Dan Krimm: Second Wind

Dan Krimm is hardly the first artist to find inspiration in the bounteous beauty of Marin County, but in composing, recording and designing Second Wind he's crafted a musical sojourn equally fueled by locally sourced creativity. Since moving to San Rafael in 2016, he's reimmersed himself in music after several years focusing on other pursuits. With Second Wind, he's reintroducing himself as a fretless bassist, bandleader, and composer with a gift for honing singing melodic lines. And he's keeping excellent company.

The quartet features veteran Santa Rosa reed expert Rob Sudduth on soprano saxophone. A highly versatile musician with extensive experience playing blues, jazz, rock and pop, he's been most visible on the Bay Area scene in recent years working with an array of cutting edge improvisers. Krimm's music, composed with the soprano sax in his ear, soars with Sudduth's lithe lyricism.

On piano, he reconvenes with El Cerrito-based Gary Monheit, an intermittent collaborator since they met as college students at Princeton in the mid-1970s and continued to perform together in New York City in the '80s. Most recently, they recorded the luscious 2016 session New Shoots (which features special guest Scott Amendola on drums). For Second Wind, Krimm reconnected with drummer Grant Jarrett, who played on his 1986 debut album Sentience (which also featured Monheit). He was active on the scene for many years and reconnected with Krimm after settling in Marin a few years ago. They've all come a long way since those fusion-soaked years when Jaco Pastorius's revelatory bass work was still shaking up the scene.

Not long after Sentience, Krimm moved to a five-string instrument that extended his range as a lead voice, though he composes mostly on nylon string guitar. "Once in a while I get restless and something pops out as a composer," he says. "I start out with a chord progression and layer melody on top, from humming or whistling. It's a very human, melodic style of creation."

He convened the quartet at Sausalito's Studio D and worked closely with veteran audio wizard Joel Jaffe. A co-founder of the studio, he's known for engineering albums by heavyweights such as Santana, Bonnie Raitt, Van Morrison, Kirk Franklin, Roy Rogers, and Maria Muldaur. "I wanted to record at a top-shelf studio, and D may be the top in Marin," Krimm says. "Wearing my producer hat, Joel and I were a close-knit team when we got to the editing/mixing stage."

While the album isn't a suite, Krimm cannily sequenced the tracks to suggest a narrative arc, a trajectory that mostly follows the chronology in which he composed the pieces. Second Wind opens with "Cirrus," a deliberate, mind-clearing soundscape built on an inviting piano ostinato. Inspired partly by the great British jazz trio Azimuth's crystalline ECM recordings, Krimm takes the first solo, a gentle excursion that displays his warm, sumptuous tone.

From the lulling breeze of "Cirrus" the pace picks up on the jazz waltz "Seeking," a buoyant, confidently grooving piece that evokes a spirit of exploration and optimism. The rhythm's lilting spiral feels like an invitation to dance, an opportunity that Monheit makes his own. The mood shifts from playful to resolute with "The Journey Ahead," which brings a sense of determination and curiosity as the music ventures into the forests. There are traces of Keith Jarrett's widely influential European Quartet in the ambiguous harmonic terrain and the supple straight-eighths pulse, but ultimately the tune sounds like the next piece of Krimm's expedition.

The album's title track comes out on the other side of the adventure, eager, refreshed and ready to ramble. Jarrett's crisp cymbal work, a key sonic thread running through the album, keeps the action taut and springy. Delivering the vibe its title suggests, "Gentle" offers a moment of reflection. A tender ballad-like vehicle for Krimm's supple bass, it's an invitation to gaze inwards while preparing for the next step.

Connecting with the 3/4 meter of "Seeking," the album concludes with the 6/8 thrill-ride "Vision Quest," delivering the big climax that Krimm has been building toward. Locking in with Monheit's two-handed syncopation, he propels the intoxicating swirl of a groove with bounding confidence. More than satisfying, the journey ends with a sense of completion. It's a second wind from an artist who has rekindled his muse in Marin.

"For me, it's a restart after several years of not being out there," Krimm says. "It was time to get the music happening again. It's been so inspiring to connect with artists of all kinds here, and I hope the music reflects that."

-Andrew Gilbert