeah.
Wally: Less spontaneous, maybe.
Brian: Yeah. I wish I could relate them both to some visual arts, you know, maybe like jazz kind of comes off as a sand painting, maybe, you know, you sort of, okay, that was it, we improvised and we don't want to alter it. But then, with Dan, it was almost like sculpting, you know. So it was a lot of chipping away and getting the right curve. So it was great.
Wally: So would you say that you play not just jazz drums, but you bring in funk, rhythm and blues and pop, and all the varied influences which you picked up during your youth?
Brian: It just kind of all boiled down to making music for me. I've been asked that a couple of times, like, "How do I approach things differently, you know, say with Joni or with, you know, playing instrumental music," -- I don't know, for me, I'm trying to serve the song, whatever the song might be.
Wally: Right. I've noticed you don't push your drums way up front like some drummers do. You don't try to take over. It's like sometimes you almost disappear. You're there, but it's so subtle.
Brian: Thank you. Thanks very much.
Wally: Now I've read that you met Joni at the 1995 New Orleans Jazz Fest?
Brian: Well, not really. We were talking on the phone for maybe six months to a year by that time. I was in LA, I think Dan and I were, recording. Dan knew I was in a band and I think he was going to go over and visit her and he took a tape of some things that we had been recording, you know, some of his music, over to her place as sort of a show and tell, like she'd play some things for him and she liked the tone of it, you know. But I had to go back to New Orleans. I couldn't stay. I was so mad. But I got back to New Orleans and then she called. I spoke to her on the phone for the first time and it was amazing, what was I going to say? I feel like I owed her this debt. But, anyway, we talked on the phone for like a year and then that New Orleans Jazz Fest came up and she was calling it her swan song at the time. And I thought "God, are you kidding?" But I couldn't be there for her, unfortunately. I was going on the road. But then she finally had me out to LA and we started recording. I think the first night I got there we put "Harlem in Havana" on tape. At that time it didn't have a name.
Wally: "Zulu Tango," I think she was calling it then.
Brian: Yeah. "Zulu Tango." It was just an instrumental. So it was great just to play.
Wally: So you actually started recording very quickly then. Do you see it as a collaborative thing?
Brian: Not in my eyes. I'm glad that she let me in on it, you know, because realistically she didn't -- it's kind of like her paintings, she doesn't need anyone to paint with her. I'm glad that she wanted me to be a part of it. Kind of part of the orchestration. That's the way I see it. Yeah, I still owe her. She's given to me and I hope I can give back something, maybe just playing for as long as she'll have me.
Wally: The first I became aware of you working with Joni was in November of 1995 when you went with her on a promotional trip to New York City?
Brian: Oh right. It was for a benefit.
Wally: The Gary Trudeau salute. Is that the one, at the Waldorf Astoria? A benefit for People for the American Way?
Brian: Exactly.
Wally: Do you have any memories of the event?
Brian: Well, I met Norman Lear there. I think he may have been the man who got Joni to be a part of it. I'm not sure. And Maya Angelou was there.
Wally: Oh, wonderful.
Brian: Yeah. I remember after the performance I was going up in the elevator and Chevy Chase was asking me questions about Elvin Jones. It was funny, you know. It was great that all these people, you know, were probably fans of Joni and music listeners. Because I've seen Chevy Chase in so many films.
Wally: And, of course, Saturday Night Live.
Brian: Yeah. The fact that he started talking about Elvin Jones to me was great. I was like, oh yeah, sure.
Wally: That was a short set, wasn't it? Just a few songs?
Brian: Yeah. I think we played "Hejira." We played "Three Great Stimulants." We maybe played "Moon At the Window." And "Just Like This Train." And the next day was her birthday...
Wally: And you played at the Fez.
Brian: Exactly. They invited Joni. They said if she wanted to play, she could. So we did it and it was so much fun. We played just song after song.
Wally: You know there's been a much-reported incident in the audience between Chrissie Hynde and Carly Simon. Were you aware of that?
Brian: Well, you know, I definitely could distinguish Chrissie's voice. She was saying things to Joni, you know, like "Rock, Joni!" But I didn't know there was some turbulent stuff happening between her and Carly.
Wally: I don't know if you've heard this story, but a few nights before the Fez show, Joni went to see The Pretenders show in NYC, and Chrissie, who was in a bad mood and complaining because all these women in her audience that night and the show before that in LA, were screaming out to her. And she said it was distracting. Yet there she was, a couple nights later, doing the same thing at Joni's show.
Brian: That's funny. Wow. I've become what I hate, you know. I don't know. It was all kind of going over my head. I was just so concerned with, okay, wow, okay, "Just Like This Train," okay, you know, I'm ready. What are we going to play next?
Wally: How much rehearsal did you have?
Brian: Well, we rehearsed up a few songs for the benefit that we had played the day before. But that was it. It wasn't a lot. We were just winging it. And she was going through her songs and I knew them all. But it was good to try and reinterpret what I thought I knew. I say I knew them all, but only because I have the records and I listen to all of them. What am I going to do if I have to play them live? That's another story. That never crossed my mind until that incident. It was so much fun, though.
Wally: I have the set list from that show, and one of the songs is referred to as "A Rocking Instrumental Work in Progress." Was that "Harlem in Havana?"
Brian: No, that was the roots of "Lead Balloon."
Wally: Oh. The song about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
Brian: Exactly.
Wally: I haven't heard that one yet.
Brian: She launched into it, then she just stopped and laughed. I think we played it for like, maybe, thirty seconds. It was still just an instrumental sketch. She didn't have any words or story to it yet.
Wally: It's so interesting when I hear that. Because Joni's words are so wonderful, better than anybody's in my opinion, I would think the words come first.
Brian: Well, in some instances they do. Like "Stay in Touch," for instance. Have you heard that off the record?
Wally: No, haven't heard that one yet.
Brian: Well, that's probably something that she wrote on paper first.
Wally: Then in early December you and Joni did some T.V.- CBS This Morning and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Do you remember those two shows?
Brian: Yeah. On CBS This Morning we played, I think, it was "Happiness is the Best Face Lift." You know, it was great because the audience, they were such great fans of Joni and it was a good feeling in the room. Especially for something that happened in the morning, because that's usually kind of a strange time for everyone.
Wally: I heard that they moved the taping ahead for Joni, so it was like at noon or something, wasn't it?
Brian: That was still early. (Laughs)
Wally: For Joni, yeah, that's true.
Brian: But it was good, you know. And the Leno show, I guess we only played one song.
Wally: Yeah, and I haven't heard that one since, "Love Has Many Faces."
Brian: Yeah, yeah. Just one song but I guess you know, every chance, every opportunity to play, is great.
Wally: And you all reached a big audience by appearing on the tube, of course.
Brian: Oh yeah. Hopefully, people were watching. It was nice just to be playing anytime we could, you know, for me.
Wally: I guess during all this time you were playing with her at home and recording?
Brian: We did it in chunks of time over a year, whenever she was able to because she's busy with just life. Just so much happening in her life. When I could come out to L.A., she'd schedule time. So it was great to not really be too rushed, so that new songs could come up.
Wally: Did you work together on creating any of the songs on the album?
Brian: No, no.
Wally: She had the basic tracks first?
Brian: Yeah, sure. The songs on my first trip there were "Zulu Tango," and I think we were playing "No Apologies." I can't remember if that had words already or not. But I think it was just an instrumental at the time as well.
Wally: And I guess she had "Love's Cries," or as she calls it now, "The Crazy Cries of Love."
Brian: Right. Don Freed. I think that's his words.
Wally: Yeah. He wrote all the verses and she did the chorus. That's a great track, by the way. I've heard five or six of the tracks because Joni appeared on Chris Douridas' "Morning Becomes Eclectic" radio show a couple of weeks ago and previewed some of the songs from the album.
Brian: Oh, yeah
Wally: You went with Joni to Stockholm where she received the Polar Music Prize. I understand you were on tour with Joshua at the time but you had the day off, so you flew in just for the day?
Brian: Absolutely, yeah.
Wally: How was that? I've seen some of it on video and it looks like it was a really wonderful tribute.
Brian: Yeah, it was a great day and I think just the whole idea of kingship, you know, the protocol and all that. She had to go through it, I didn't. I just sort of tooled in through the back door. I just wanted to be there for her. Stockholm was a beautiful city. One of the most enjoyable things, aside from the playing we did, was when we went over to Stig Anderson's place. He's an amazing songwriter. Are you familiar with him?
Wally: Oh, sure. ABBA and all that. He's dead now, I guess you know?
Brian: Really?
Wally: Yeah. He died within the last year.
Brian: That's right.
Wally: I think it was in September.
Brian: Wow, man, it was so bizarre, because I talk about me coming in the back door but they treated me beautifully. It was like because it was the music award, and the whole country was sort of acknowledging it. So I didn't even need a passport to come in. It was beautiful. They met me there and sort of made me feel special and just to know that I was going to see Joni was so great. But afterwards there was a party at Stigs. Everybody was all gussied up, tuxedos and the whole bit. And he was in the kitchen with me in his slippers. It was funny, you know, it was like, man, he didn't care. All these people in his house eating hotdogs or whatever and dressed up and he was just, like, chilled, you know. So it was fun. It was beautiful. Everybody was really open. And Pierre Boulez, he was honored as well. So I met some nice folk there on that trip.
Wally: And you and Joni performed two songs?
Brian: That was during the honorarium. I forget what songs we played. I think we played "The Train" and I can't remember what else. Maybe you remember better.
Wally: Yeah, I do. I have it written here. You did "The Magdalene Laundries" and "Just Like This Train."
Brian: Got heavy. Yeah, "Magdalene Laundries."
Wally: Joni always wants to do those light ones, right? (Laughs)
Brian: (Laughs) I love it, don't pull any punches. Great, you know. It was fun.
Wally: So Joni refers to you as her musical partner on "Taming the Tiger."
Brian: Wow.
Wally: She told me recently that you recorded your drums on all ten of the tracks, but in her final mixes she cut out the drums on five cuts.
Brian: Yeah.
Wally: I guess you've heard the final mixes by now?
Brian: Yeah, definitely. Mostly, the only one I was sort of upset about was "Stay in Touch." Ooh, I wanted to be on that one so bad. Because I felt great about what was happening. And usually I don't, usually I'm sort of, oh, man, am I even serving the song right here? But that was cool. You know, I totally trust her judgment on every level. And orchestral choices that she made, like the way the record flows -- and I love when she comes out so clearly, like alone, just a guitar and her voice. It's beautiful.
Wally: Oh, absolutely.
Brian: And I thought even if she took me off the whole thing, the experience would have still happened.
Wally: Joni told me that on "My Best to You," the old Sons of the Pioneers song, she took your drums off on at least the first part of the song. She said that they were played excellently, but they were too jazzy and took away from the emotion she wanted on that last tune.
Brian: Right.
Wally: As a matter of fact, she said, with the drums off, a few of her men friends have cried during the song.
Brian: Right, well, jeez, hopefully, if you're in on something, you don't eclipse it. So if that's what she felt, it's definitely important that it be taken off. I mean, that song "My Best to You," is definitely that sentiment. And it's needed so much now.
Wally: She said that people were coming up to her and saying, you know, "What are you writing?" and she'd tell them, "Well, I'm kind of blocked now. What can I write about?" And they usually told her, "Well, we want you to write about something hopeful." And she's like, "Well, you know, they shoot people who give hope."
Brian: Yeah, right. Well, somebody's got to be the messenger. I think she's definitely that.
Wally: So what do you think of the final mix for Taming the Tiger?
Brian: I love it. It's tightly banded, so the record moves. It's just a very little time between songs, and the story unfolds and you're at the end, and wanting to go back to the beginning. It's a beautiful and, I think, hopeful record. Of course, there are some heavy moments, too. "No Apologies" and things that are sad in reality, but then, also in reality there's a lot of joy.
Wally: And there's beauty in sadness, too.
Brian: Right. Exactly.
Wally: Or as Joni says, "There's comfort in melancholy."
Brian: Yeah, totally. But there's also a lot of laughing on there and, gosh, it's great.
Wally: I want to go through the ten tracks on TTT and have you tell me what your memories or impressions are of each of them. Let's start with "Lead Balloon."
Brian: "Lead Balloon." Wow. Joni's guitar playing on that one is really different from what people are accustomed to. And just the way it comes in, the first words are "Kiss my ass." So it's like, whew, it's going to be great to hear people's response to that song. Yeah, it was fun making that. We were sweating in the studio playing that song. It's funny. She was up dancing.
Wally: And how about "Crazy Cries of Love?"
Brian: Well, I was sort of the last element to come into that song. I think it was an older piece of music that she had maybe cut a year or so ago.
Wally: Yeah. I think she said she first cut it in 1994 with Wayne Shorter and Larry Klein.
Brian: Right. Well, Wayne's still on it, of course. And Klein. And she redid the vocal, I think. And then she wanted me to play on it. So, it was a little strange. I'd prefer to do things the way we did for "Harlem in Havana," just playing it live off the floor, just together. It helps me to feed from her energy, be right in the present, you know. But it came off okay. I love the story. You definitely get the image of lovers, so I love that.
Wally: It's a really great track. I think it's because of your drum work, actually, which makes it chug along.
Brian: I put the Union Pacific on it.
Wally: I think it could actually be a single. I mean, not that Joni needs a single, but...
Brian: I hear you.
Wally: Well she does need one, but, you know.
Brian: It would be nice for as many people as possible to get in on a lot or all of the songs. I know what you mean. Absolutely.
Wally: How about the song "Love Has Many Faces?"
Brian: That's killer, too, because we played that just live off the floor but, unfortunately, my drums aren't on that now. But it's so beautiful.
Wally: And of course there's always the live version from Jay Leno with you playing drums on it.
Brian: Oh, yeah, right. (Laughs) I think that's a hopeful song. Definitely makes you think.
Wally: It's amazing. "Happiness is the Best Facelift," or I guess she just calls it "Facelift" now. How about that one?
Brian: Oh, "Facelift." Well, I guess we all go through stuff with our parents. There's going to be tough times, you know. You're going to be butting heads sometimes, but it's heavy to document it as some piece of history. Wow, it's a great song. Probably a huge hurdle to overcome, I would think. In terms of a relationship with her mom. I think they're so tight now because Joni's like, you know, she's a mom. And a granny. So, it's like you get some of your own medicine there, kid. It's interesting.
Wally: How has finding her daughter, Kilauren and the extra gift of a grandson, changed Joni, do you think?
Brian: I don't know. It just definitely confirms the circle that we're in, you know, like this life. I mean, 30 years, that's a long time.
Wally: Yeah, it really is.
Brian: So I think it's given her quite a bit of light. I don't know how it has necessarily changed her, aside from the fact that it's definitely made her happy.
Wally: So maybe it's like a second facelift?
Brian: (Laughs) Yeah, exactly. Totally. Just, like happy.
Wally: Have you met Kilauren and Marlin?
Brian: Yeah, they're beautiful.
Wally: The next song is "Taming the Tiger." I don't think you're on that mix, are you?
Brian: On the song, "Taming the Tiger," unfortunately, I'm not.
Wally: That's a wonderful and witty song.
Brian: Yeah. I love that. For me, that sums up the record.
Wally: I like the way she kind of gently takes on the tiger, which represents, I guess, show business. And she goes, "be nice, kitty, kitty."
Brian: Yeah, terrific. "You can't tame the tiger." It's such a beautiful piece. I hope a lot of people get to hear that song.
Wally: That one and "Harlem in Havana" are my two favorites of the tracks I've heard. "Harlem in Havana," I mean, my God, it's got all those magical carnival sounds. It's so cinematic, it's almost like you're coming in in a helicopter and you get closer and closer, and first you hear the wooden planks with the roller coaster running over, then you hear the calliope, then you hear the crowds screaming.
Brian: Yeah. Well, man, when I arrived to play on that one, you know, Joni's kind of a night owl. I was fading when we were making that. When we were putting it on tape, I was like unconscious practically. Of all the things that she kept my drums on, I can't believe she's going to keep me on that. But once it was done, once she had orchestrated the whole thing, then the picture was clear to me. It wasn't before, but obviously her foresight is much more intense than mine, so she could see what was happening. Or maybe she didn't. Maybe she was discovering, too. But something in her gut told her that the drummer was okay on it. So, yeah, what a great story.
Wally: And it's jazzy again, for her.
Brian: That might be some of the best singing I've ever heard.
Wally: It is, you're right. The way she sings that line, "It's Harlem in Havana time."
Brian: Wow, man, there's so much swaying and, ooh, yeah, give on those lines. It's amazing. I love hearing that. And the curve of the range that she's covering. She comes in so high and she dips down so low. "Step right up," but then it's like, whew, it's so beautiful, man.
Wally: How about the song "No Apologies?"
Brian: We were talking about, I forget the tribe, they have like a whispering tradition, I forget what African group this is, but that song almost comes off as a whisper. As it should, in a way, because it's such heavy subject matter. You don't want to rub anybody the wrong way, just tell the story.
Wally: Now are you on that final mix?
Brian: Yeah, and, boy, that was so much fun to play. Wow. Yeah. It seems like my memory of it is almost as if it went down in like one time. I guess she did work on the vocal, but I think we did it all at one time. I don't know what else was put on to it in the final mix. Maybe Greg Leisz on petal steel. It went down so effortlessly.
Wally: I haven't had a chance to hear that one yet.
Brian: It's really kind of slow, you know, and languid. It's a beautiful piece of music.
Wally: How about "Stay in Touch?"
Brian: I love that piece of music, too. That was the one where the words came first.
Wally: That's the one where your drums were taken off and you wish they hadn't been, right?
Brian: Yeah. But, you know, I can understand that.
Wally: How about "Man from Mars?" Are you involved on that one?
Brian: Wow. Yeah, yeah. That's amazing because, well, maybe I should leave off the history for Joni to tell you herself, about how certain songs are born or written.
Wally: Well, she mentioned that it was written because her cat Nietzsche ran away.
Brian: Yeah. That's so heavy, you know, the things that she can put into words. That's what amazes me. And it means so much on a human level just hopefully, another aide for us, another helping hand to try and understand things. But, yeah, that was great. That's the one song she played piano on. It's not a guitar song. It was fun to put down to tape, too. She played it for me. Oh, man, talk about wishing I had a tape player in my sleeve or something. It was used in the film "Grace of My Heart." She wrote it for that. But, man, when she initially played it for me, she had a little Wurlitzer in her room and I think I had just gotten there. I forget, this was just another period of recording, and she played it for me, almost rubato, not really in time, just as it went down. Whew. It's like, okay, that's it, you know. It should have been on the record just like that. It was so heavy. So I wish I had taped that.
Wally: And the final mix on "Man From Mars" is so dense, I mean, there's so much happening on it.
Brian: Yeah. I think it's still got that float though, that I heard that first time that she played it for me by herself. The version on the record is great.
Wally: And the last song on the album is the old Sons the Pioneer Song, "My Best to You." Were you familiar with the Sons of the Pioneers?
Brian: Well, not really. She kind of introduced me to them. I know I'd heard them maybe in some movies or things like that. A cowboy song that makes you feel like there's still some moral code, you know. Hopefully, we haven't lost all of that wanting to wish people good.
Wally: Yeah, it's a nice song. I guess Joni's always thinking that maybe an album's going to be her last album, you know. If this one's going to be her last release, that song would be a very hopeful place to leave it, I think.
Brian: Wow, yeah.
Wally: Now, you're going to be accompanying Joni on her seven-date west coast tour this coming May. What are you thinking about that?
Brian: Well, it's going to be great. I'm totally excited. We're going to start rehearsing soon. We've been talking about songs. I'll throw in my two cents, "Ooh, let's do that." You know, I think she's doing a lot of practicing at home, now, by herself, and then once we all get together, it'll be so much fun.
Wally: Now, who from the Fellowship is going to be coming with you?
Brian: Well, unfortunately, some wrench fell in the machine, so only me, you know. I think Greg Leisz is playing pedal steel and guitar. And Larry Klein's going (Bass). It'll just be the four of us. Maybe it was more feasible for this short time, because there's seven members in the Fellowship. And, you know, it's a missed opportunity for me. I'd love to hear us interpret her music because we're our own little orchestra, that's the way I see it. And I think that's the way she hears things, the thick and thin of music, you know. We're capable of building quite a bit of texture and then also if need be, there's just me and her. It can be as sparse or thick as need be. But, maybe some shows with the Fellowship could happen in the not-so-distant future.
Wally: Well, if Joni has a picnic on these seven dates, maybe she'll want to do some more.
Brian: Yeah, I hope so, man. Hopefully, it will be okay traveling, you know.
Wally: I'm concerned, because she, you know, she's always talking about how her health can be affected by things like this and I hope she can handle it.
Brian: I don't think it'll be too strenuous.
Wally: Yeah, it's only ten days or so.
Brian: Yeah. I think it will be fine. Plus it'll be nice to see Bob and Van Morrison. Those two bands.
Wally: Joni will be sandwiched in the middle.
Brian: Yeah, rolling. So it will be fun.
Wally: So she'll be playing her VG-8, then?
Brian: Yeah. As far as I can tell at this point.
Wally: When do you start rehearsals?
Brian: Towards the end of this month.
Wally: Well, you know, I'm going to be following the tour in my role as web site reporter.
Brian: Alright! I'll talk to you anytime, if I can help you with any details.
Wally: Oh, thank you.
Brian: But it sounds like you've got it all covered.
Wally: Well, you know, I do have lots of contacts and I try to keep up on things. That's my job. Not my paid job, but my self-appointed job, you know, to get information to the fans. There's like 30,000 Joni fans who come to the site each month. So I feel like my job is to keep them informed on what's happening as quick as possible, you know, with her career and stuff. So I'll be there at every show. I've also invited Joni to talk to me during the tour if she'd like to give any reports to her fans.
Brian: Alright, Wally. On stage, here -- Wally!
Wally: This is going to be real exciting for me, Brian. This is like a dream come true.
Brian: Me, too, man. I'm with you, totally.
Wally: I really appreciate your talking with me today and we'll speak again soon.
Brian: Yeah. Thanks for calling. Bye.
Wally: Bye.
My thanks to Beverly Wolfe, David Sholemson and Brian Blade.
THE
MUSIC OF BRIAN BLADE: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF
RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS
WITH BRIAN BLADE:
