David Binney: Airplanes, Cities, Moods and Vibes

AAJ: This is, for you, a pretty short album—even with the bonus track that comes with the download. And I like that. But it's material that wouldn't work if it wasn't perfectly sequenced—some of the stuff wouldn't make sense if it wasn't right where it is on the record. Did you think about the sequencing much?

DB: Oh, yeah. That's always a big part of all my records. Records can be completely different if they're sequenced differently. I know from going over so many albums and putting sequences together in the computer and listening to them. They can be just so drastically different, even with the same material. So I've thought about it a lot, actually.

And as for it being short—see, I am actually a huge fan of short records, contrary to what you might think when you see so many of my records. What usually happens is that I have a lot of stuff that I really love, and I don't want to take it off the record. There's stuff that I just can't imagine not putting on the record. So a lot of my records become long because I really like what happened, which I guess is a good thing. But my initial ideas of most of the records are to make them short. Also, a lot of times I've had bigger ensembles, and when they're records with solos, and everyone's soloing, you can't help but have a long record.

AAJ: Yes, you get a lot of ten-minute tunes.

DB: Exactly. So this is a smaller ensemble, and there aren't so many set solos, and the record's shorter. And I like that. My very first record ever, this record called Point Game (Owl Records, 1991), was 39 minutes long. I liked it that length; it's what I grew up with, listening to LPs. I wouldn't release a record that's 77 minutes long unless I felt like it warranted that and was a good album. Like with South and some of those longer records, I don't feel when I listen to them that they're 77 minutes long. They don't feel that long to me, which is a key, because there are some records that I own that are that long, and they feel that long to me. You don't want that.

AAJ: Well, you never find out how the last couple of songs even go.

DB: Yeah [laughing], right. You never hear them. So I am a fan of short albums, ultimately. But even this new one that's coming out on Criss Cross ended up being long, I don't know how long—74 minutes, something like that—because it's a real blowing record and we really stretched out and just let it go. And I didn't want to cut some stuff; there's a lot of good stuff. Also, record labels—not necessarily my own, but certain record labels—want a certain amount of material. For those ACT records, if I were to have made short records, they would have requested more material. They did request more on, I think, Balance. I had had the idea of making a shorter record, and I made the record and presented it to them, and they actually said, "It's too short. We need it to be longer; there's not enough material. I had tons of material, so it's not like I didn't have it, and it's material I was proud of. I was just trying to make a shorter record with that album. So I ended up making that record longer by doing some edits with some of the free playing we did.

Actually, I have a whole other hour of free playing I did from the Balance sessions, and I made a record out of it in my apartment by myself where I actually played some guitar over parts, sang over parts, looped things. It's all using the improvisation, but things within that are looped. At some point, I'd like to release it on my site. It's just that I've had a steady stream of CDs coming out, and I don't want to compete with that. But I've have this record done for three or four years of free improvisation we did from the Balance material that I used and made into this record that I think is very cool. It's pretty unique; in a way, I was thinking of [John Coltrane's] Ascension (Impulse!, 1965) or something like that, where they just improvised, but putting it together in a modern way where, again, you take some of the themes that were stated in the improvisation and magnify them and build on them, orchestrate them. And that's what I did on this thing, and I think I'll put that out within the next year on my website.

AAJ: You'll have to call it Out of Balance. I suppose that already occurred to you.

DB: Yeah [laughing]. It didn't occur to me, but I think Queva [Lutz], the owner of the 55 Bar, called one of our nights there "Out of Balance, because the group's called Balance, and some of the guys couldn't make it. But I did that on that record Balance because people wanted more material. And I'm glad I did, because I liked what happened, but that's another reason why some of those records are long—labels don't necessarily want short records.

AAJ: I don't even understand the reasoning. I'm glad to have the material, because you're a prolific composer and the stuff is good. But it's odd for a label to want that—it's not like they're releasing the music on more than one CD, so they get more product to put out.

DB: I know. I don't really understand the logic. You know what it is? I think they want people to feel they got their money's worth. And to their credit, I have seen complaints from people, especially in the jazz world, where a record was short and they felt they didn't get their money's worth. Which is surprising to me; they're not judging the music, they're judging the quantity.

AAJ: Yeah, it's like, "Well, A Love Supreme (Impulse!, 1964) is okay, but it's so short—you don't get very much music.

DB: It doesn't make sense to me. But I've seen complaints like that. Even for my record Point Game, there were reviews like that. And it is very short, but it works that way. I think labels are confronted with that more than the artist is.

DB: I can't really ask you about your previous CD, Bastion of Sanity, which is a Criss Cross session that came out in 2005, good though it is. The interview would be 50 pages long. I do want to ask you about two other records—your recent duo CDs, Fiestas de Agosto, the 2005 Red Records album you did with pianist Edward Simon, and A Small Madness, the 2003 Auand set you made with drummer Jeff Hirshfield. I'm curious whether you approach playing in a duo setting differently than you do playing in larger ensembles.

DB: I think I probably approach it slightly differently. At this point in my career, or development, or whatever you want to call it, I sort of play the way I play. Which is, in a way, what an improviser is trying to get to. It wouldn't matter if it were a Wilco record, or a duo with Ed Simon; whatever I was doing, I would just play the way I play. The constraint would be how much time somebody would give me to solo, or whatever. I don't think of it as, say, "I'm going to play this way because it's a duo. But within that, you have to play differently as a saxophonist, because there are instruments that you usually play with that are missing. There are bass lines, let's say—things that I wouldn't be doing with a quartet that I'm doing in a duo situation. So in that sense, I'm playing differently, but as far as the solo and improvisation, it's really the same.

But I love those settings. And I've played for years with these guys. Actually, on both of those records, I manipulated things in my home studio after the fact. Especially the one with Hirshfield, and the funny thing is that I didn't tell Hirshfield I was doing it! I just wanted to surprise him, because I knew he'd be into it. So when I gave him the record, he just couldn't believe it, because we had been playing that material for years, but he'd never heard the material with the other parts added. When I wrote those pieces, I had actually written these other parts in there that we didn't do as a duo, because there were no other instruments. So I added them later in the studio, and he couldn't believe it. I remember him listening to it and laughing uncontrollably. He was stunned.

But that was just a completely live duo record that I added parts to, and I don't know if I think that much differently in that sort of situation. The goal of improvisation for me is to be emotional in some way and to convey something; that's all the same. I guess technically, there are differences.

AAJ: You're a very good composer, one of my favorites—and really a rather prolific one. If you add up all your compositions just from Welcome to Life to Out of Airplanes, that's a lot of songs. Are you always writing?

DB: It's funny—I'm not always writing. I've gone through phases where I wrote a lot. I have lots of material. Beyond the material I've released, I have way more sitting at home in my file cabinet or on my computer. I have so much material. I could not write for years and still release records. But it's somewhat of an addiction/outlet for me, because I need to do it sometimes. I just have an urge to do it, and I really have fun doing it. Usually at this point, it happens when I have a project looming and I realize I have to write for it. Then I get into that whole head and spend a certain amount of time writing for the project. I used to do it because I loved doing it and I had nothing else going on and I'd just lock myself in my room and write. Now it's for these projects, and I think about different people for whatever I'm writing for. If I'm writing for Brian Blade on drums, I think that way. Once in a while, I bring in songs that I just wrote for nobody in particular, and know that it'll work for a given group. But a lot of times now, I'm writing for specific people.

Right now I have two more records coming out. After Out of Airplanes, I have this new one on Criss Cross, Cities and Desire, which I'm really, really happy with. It's a blowing record that's really the best one yet. Then I have another one on Criss Cross that's coming out in January that's me and Ed Simon, with Scott Colley and Brian Blade and [vocalist] Luciana Souza. It's much more of a Latin-based record, and much more composed—though there's a lot of soloing on it. It's a lot cleaner than, let's say, the record that's coming out in September, which was really just going into the studio and playing like you'd play live. So I have things still down the pipe. I am coming up with new projects in my head, but I'm not in any sort of phase where I'm working towards anything yet. I'm just sort of trying to come up with the next thing. But once I do, I'll start writing. Right now, I'm not writing.

AAJ: Well, you've pretty much concluded this interview. I would be asking you now about upcoming projects, but you've beaten me to the question. Anything else?

DB: Not so much. I've had a steady, three-year period of constant traveling and recording, and now it's sort of all slowed. A lot of people are not working this summer in Europe, because things have changed over there drastically in terms of opportunities for us to play. Also, the World Cup killed a lot of tours. But there are some things coming up in the fall. I pretty much gave up on trying to book my band for the rest of the year because it was becoming hard to do—I was so busy, I couldn't give it the time, and I also just thought, "I'm fine for the rest of the year. I'd really like to have the time to sit around and come up with new projects, compose, practice. I'm studying Indian music now with [tabla player] Samir Chatterjee in Queens, learning the rhythms. It's the first time I've studied in 20 some-odd years, so I'm just doing that. Next year, with all these other records released, I think I'll be touring a lot with different things. But I'm sort of taking the rest of the year off from that and trying to come up with the next project.

Selected Discography

David Binney, Cities and Desire (Criss Cross, 2006)

David Binney, Out of Airplanes (Mythology, 2006)

Joel Harrison, Harrison on Harrison: Jazz Explorations of George Harrison (HighNote, 2005)

David Binney, Bastion of Sanity (Criss Cross, 2005)

Edward Simon & David Binney, Fiestas de Agosto (Red Records, 2005)

David Binney, Welcome to Life (Mythology, 2004)

Alex Sipiagin Sextet, Equilibrium (Criss Cross, 2004)

Joel Harrison with David Binney, So Long 2nd Street: Free Country II (ACT, 2004)

David Binney/Jeff Hershfield, A Small Madness (Auaud, 2003)

Donny McCaslin, The Way Through (Arabesque, 2003)

Jazzhole, Circle of the Sun (Beave Records, 2003)

Joel Harrison, Free Country (ACT, 2003)

David Binney, Balance (ACT, 2002)

David Binney/Edward Simon, Afinidad (Red Records, 2001)

David Binney, South (ACT, 2001)

Fima Ephron, Soul Machine (Tzadik, 2001)

Lan Xang, Hidden Gardens (Naxos Jazz, 2000)

Matthew Garrison, Matthew Garrison (GJP, 2000)

David Gilmore, Ritualism (Kashka Music, 2000)

David Binney, Free to Dream (Mythology, 1999

Drew Gress' Jagged Sky, Heyday (Soul Note, 1998)

Scott Colley, Portable Universe (Freelance, 1998)

Lan Xang, Lan Xang (Mythology, 1998)

Lost Tribe, Many Lifetimes (Arabesque, 1998)

Edward Simon, La Bikina (Mythology, 1998)

David Binney, The Luxury of Guessing (Audioquest, 1995)

Jazzhole, And the Feeling Goes Round (Mesa-Bluemoon, 1995)

Medeski Martin & Wood, It's a Jungle in Here (Grammavision, 1994)

Lost Tribe, Soulfish (Windham Hill/High Street, 1994)

Virgil Moorefield, Distractions on the Way to the King's Party (Cuneiform, 1994)

Lost Tribe, Lost Tribe (Windham Hill, 1993)

David Binney, Point Game (Owl Records/Mesa-Bluemoon, 1991)

Photo Credit

Courtesy of David Binney

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