By Mike Brannon
Even if you've listened to jazz for awhile you might not have heard of Adam
Levy,
but you likely will, either through his higher profile efforts, including
work with Tracy Chapman, Joey Baron, Sex Mob, John Zorn and now the latest
Bluenote sensation, singer/pianist, Norah Jones. Though Bill Frisell, Brian
Blade and Kenny Wolleson along with Levy, joined the Dallas native on her
first major release, Levy is doing the tours, adding to her evocative voice
and lyrics with a bluesy and decidedly minimalist, textural style.
Just back from a European tour with Jones' group to promote her Bluenote
release,
"Come Away with Me" and currently making the rounds of the late night network
shows ("Conan", "Late, Late Show" etc) and SXSW showcases, the future seems
to hold a lot of promise for this group. Levy has a lot to say both about
this point in his career, creativity, recording his latest CD and music in
general.
AAJ: After listening to "Buttermilk Channel" I had to say that besides the
obvious
Frisell influence, I swear I heard Larry Carlton, too. It's a great record,
too. Real
bluesy, Hammond trio stuff but in a modern way.
AL: Glad you picked up on the Carlton thing. I *loved* him as a kid,
hearing him on the Crusaders records and on Steely Dan stuff. Everybody
busts me for the Frisell influence -- which I can't deny -- but I *hope*
there's more to my playing than just being a Frisell stylist. If you hear me
on Joey's disc and/or the Dunn record, you'll find some other things in my
playing, I'm sure. Sometimes I think of 'Buttermilk Channel' as my "homage
record", with nods to Frisell, Scofield, Strayhorn and Carla Bley. Having
made that type of artistic statement, I'm looking forward to defining my own
concept more and more clearly with each future effort. Whatever, it's all
good.
AAJ: Yeah, I can hear the influences...making records is a real personal
journey of self discovery. Lost Wax, your publishing company, is an
intriguing name...how'd it come about?
AL: The short answer is that the name came to me in a dream -- really.
About 10 years ago, while living in San Francisco, I was heading my first
jazz group as a composer/leader. I wanted to name it something more
interesting than the Adam Levy Quartet, and wracked my brain for weeks,
trying to find a name. One early morn, my eyes popped open suddenly, and I
exclaimed to my girlfriend, "I've got it! Lost Wax Process!" She approved,
and we went back to sleep. The band only lasted a couple of years, but I've
retained the name Lost Wax Music for my record label and for publishing.
AAJ: Sounds like intuition was at work.
AL: I do think there's something about the ancient art of lost-wax casting
that is similar to the musical process, in the way that a composition is the
"cast" or "mold" into which you can pour improvisation, but I never took the
metaphor too literally. (There's a pretty good explanation of the lost wax
method at http://users.lanminds.com/~drewid/Lost_Wax_Casting.html if you want
to check it out.)
AAJ: That's interesting. I like the metaphors that like the wax process is a
process to develop our sounds and styles over time; that it can't necessarily
be done quickly and that we have to burn away what we are to become what we
are yet to be. It's a process. Are you involved in arts other than music?
AL: No, I'm not involved in any arts other than music (unless you count
"bullshit artist").
AAJ: (laughs). Buttermilk Channel's another curious name. Any reference to
amp and guitar tones?
AL: Yes -- and no. I'm like names that are somehow evocative but not
limiting in
their interpretation. Buttermilk Channel is the name of a body of water
between Red Hook (a Brooklyn, New York neighborhood) and Governor's Island. I
don't even think they call the channel Buttermilk Channel anymore -- this is
from ages ago, when Walt Whitman lived in Brooklyn. Around the time I was
writing music for the album that became 'Buttermilk Channel', I had just
moved to Red Hook. In trying to get to know my neighborhood, I found some
old nautical maps online. As soon as I saw the name, I knew it would be the
title of my album. It represents something specific, but most people don't
know the history of New York waterways, so they come up with all sorts of
wild ideas for the title's meaning. It gets people's imaginations going, and
I like that.
AAJ: For sure. I tend to do the same thing (multiple entendre for song/album
titles). Sounds like all the stories people came up with for "Rikki Don't
Lose that Number" that were all wrong. What's interesting is that once you
use a term, name or reference in a new way it retains that new association
for others, sometimes even getting used as a new phrase. What are your
current gear preferences?
AL: Guitars: 1972 Fender Telecaster, 1979 Gibson ES-335, 1964 Martin 0-18,
1964 Gibson LG-0.
Amps: 1968 Fender Princeton Reverb for live shows, 1964 Fender Princeton
(without reverb) for recording.
Effects: MXR Distortion+ (distortion/overdrive pedal), Danelectro Tuna Melt
(tremolo pedal). I only use the Tuna Melt when touring, in case the "rental
amp du jour" doesn't have a good built-in tremolo; my Princeton amps have
nice tremolo.
Picks: Fender heavy-gauge picks.
Slide: Dunlop model 222 brass slide.
Strings: D'Addario XL115 strings (.011-.049) for electric, Martin Marquis
80/20 Bronze light-gauge (.012-.052) for acoustic.
AAJ: I'm sure you hear this a lot but you've got a bit of a Frisell
sound/approach and that clean channel, blues thing happening.
AL: I first saw Bill Frisell in Santa Monica, in 1989, when a friend called
one night and asked if I wanted to go see Frisell with him that night. This
was about an hour before the show, so I think this guy's girlfriend must've
canceled on him or something. Anyway, I was totally blown away by Bill
Frisell and by his band -- Joey Baron, Kermit Driscoll, Hank Roberts.
Having been born in 1966, I had no real chance of seeing Jimi Hendrix play,
but when I saw Bill, I thought that the experience was the equivalent of
seeing Hendrix and the Band of Gypsys, in the sense of how totally
revolutionary it was. His approach was so different from anything I had ever
heard. My main jazz guys at that point were probably Joe Pass, Larry
Carlton, and John Scofield.
I loved -- and still love -- his ethereal legato phrasing, his use of open
strings ringing against fretted notes, his unique wiggle-the-guitar-neck
vibrato, and other unorthodox techniques -- not to mention his ingenious note
choices.
AAJ: Right. I remember the first time I heard Bill. It was in Cambridge, MA
at Johnathan Swifts and he was with Eberhard Weber's group. What really
struck me was how unguitaristically he approached the instrument...it was
much more textural
with the volume pedal, bent neck, whammy bar, delays etc. He didn't try to
blow in a chops sense but added so much dimension with just those voicings
and the right held note at the right time. Almost transcends the horn-like
quality guitarists often go for. A very original voice.
AL: Also, he has usually emphasized guitar timbres that are more clean and
spacious, which I've always been partial to. A few years before I heard
Bill, I had a copy of Brian Eno's 'Apollo', with Daniel Lanois on guitar.
Lanois' tones chime and echo beautifully on that record, and I listened to
'Apollo' hundreds of times, mesmerized by the beauty of it. Frisell melded
those shimmering tones with the harmonically adventurous compositions I was
digging elsewhere -- from Scofield, Stern, and early Carlton -- so I was
hooked.
AAJ: Yeah. Amen to the invention of the Digital delay and analog chorus.
Seems like a lot of guitarists were all searching for a more ethereal,
evocative, tonal presence ... more like vocals or horns...and we've ended up
w/ some great but very different proponents: Metheny, Stern, Frisell, Sco,
Carlton, Holdsworth etc. Goldings and Wolleson are great support. What made
you choose them for this and can you discuss the making of that CD?
AL: I first met Kenny Wollesen when I moved from Los Angeles to San
Francisco in
1989. By the time I made 'Buttermilk,' he and I had been playing together for
more than a decade, and had both been in New York for a few years already.
He was the obvious choice for my album, because I knew how subtle he can be.
In many ways, I'd say he approaches the drum set more like a percussionist
than a drummer.
I wanted to make a mellow organ-trio record, which is a pretty novel idea.
Before recording 'Buttermilk Channel,' I had been listening obsessively to
Jimmy Smith's 'Standards' (Blue Note), which is all ballads, and that was a
big inspiration for me. Donald Bailey played drums on that album, and Donald
is one of Kenny's favorite players, so it all added up.
I had known Larry for a few years before we recorded 'Buttermilk Channel,'
but we had seldom played together. We'd hang out and go hear music together
in New York, but rarely gigged. Still, I was very familiar with his playing
-- on Scofield's 'Hand Jive' (Blue Note) and on Larry's own CDs. I was
particularly knocked out by a piano-trio record he made with Paul Motian and
Larry Grenadier, called 'Awareness' (Warner Bros.). Wow! Along with that
Jimmy Smith CD, 'Awareness' was inspiring to me when I was first formulating
my ideas for my own album. Another CD worth mentioning here is Wayne
Horvitz's 'American Bandstand' (Songlines). What 'American Bandstand' and
'Awareness' have in common is an introspective mood, subtle interplay -- as
opposed to just solo, solo, solo) -- and wondrous compositions. That was the
target I was aiming for, with a little more emphasis on the blues feeling
that I heard on the Jimmy Smith disc. By the way, Kenny Burrell is the
guitarist on 'Standards,' and it's my favorite recording he has ever done.
One downside to working with super-talented players like Kenny Wollesen and
Larry Goldings is that they tend to be in high demand, so it was nearly
impossible to find a day that they were both in town and available to record.
Once I did nail down a date, everything really had to happen on that date.
We couldn't come back the next day to fix things, because Larry was leaving
to go on the road with Michael Brecker and Kenny was busy, too. It'd be
another three months before we could get together again. No problem, I
figured -- we could nail the music in one day. But at around
5:30 in the afternoon, after four or five hours of recording, the engineer
noticed that there was a technical problem that spoiled all of the music we
had recorded so far. We already had good takes of everything, or so we
thought, but now we'd have to start over from scratch and record the whole
album in the remaining hours of the night with much of our energies already
spent. Yikes! I figured my record was ruined. But the three of us went out
to dinner, shared a bottle of wine, came back to the studio, and knocked out
the whole record in a few hours -- with just one or two takes of each song.
That's the upside to working with great players. They don't lose
their cool easily, and they can play their best under almost any circumstance.
AAJ: Man, that's tense. It's a drag to have a glitch wipe work so that it
can't be
used. Hope they comped you there. It's good that you were able to make the
best of it and make it happen anyway. What about the "Killer Joey" disc and
gigs with Joey Baron?
AL: I played with Joey's band for a while, around 1999. Steve Cardenas was
the
other guitarist, and Tony Scherr played bass. Playing with another guitarist
-- especially Steve, who I've known since 1990 -- made me get very clear
about my own musical identity. Because after Steve would play a kick-ass
solo, I'd have to follow him with my solo and play something fresh. Since he
and I have a lot of the same influences, and were both playing the same kind
of guitars (Gibson Es-335s) at the time, we both had to deal with identity
issues. "Who am I?" "What do I sound like?" It was a pretty heavy growth
period for me.
Joey is one of the greatest drummers alive, and he's also an inspiring band
leader. He thinks about all of the aspects of group interplay and
improvisation, and talks about it with the players. He has a very clear idea
of what he wants, while still giving the players lots of room to do their
thing. As a sideman, I appreciate his clarity and direction. When a leader
has good ideas and can communicate them clearly, I actually feel freer,
because I don't have to spend time and energy worrying about whether or not
I'm playing the right stuff. Once Joey spelled out the things he
wanted to hear from us -- musically and sound-wise -- we could focus on
making good music together.
I started playing a different guitar because of my experience in Killer Joey.
After we had played a few gigs, Joey asked me and Steve if we could find a
way to sound less alike. For a gig or two, my Gibson was stuck in the repair
shop, so I borrowed a Telecaster for a rehearsal with Killer Joey. Right
away, it was clear that the band sounded more like what Joey had in mind. I
stuck with it, and now I play a Tele more often than not. I've had a few of
them. The main one I use is a 1972 Telecaster. Still, I've had my Gibson
ES-335 since my Bar Mitzvah in 1979, so that guitar will always feel like
"home" to me.
AAJ: Some of your higher profile gigs include: Tracy Chapman, Zorn, Baron, Sex
Mob, and now Norah Jones. Can you talk a bit about how each came about for
you and how they differ?
AL: The Tracy Chapman connection came about when I was recommended for the
gig by a friend. I auditioned, never dreaming I'd get the gig. But I did.
I played with her for a year, 1994-5, and am featured on her 'New Beginning'
album.
I've only played with Zorn once or twice -- on his improv nights at a club
called Tonic, in New York City. I met him just by being on the scene in New
York. In many ways, NYC is a small town, so you get to know the people in
your scene pretty quickly. Zorn's improv nights are interesting. He calls
several people to show up for the gig, with no advance planning. Then the
players sit at the side of the stage while a duo or trio plays an improvised
piece. When the mini-group onstage finishes, two or three other people
follow immediately. The pairings keep mixing and changing, so everybody gets
to play with everyone else in some combination. It's really fun, and
challenging. You never know who you'll be playing with, or where the music
will go.
I met Sex Mob the same way as I met Zorn -- just being on the scene. For a
while in 1997, Sex Mob had a steady gig at the Knitting Factory. I was
hanging out there a lot, and Steven Bernstein, the band's leader/trumpeter,
knew of me through mutual friends. He asked me to sit in one week, and the
music felt good. He kept inviting me back, and when they made their first
CD, 'Din of Inequity' (Columbia), he invited me to play on a few songs. I
think that was the first recording I did in New York.
I met Norah three years ago in a bar, in New York City, when she first came
to New York from Dallas, Texas. We had some friends in common, we had
musical interests in common, and we clicked together nicely. We've been
playing together ever since -- except for a year from summer 2000 to summer
'01, when I was living in San Francisco.
AAJ: I saw the Late Late Show appearance with Norah. She sounds really great,
really different.
AL: Norah's music is from a classic mold -- with elements of jazz, folk,
blues, and
country -- but the way she blends it all is totally original. It can sound
familiar and new at the same time. She's a really gifted pianist and singer,
and people tend to go crazy about her when they hear and see her. In just a
few short years, she went from singing in New York nightclubs to a major deal
with Blue Note Records, and now we're touring and doing television shows, and
there has been lots of magazine coverage. Things are really blowing up
quickly for her. Before making her own album, you might have heard her on
Charlie Hunter's recent Songs from the Analog Playground (Blue Note).
AAJ: Frisell's on her new record with you, Brian Blade and Wolleson. Were you
all in the studio together or was it different sessions?
AL: Different sessions for me and Frisell, I'm sorry to say. Brian Blade
and I
played together on "Nightingale" and maybe one or two others. He's amazing!
I
had never played with him before. Kenny and weren't together for these
sessions. For most of my time in the studio with Norah Jones, the musicians
present were Norah, me, Jesse Harris (acoustic guitar), Lee Alexander (bass),
and Dan Rieser (drums). Guests while I was there included Sam Yahel (Hammond
organ), Jenny Scheinman (violin), and Rob Burger (pump organ).
AAJ: What's your approach to writing?
AL: Usually I sit down with my guitar, my metronome, and my little $39 Radio
Shack cassette recorder. I'll set a tempo on the metronome and improvise in
time, recording the whole session on a 60-minute tape. Usually within the
first half-hour or so, I'm onto the seed of something, and by the time the
tape runs out I've got a song done -- or nearly done. This is not the most
scientific way to compose, I know, but it's tried and true for me.
AAJ: What's your background...education... who did you study with?
AL: In my teenage years, I studied guitar privately with Ted Greene, the Los
Angeles jazz-guitar guru, and with Jimmy Wyble -- an underrated player who
worked with Red Norvo and with Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys. Their
teaching styles are so different, as are their playing styles. Jimmy had me
working on very specific exercises for my right and left hands, and these
weren't just mechanical workouts -- he paired rich musical contents with the
knuckle-twisting fingerboard gymnastics. He also stretched my ears with his
chromatic counterpoint etudes. Ted, on the other had, mainly had me work
with his solo-guitar arrangements of jazz standards, and also talked a lot
about using blues phrasing within jazz improvisation. I remember one lesson
with Ted where all we did was listen to Billy Butler's solo from Bill
Doggett's recording of "Honky Tonk" over and over, and then talked about the
structure and phrasing of it. What a lesson!
I also went to the Dick Grove School of Music in Los Angeles. I went through
their guitar program and their composing/arranging program -- both of which
were one-year long and were excellent. The school has since gone out of
business, unfortunately.
AAJ: Who are your main Influences?
AL: On the jazz side, my teachers, Jimmy Wyble and Ted Greene, were hugely
influential, because these guys were the first great guitar players I ever
had the opportunity to see and hear up close. My sense of what jazz guitar
sounds like comes largely from my early experiences with them. I was also
into Joe Pass' solo recordings back then, and Larry Carlton's first couple of
records. Later, I went through phases when I was nuts about John Scofield,
then Bill Frisell, then Jim Hall.
On the blues side of what I do, B.B. King is probably the strongest
influence. If you listen to my solo on Tracy Chapman's "Give Me One Reason,"
you can hear lots of B.B. I also love Albert King, though I don't think I
sound much like him. Also, I really dig Steve Cropper's work with Booker T.
& the MGs. He wrote the book on Memphis soul guitar. Also great in that bag
is Teenie Hodges, who played on all the classic Al Green records.
AAJ: Cool. What are you listening to these days?
AL: A lot of older stuff -- Big Bill Broonzy 'Sings Folk Songs'
(Smithsonian), Etta James 'At Last' (Chess), George Harrison 'All Things Must
Pass' (Capitol), Doc Watson 'The Best Of' (Vanguard), and a Tom Waits live
bootleg from 1974. I also just picked up the new John Abercrombie -- 'Cat
'n' Mouse' (ECM) -- with Joey Baron and Mark Feldman on it. I can't wait to
check it out.
AAJ: Yeah, ECM sent it to me last month, it's real interesting. What are you
current and upcoming projects...anything you'd like to talk about?
AL: I'm pretty busy touring with Norah Jones. Her record seems to be taking
off, and I enjoy working with her, so I'm blocking out most of this year to
tour with her. She's such an inspiring singer and pianist, and she's got
lots of great material.
I recently played on violinist Jenny Scheinman's next record, which will be
coming out soon on John Zorn's Tzadik label. The band includes Kenny
Wollesen on drums, Trevor Dunn on bass for half of the album and Greg Cohen
on bass for the rest, and Russ Johnson on trumpet. I heard the rough mixes,
and it sounds great. Jenny's an interesting composer, and I think I got to
play some things on her record that are unusual for me.
I'm planning my next record, which I'll record later this year. I can't say
much about it, because I've only got a few songs written. But I do have a
concept in mind, with Memphis soul music being the backbone of the sound for
the album. I may even record it down there.
I've been playing some concerts in tandem with other guitarists -- Leni
Stern, Will Bernard, and Jim Campilongo. On these shows, each of us does our
own segments, and then we mix it up a little together. I'm playing my
segments solo, on acoustic guitar. Scary! If these concerts go well, I may
make a solo-acoustic recording sometime soon.
AAJ: Very nice. Leni's great. Looking forward to the new releases.
AL: Good luck with your recording.
AAJ: Thanks, and all the best to you, too, Adam.
Mike Brannon is guitarist/writer for the Synergy Group. The latest release is
"Barcodes" w/ Trey Gunn of King Crimson and Jeff Coffin of the Grammy-winning
Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. Synergy's followup, "Later", w/ special
guests, Harvie Swartz, Paul Wertico and others will be released in late '02.
