Keefe Jackson's Fast Citizens: READY EVERYDAY

[ghost of miles]

Bought this at Landlocked in B-town several weeks ago & am listening to it for the first time tonight. I'll confess that I haven't followed the Chicago scene as fervently as I did, say, five years ago, but it's the best CD I've heard out of said scene in some time. (Is it just me, or do recent-vintage V5 records sound a tad run-of-the-mill? I haven't checked out the new one, mostly because the previous several have seemed too "dependable," or something akin to that. I have nothing but praise for Ken Vandermark and what he's done for the modern improv world... and he's so prolific that I've missed a # of his side projects. Would be interested to hear any recs for post-2001 KV cds.) [Edit: just stumbled across the KV thread in "Recommendations," which I'd somehow overlooked.]

I first learned of this CD through a Delmark R & Blues catalogue article--may have been a duplication of Larry Kart's liner notes. Larry with his impeccable writing skills describes this music far better than I ever could, but suffice to say there's a lot going on here. Traces of West Coast/Chico Hamilton Quintet, Don Cherry circa COMPLETE COMMUNION, a solid appreciation for AACM dynamics, obvious gestation in late-1990s Chicago, and yet it all somehow sounds original even as it's tripping triggers of familiarity in my brain--the kind of feeling that inevitably sends me back to a record for repeated listenings. Favorite track first time through: "Blackout." Recommended.

Edited December 8, 2006 by ghost of miles

[ghost of miles]

Up...anybody else heard this CD yet?

[.:.impossible]

No, but your description makes it sound tastee!

[Larry Kart]

Since Ghost brought it up, here are the liner notes:

One good way to grasp how rich and diverse the Chicago jazz scene has become over the last ten years or so would be to place the album at hand, tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson's “Fast Citizens,” alongside the music on another Delmark album, “Several Lights,” that three of these musicians (Jackson, cornetist Josh Berman, and drummer Frank Rosaly) made in 2004 with Swiss tubaist Marc Unternährer under the name Chicago Luzern Exchange. All of the music on “Several Lights” is, as we have learned to say, “free” -- improvised from scratch, more or less measureless, and without pre-determined harmonic and structural frameworks. By contrast, the music on “Fast Citizens” swings very hard when it wants to (which is often), and the album's seven pieces -- five by Jackson, one each by cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and alto saxophonist Aram Shelton (the remaining Fast Citizen is bassist Anton Hatwich) -- present both players and listeners with relatively songlike frameworks that tend to stay in place, harmonically, metrically, and structurally. But I wouldn't say -- and this touches upon what may be the core identity of this Chicago scene -- that the music on “Fast Citizens” is one bit less “free,” in effect, practice, or intent, than the music on “Several Lights” or any of the other widely varied sounds to which this scene keeps giving birth.

The common thread here, that core identity, is genuine compositional thinking -- a practical, unpretentious drive to make music in which every part has a significant structural and expressive role to play. And in the music on “Fast Citizens,” who plays what role and when does seem to be determined quite freely (whether on paper, in rehearsals, or on the run) -- by unusually acute, friendly-competitive ears and sensibilities, not through executive fiat or mere habit. (These are, by the way, the ears and sensibilities of musicians who know both their Ornette Coleman and their Sidney Bechet, their Morton Feldman and their Ruby Braff, and so forth and so on; one of the best things about this Chicago scene is how naturally -- and, again, how freely -- the pasts of jazz and related musics are being played with/sorted out in the present.)

Jackson formed this band in 2003; it played frequently in 2004 at the aptly named (because it's hard to find) Chicago club The Hideout. With the exception of Lonberg-Holm, who is 44, all of these musicians are in their late 20s or early 30s; and all of them, with the exception of Berman, are not Chicago-area natives but arrived here from elsewhere -- Arkansas (Jackson), New York City (Lonberg-Holm), Florida (Shelton), Iowa (Hatwich), (Arizona) Rosaly -- from 1995 on. This flow into town of remarkable, like-minded players and their subsequent further flowering is something one has come to expect.

Some examples, now, of that aforementioned compositional drive in action. Notice during Shelton's solo on “Blackout” (his own piece) how he proposes a fluttering, tremolo-like figure at about the 5:25 mark, which is swiftly echoed by Lonberg-Holm's bowed cello -- with alto and bass then discussing and remolding what might be said to lie under their fingers until Shelton's solo line rises in pitch and emotional heat to a near explosive level of intensity … and then out. In effect, that initial moment of mutual invention/recognition/response has become the basis of the entire second half of the piece. And much the same tremolo impulse resurfaces more briefly and in a rather different guise on Lonberg-Holm's “Pax Urbanum” -- the cello now pizzicato, while Shelton's side of the duet is fittingly cool, delicate, and precise. In fact, and he can laugh at the likely incongruity of this, throughout “Fast Citizens” Lonberg-Holm seems to me to be playing a kind of Django Reinhardt meets D'Artagnan role -- sweeping in over balustrades to add fantasy, fire, and wit.

Berman is a virtual composer in himself; as much any brass player of his age, he has his own sound and personality, with one of his key traits being the way his lines typically seem to think again about what they've just said, in a wry “Did I mean that?/Yes I meant that” manner. But on Jackson's “Signs,” with Rosaly and Hatwich cooking behind him, it would be hard to think of the climactic passages of Berman's brilliant solo as a solo per se -- what we have here, by about the 3:20 mark, is a virtual cornet-bass-drums trio; that it was arrived at spontaneously makes it no less concrete. Speaking of Hatwich and Rosaly, while they aren’t the only gifted bassist and drummer on the Chicago scene, it would be hard to think what things would be like without them. A virtuoso who never thrusts his virtuosity at you, Hatwich has great time, a rich, woody tone; a marvelous, “abstract” ear; and is – that phrase again – always thinking compositionally. And the at once calm and effervescent Rosaly – let’s just say that he’s my favorite drummer since Joe Chambers and leave it at that.

As for Jackson, as soloist and principal composer, I was struck at first by the habañera-tango feel of “Signs” and “Saying Yes.” But no deliberate Latin or Spanish strains are at work here. Instead, Jackson explains, the gliding, brooding moodiness of these pieces may be an oblique, accidental offshoot of his onetime interest in Eastern European music in general and Klezmer in particular. “I was pretty intense about Klezmer for a while,” Jackson says, “playing the clarinet and transcribing all of those tunes, listening in particular to [clarinet virtuosi] Naftule Brandwein and Dave Tarras. Years later, I suppose, melodies with those intervals we associate with the East [must be] floating around in my head.”

Jackson modestly solos on only four of the album's seven tracks, but each one is a gem. The first three (on “Ready Everyday,” “Saying Yes,” and “Pax Urbanum”) all come from one side of Jackson's musical spectrum, I think -- these nearly unbroken lines, absolute in their linear logic, also seem to outline in their sober rise and fall other “shadow” melodies, as though the changes Jackson plays over or implies were, in effect, ghosts. From another side comes Jackson's solo on “Course” -- steaming and expressionistic, it virtually glories in its ability to weld disparate voices and parts into a whole.

The first time I heard Jackson's music, some four years ago, I felt sure that he was someone special; the only question was whether a certain diffidence of temperament would prevent all that he had to give from getting out. Jackson is still the same thoughtful, soft-spoken individual, but the music on “Fast Citizens” speaks loud and clear.

[Larry Kart]

Forgot to mention that I get 10 cents for each album sold.

[Uncle Skid]

Forgot to mention that I get 10 cents for each album sold.

, but you forgot to tell interested parties how to purchase it... it's not obvious from Mr. Jackson's website, and I couldn't find it on Delmark or Dusty Groove.

[ghost of miles]

Forgot to mention that I get 10 cents for each album sold.

Thanks for the full disclosure! And thanks, too, for posting your liner notes here, Larry. I listened to this again late last night and it sounded even better the second time around.

Uncle Skid, I searched Amazon through ye olde Organissimo filter and found this listing. Looks like Deep Discount & the dreaded Caiman both sell it new for close to $13... it's also an item Chuck might carry. I first read about it in a Delmark catalogue, and it's in the new one as well--but I realize the Delmark website is not always customer-friendly. The Landlocked guy sells a fair amount of avant-jazz, so he just happened to have it in his bins one day when I walked in.

[Uncle Skid]

Thanks, Ghost (and Larry!)

Looks like Jazz Record Mart has it for $15, but I'll check with Chuck first.

[Larry Kart]

Forgot to mention that I get 10 cents for each album sold.

, but you forgot to tell interested parties how to purchase it... it's not obvious from Mr. Jackson's website, and I couldn't find it on Delmark or Dusty Groove.

So that's why those dimes haven't been rolling in.

[Uncle Skid]

Forgot to mention that I get 10 cents for each album sold.

, but you forgot to tell interested parties how to purchase it... it's not obvious from Mr. Jackson's website, and I couldn't find it on Delmark or Dusty Groove.

So that's why those dimes haven't been rolling in.

[paul secor]

CD Unverse also carries it - no soundclips, unfortunately - and the Forum gets $ if you buy it there.

[.:.impossible]

I'm going to pick up both of these. Larry, at one time I had bookmarked a thread where you outlined a few of the, in your opinion, more interesting young musicians in Chicago, along with some recommeded recordings. You wouldn't happen to know where that is located, would you?

Thanks.

[ghost of miles]

Somewhere in this thread? Larry alludes to it in the "Aging Avant-Garde" topic.

[.:.impossible]

Yes. Thanks David. There we are!

[gslade]

Yep, another to the list of too get!

[Uncle Skid]

Finally bought this one a few months back... liked it the first time, but it has really been growing on me lately.

Current favorite track: Signs. Outstanding cello work from Fred Lonberg-Holm, and a killer drum solo (Frank Rosaly), too.

There's a dark, mysterious quality to this record that I find compelling -- I wish I could describe it better. Some compositions vaguely remind me of Andrew Hill's work, which is interesting, as there's no piano on this recording.

There's a review in the May 2007 issue of Cadence, page 116.

[jlhoots]

Lucky 7s: Farragut

You'll like that too - really!!

[Uncle Skid]

Lucky 7s: Farragut

You'll like that too - really!!

Listening to it now... thanks very much for the tip!

Downloads from the March 6, 2006 show at The Hungry Brain available here -- recorded at the same time as the pieces on Farragut.

Edited April 27, 2007 by Uncle Skid