Hamid Drake, William Parker and "Freedom"

I've been in love with the drum/bass tandem of Hamid Drake and William Parker since I was a teenager. My family lived close to the Metro North train in CT and my parents were kind and trusting enough to allow me to travel with friends into the City starting when I was about 16 In the early '90s. I didn't really know much about "free jazz,"--this was before the Web y'all--but my teen angst felt empowered when I heard a tenor sax wail and as soon as one of my teachers told me "that's not 'real jazz'" I knew I had found a sound. I heard about the Knitting Factory, then located on Leonard St in Tribecca, and from the first time I ventured into it's sub-sub-basement space, I was hooked.

My fellow adventurers and I saw some stuff! And mostly by accident. I remember hearing a young Cindy Blackman-Santana with Pharaoh Sanders and even more I recall Charles Gayle's cacophonous opening set; I had simply never heard anything of the sort. I saw John Zorn several times in various configurations, and Sex Mob with John Medeski guesting performing on the tiny stage in the bar, long before I knew who any of them were. I was just an excited teenager with big ears and a beer (gotta fulfill that drink minimum, this was pre-Giuliani lockdown!) who stumbled into an artistic renaissance.

I was particularly moved by William Parker however. I felt then, as I do now, that he musics without walls; he plays truly "free" in the sense that anything is possible. Anything I've ever seen or heard of his lacks all pretense, he just connects to the master vibration and rides. If he departs this earth by becoming a ball of light on stage one day, I will not be surprised.

In tandem, Parker and Drake are among the great dynamic duos such as Dannie Richmond/Charles Mingus or Sly & Robbie. From moments of unison to times in which they seem to pull at opposite ends of the universe's fabric, they are complimenting one another. Love and joy radiate from everything they do. Their output is massive. A couple of recordings that have moved me are Scrapbook, a violin trio with Billy Bang and O'neal's Porch.

I rarely have the opportunity to see music like this these days, but some higher power sent this set to my news feed recently. Last night when I improvised, in a dramatically different setting, I was overwhelmed (in a good way) by how much 40 minutes of watching Mr. Drake had influenced me. Here are some ways In particular with ways that I might practice developing them:

• Time! In this setting Drake is playing what many people would refer to as "free," but there is a deep pulse embedded in the performance. It's malleable, but he and Parker are on a shared wavelength.
• Try setting a metronome to any tempo you choose but only put a sound on beat one. How many ways can you get from 1 to 1 (or over a few bars and to one again)?
• Think of a time table, i.e. whole notes, dotted half notes, half notes, quarters, quarter note triplets, etc
• try playing these note groupings with this slow pulse, then try orchestrating them around the drums
• Once you're comfortable with the individual note groupings, begin to mix them
• Non-idiomatic drumming
• Drake plays "pocket" for much of this set, but he doesn't do it with the hi-hat/ride and snare or a "beat." How can you articulate time without falling into expected orchestrations and patterns?
• Space!
• If you're playing with strong musicians, you needn't hold them up by enforcing time. Notice in this performance how much space Drake leaves between phrases and how much he trusts Bluiett and Parker.
• Phrasing / Melodies
• This is a combination of all of the above, but if you wish to play time with non-idiomatic beats and to include space, you arrive at melodies. Have you ever attempted to learn the melody to a song on the drum set? In drumming "linear" tends to be used in reference to fusion beats, but a single-note melody is also a linear approach to drumming. Give it a whirl. Trying breathing in between phrases like a sax player would. It's rewarding. 
• Colors
• Different sticks, bare hands, the sides and tops of the drums; with Drake seated behind it this 4-piece kit with 2 cymbals is a source of infinite sound. You don't really need that new splash with holes in it from Guitar Center, you just need to find more sounds in the gear you already have. 

Jam Cruise Wrap Up!

Last week I spent five days aboard the MSC Divina, a classic, oversized luxury cruise ship (or as my son innocently put it, “oh it’s like the Titantic”) repurposed as the floating music festival called JamCruise. It was something, that’s for sure.

I was on board as a member of Zach Deputy’s band. Zach is well established but as a solo artist; we were a (pleasant, I think) surprise to most. We performed three times. Once as guests along with Zach’s looping rig, once at a Positive Legacy fundraiser on the beach in Costa Maya, Mexico (we also hosted Paul from Greensky Bluegrass and Scott Pemberton on this one, both incredible players), and once in full-volume regalia on the ship’s pool deck. The whole ZD band, as well as Todd Stoops, Mike Dillon and members of San Francisco’s Con Brio also teamed up with Thievery Corporation’s Ashish Vyas and Jeff Franca for the Sunday afternoon “Reggae Brunch” on the pool deck.

I’ve done quite a bit of double drumming over the years—you know, the whole Mickey and Billy shtick—so I guess I was a natural pick to play support for the great Bernard Purdie’s Jazz Lounge set. You may know Purdie from his years with Aretha Franklin, or all those Steely Dan tracks he blessed. Or maybe you love his Purdie Shuffle video (don’t we all?).  I also know him for having one of the two greatest approaches to combining jazz and funk on about 10,000 Prestige Hammond organ albums back in the day, including his solo albums and perhaps the best music video ever made (R.I.P. Idris Muhammad, your beats are forever too). Purdie wanted a second drummer to hold it down in case the solos got long and, of course, so he could get up front on the mic and hold court a bit. During the set I played behind Fred Wesley, Karl Denson, Nigel Hall, Cory Henry, everyone from the New Mastersounds and so many others. Pinch me!

My intention was to take photos and write about JamCruise in detail, but by the first night I was completely overwhelmed. The level of musicianship on the boat was extraordinary; I don’t think I’ve ever swum in such a pool. Forget swimming, I sat on the bleachers and watched more Jedi-level music in five nights than I’ve seen in the last five years. Then I figured I’d get home and start writing. But I didn’t. Instead I started practicing and haven’t really stopped yet. Because after seeing all that I saw, I knew that’s what I needed to do.

Big picture wise, here’s a few things I left thinking about:

-       Clarity: Almost every set I saw was defined by clarity of intention and presentation. When something is presented in such a way it is possible to respect and enjoy it even when you don’t necessarily love it.

-       Joy: All of the greatest music I saw on board was made with big smiles. Love and happiness are most potent emotions. Great musicians play with love.

-       Diversity: We’re not all supposed to be the featured whatever. Anyone who was killing it on the boat was doing it vis-a-vis his own person and personality. Despite his chops and flair, Bernard Purdie would lose a drum battle to many of the drummers on the ship, but that was never what he was about anyway. Along with instrumental pyrotechnics, many of my favorite moments took place in the ship’s atrium with a grand piano, acoustic guitars and lots of people singing together.

Cruising and Being

Wednesday the MSC Divina shall shove from the Miami shore packed to capacity with music lovers, myself included, eager for vitamin D and roughly 20 daily hours of music. I’ll also be one of the musicians officially on board to perform, first with Zach Deputy and later as second drummer support during the Bernard Purdie Jazz Lounge set.

It’s a funny position: the lineup is saturated with talent; I’m a lifelong fan of many of the people who will be my colleagues this week. And Purdie? I’d carry that man’s drums, and his suitcase if he asked (actually I have carried his drums twice, happily, just to be in the presence of greatness).

Fight or flight is real; I’d be fibbing if I didn’t admit that part of me doesn’t just want to slink off into obscurity when I see that Stanton Moore, Adam Deitch, Joe Russo, Sput, Nate Werth, Alan Evans and Grandmaster Purdie are just a few of the drummers on that little private island with me.

Well, I’m not going to fly. Nor am I going to fight however, I think I’ll just be.

On a drum-specific level, just be-ing is where I see people struggle the most. I’ve seen the practice room dragged out onto some sizable stages; sometimes I can even name the book and page I’m hearing forced into a jam. (Yuck!). In reality however, there is room in popular imagination for a handful of “name” drummers whose personal skill set is the feature of everything they do (and you better bet you’re not identifying which page of syncopation they’re using on stage!). If you’re wondering if you’re one of them, you’re not! If you were you’d never have to ask. So what does that leave? Everything else! Play a sweet beat, support the music and give thanks.

This week I’ll be be-ing me vis-à-vis Zach Deputy’s band in which I attempt to channel his ridiculously solid beat boxing on the drumset. The group is new, but we’ve landed in a deeply pocketed Afro-JamRibbean musical stride. However, it will always be a work in progress that, in the drum section, requires open-heartedness from all of us. Zach could do it all by himself, and has for years, yet he’s willing to show Jamemurrell Stanley and I the parameters and let us find our own route in. He trusts me to interpret something he’s worked unrelentingly to develop for almost a decade in front of his audience. On my part, I’m willing to try anything, including a crazy groove composed of 5 vocal sounds, none of which are hi hat, which he spits in my direction on stage in front of several hundred people with no warning. There are no passages of 9/8 to rip over, but there are funky agogo breaks, meditative one-drops, and Jamemurrell and I recently unearthed the uptempo calypso pocket of destiny. Jay and I have been connected at the hip for the better part of a decade, yet there is a language of grooving that is new to us. Sweet! 

I’ll be blogging whilst on board this week whenever I can harvest the Internet. Stay tuned.

Practice: 

• As drumset players we tend to think in permanent 4-limb mode. Recently I’ve been playing along with “Elegua” by Jerry Gonzalez without the goal of it becoming a “drumset groove.” The ensemble features three bata drummers, each with two tones and slap sounds, bell, clapping and singing. Things I do:
• Pick one pattern and play it through the track with my hands on kit, or 
• one stick and one hand. Or 
• I try to make a pattern out of two parts with a foot and both sticks. Or… 
• anything! There is so much rhythm and rhythmic melody in this one piece that I don’t think I could ever exhaust the possibilities. Practicing like this opens my ears to melodic grooving and the possibility that sometimes I can trust the other people in the group to hold it down while I add color, etc. Also, doing it by ear, without any books or guidance, prepares me for the inevitable moments when I'm on stage in front of an audience performing that I don't really know.