Darrell
Grant
Coffee House Tour Starbucks
1134 NW Glisan
St., 221-7426
7 pm Thursday, Dec. 2
When renaissance jazzman Darrell Grant left New York for Portland
three years ago, he found himself most impressed by his new
home's proudly professed status as a mecca for the weird.
"It's idiosyncratic," offers Grant, a 37-year-old Portland
State educator and globally branded jazzman. "Somehow, the
people here have maintained a strong sense of individuality."
Strange coming from a man who moved to the Rose City from
Manhattan, the alleged international stomping grounds for
all things independent and off-kilter. Conventional wisdom
says that if you want to play jazz, New York is where you
have to be. Although Grant put in his time there, in a decade
of apprenticeships with Woody Shaw, Junior Cook and Betty
Carter, he disagrees with that hoary piece of dogma.
"In New York there are all these cliques that you have
to fit into," he says. "If you play this, you're in this
group. Here, anyone plays with anyone. It means the art's
not stale."
Grant's not just trying out sound bites. The music entrepreneur,
who books jazz at Typhoon! Imperial Lounge on Broadway,
is backing up his Bridgetown bullishness with his new disc,
Smokin' Java, a day-in-the-life backing track for our
drizzly city. "It contains the feeling I have for this place
and some of the people I've come into contact with," says
Grant. And he's done it all with true Northwest DIY grass-roots
fervor.
"Artists in this age have to take responsibility for getting
their music out there themselves," Grant says of his decision
to release the disc regionally on his own Lair Hill Records.
Previous experiences with American major Verve, Euro independent
Criss Cross and San Fran reissue king 32 Jazz gave him the
chutzpah to go it alone.
What makes this new disc--his fourth solo stab--such a
trip is the way Grant handstamped the whole process. He
midwifed the disc from conception to playing to recording
to distribution, pushing the musical assembly line as if
taking tips from punk's garage adventurers. There are precedents
in jazz--Charles Mingus, Lennie Tristano and Max Roach all
dabbled in running their own labels--but Grant's take is
refreshing. He sees going it alone as the beckoning front
door of jazz's future, not as a side exit for disgruntled
iconoclasts.
Grant even penned the notes to the disc. But not just any
notes. He wrote a 10-page short story to accompany the music.
"The story had to be relevant to the Northwest coffee culture
I'd moved into," says Grant, obviously juiced about the
outcome. "Originally I was going to have an author write
it. Then I got to the point when I said, 'I can do this
myself.'"
The piece is about a Portland transplant named Langston
who awakens to find he's out of coffee
and heads out onto the city's slick streets on a caffeine
quest. Like a jolt-jonesing Leopold Bloom, Langston bumps
into a bevy of urban characters on his odyssey. As a further
bow to the region, the CD's booklet includes photos of the
people and places that may--or may not--have inspired the
story. Departed bass guru Leroy Vinnegar is there, as are
saloonkeeper Bud Clark, Pink Martini piano fella Thomas
Lauderdale, even motorhead Scott Thomason.
"It's not entirely autobiographical," Grant stresses, although,
much like his creator, Langston just happens to be a jazz
musician and coffee junkie. More importantly, as a musical
device, it works. The characters and scenes of the story
are represented in the disc's tunes. "Little Jimmy Fiddler,"
by Spike Lee's bass-playing dad, Bill, conjures Vinnegar;
the standard "If I Should Lose You" embodies Langston's
lost-love pining; Michel Legrand's bittersweet "You Must
Believe in Spring" is offered by a street poet as a bit
of philosophical wisdom on surviving the Northwest winter.
The disc is as solid a take on mainstream jazz as will
greet your ears this year. The band is manned by the front
line of saxophonist Donald Harrison and vibe player Joe
Locke with bassist Bob Stata and drum phenom Brian Blade
kicking things up. Locke is astounding throughout, and Harrison
sounds tougher here than he has on his recent Impulse! outings.
"One of the cool things about jazz is that you establish
relationships with various musicians you play with," Grant
says. "Then you find the music that comes out of those relationships."
As the vibes, sax and piano dance an intricate three-way
samba on "You Must Believe in Spring," you hear the intuitive
comfort zone these five occupy.
The quintet played a Sunday CD release date at the Kennedy
School. But the gigs Grant is most excited about are his
solo renditions of the new tunes at coffeehouses throughout
the city. Though he planned a dozen shows, the pianist is
so amped about the hourlong morning and lunch spots that
he may continue the "Coffee House Tour" indefinitely.
"They're informal, like what the whole cafe tradition was
always about," he notes. "And it's like an unexpected bonus
for the audience. They didn't come in to hear this.
"It's like giving someone a gift."
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Willamette Week | originally
published November 23,
1999
|
