Dallas, 3.1.2025

 

After seeing Denton rockers Smothered playing one of my favorite records of this young year (their newie Dirty Laundry) front-to-back at Rubber Gloves a couple of weeks ago, my buddy Mike and I trekked over to one of our favorite Dallas listening rooms, the Cedars' Full City Rooster, to hear my favorite band of the moment, Trio Glossia, play the release show for their stunning self-titled debut, which dropped on Sonic Transmissions February 7, more or less in album order (they switched the order of "Shedding Tongues" and first single "Nerdy Dirty Talk" on the fly for maximum impact).

We've been following Trio Glossia since their second show, at Molten Plains Fest in December 2023, and it's been a pleasure watching their compositions and interaction develop and evolve in performance. Every new viewing brings a deeper, more refined level of communication between the musicians, enabling them to take the music to new places that surprise even them in the moment, bringing their listeners greater catharsis. 

So there was a surprisingly comedic element to Joshua Canate's performance during "Cikatiedid," when he turned over his snare drum and dumped his sticks and percussion implements over it (one is reminded of stories of the early Bob Dylan and his comical onstage awkwardness), and when he later complained of audience members throwing sticks at him ("You started it," said leader-vibraphonist-drummer Stefan Gonzalez). Or when Canate introduced the set closer "All Blowed Out" (a digital-only afterthought to the album) by saying "We're almost out of free jazz hell" (earlier, Gonzalez had noted the dual titular significance of Canate's composition "For a Fee" -- both a tribute to New York improv eminence Joe McPhee and notice that "we don't play free jazz"). At one point during the aforementioned "Cikatiedid," the two percussionists shared Gonzalez's vibraphone, sounding at times like the two hands of a piano player.

Gonzalez brought even more of his trademark intensity to the table than usual. We'd last seen him in a percussion trio at last month's Joan of Bark Presents show at Rubber Gloves, where he seemed, if not subdued, at least more intentionally spare and light than we're used to hearing him. At Full City, he brought tremendous physicality and force to his performances both on vibes -- the Oak Cliff hard bop of "Ode to Swamp Thing," the '60s Blue Note impressionism of "Dream Travelers" (dedicated to his father, the late polymath Dennis Gonzalez), and the album climaxing tour de force "Shedding Tongues" -- and behind the trap set. On "For A Fee," the sheer brutality of the leader's Elvin Jones groove threatened to overpower Canate's full-throated, multiphonic-rich '60s energy music tenor. And the vibe seemed contagious, with Canate slamming the skins harder than his usual propulsive glide. 

The anchor of this active three-way conversation is bassist Matthew Frerck, a consummate virtuoso, master of pizzicato and arco attacks, fast walks and "outside" explorations, extended techniques and solid swing. Frerck also excels as a composer, having provided two of the album's highlights: album and set opener "Arcane's Dance" and a particular favorite of mine, the Henry Threadgill-inspired second single "Zoomorphology" with its insane stops and starts. 

Trio Glossia will be at The Wild Detectives on March 22, augmented by guitarist extraordinaire Gregg Prickett (who will also appear with his own trio in Fort Worth at the Grackle Art Gallery on March 8). They'll be on a bill topped by esteemed punk rock elder Mike Watt in the ensemble MSSV, with Austin ensemble THC Trio added to sweeten the pot. Don't you dare miss it.

Denton, 2.19.2025

The second Joan of Bark Presents event at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios fell on a night even colder than the Smothered show the previous weekend -- after which that band had to bail from a previously booked show because all the members were sick; hope they're all recovered in time to play their She-Rock 2025 date at Gloves on March 1. Temperatures in the teens meant that there was practically nothing on the road between Fort Worth and Denton, so we had time to kill after picking up Larry the Animals Mistaken for Monsters video guy. (Larry's videos from Joan of Bark events, combined with Stephen Lucas' audio recordings, now have a YouTube channel of their own. Check it!)

Ogonosu is the performing alias of Dentonite Taylor Collins, whose performance at Fort Worth's Grackle Art Gallery a couple of months ago I missed -- my loss. On this occasion, Collins started out with an acoustic piano sound, playing an elegiac etude that gradually, organically, began to morph into synthesized sound, achieved a peak of intensity, then morphed back. Later, Collins said that he'd included more tension in the piece than usual because "people seem to like that" -- perhaps, I suggested, a reflection of the times in which we live. It was a centering, meditative set, and a good entree into the evening. 

When we saw Houston's El Mantis at New Media Contemporary in Dallas back in May, they'd just gone from a trio to a quintet, and their performance was a little tentative. (Their double live CD is a worthy document of this transition.) Now, with a few more months of playing together under their belts, and with Aubrey Seaton's always on-point sound mix, they sounded much more cohesive, and were able to play with abandon. 

Their unlikely mix of influences -- psychedelic rock, salsa, free jazz -- is seamless and stirring, like Meridian Brothers on acid, or "Latin rock" that's closer to Afro-Caribbean roots, with Sonny Sharrock rather than Carlos Santana as a sonic signifier. Drummer-leader Angel Garcia mixes up a heady brew of rhythms and vocalizes operatically, while Mark Medina adds folkloric textures on flute and percussion. Andrew Martinez (Ak'Chamel) also sings and provides the melodic/harmonic framework, switching between hollowbody Gretsch and electric standup bass, abetted by Jeremy Nuncio on keys. Danny Kamins on alto blows pure '60s fire music, channeling the spirits of Trane, Pharaoh, Ayler and Dolphy while remaining resolutely his own guy. He says that El Mantis' set was basically their new album, which is already in the can. Can't wait to hear. Till then there's this. 

Closing set was by an all-star percussion trio comprising Ellie Alonzo (Sunbuzzed), Chelsey Danielle (Helium Queens, Pearl Earl), and Stefan Gonzalez (Trio Glossia, FireLife Trio). Alonzo applied electronic treatments to a floor tom and small instruments. Danielle effectively fronted the band, freestyling verse like a beatnik poet while playing bongos, a cymbal, and small instruments including finger cymbals and a kalimba. Gonzalez played a full kit, employing a lighter attack than usual and listening attentively to the other musicians. "I'm walking and moving to the beat of my own drum," Danielle chanted, later asking, "Did the beat guide you home? Are you alright? Am I alright? Are we alright? Do we have a democracy?" A closing catharsis for an exceptionally well paced evening of expression. Next Joan of Bark Presents is March 12. Don't you dare miss it.

Denton, 2.15.2025

We froze our asses off to see Smothered play their new album Dirty Laundry at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios. It was worth it.

Weather forecast predicted temperatures in the 50s and I didn't bother to obsessively follow the hourly 'cast the way I usually do. Had I done so, I'd have worn a couple more layers, maybe a scarf. (As Smothered frontwoman Taylor Watt said early on, while trying on some fingerless gloves that wound up not working out, "Fuck Punxsutawney Phil.") 

On this occasion, I was accompanied by my wife, who'd heard Dirty Laundry while I was reviewing it, looked up from what she was doing, and said, "Who's that?" (a trademark of quality around mi casa). So she was there with me, similarly attired, but luckily remembered we had a big quilted blanket in the car for emergencies, and was okay with standing in front of the outside stage wrapped in it. Bless her.

(Watching the musicians dealing with what they described as "a wind tunnel" on the stage, my mind drifted back to Christmas Eve 2003 at a community center in Midway, Texas, with Lady Pearl Johnson's BTA Band. The outside temperature was 25 degrees, and it was colder inside the building because the person who was supposed to turn on the heat earlier in the day had forgotten to do so. We sat shivering, watching folks stick their heads in and leave, until finally Ray Reed said, "We've got to play for 30 minutes or we don't get paid." I remember jumping around more than I usually did on that gig, and all the tempos being really fast. My shaky memory says I played with gloves on, but I don't think that would have been possible.)

The theme of the show was "Hands in pants." To their great credit, the musicians in Smothered played through their album, front to back, like a well-oiled machine. Starting the set with a feedback exorcism, they blazed through Watt's engagingly complex compositions, the rhythm section of bassist Mal Frenza and drummer Raegan Smythe negotiating frequent tempo changes and dynamic shifts, guitarists Watt and Zach Palmer playing intertwining lines with contrasting tones and textures.

Watt is slight but mighty. She engaged the audience while retuning between songs, cracking jokes, telling stories, talking shit, encouraging the crowd to move around and successfully soliciting audience participation on one song. For the release show, the band was giving away free T-shirts. I got one that says "Smothered is the best band in the world." On this night, I'd say that was truth in advertising.

Because we were lurking by the bar trying to stay out of the cold until the headliner, I missed Blonde Parts' set, but second band Chell On Earth was something special: raging punk energy, played with Lower East Side grit and fronted by a transwoman with in-your-face attitude and palpable star quality. I'd dig to see them again.  

We also observed that the action at the bar was different than what we remembered from when the Wreck Room in Fort Worth (RIP) was our second living room. Young folks today don't drink as much as the ones we remember: mostly beer, nobody's pounding shots, two food trucks outside (the excellent Render Texas Delicatessen and Curry Truck, which makes the best version of its eponymous dish that I've ever tasted). It's a change for the better.

The vortex of chaos emanating from the Christofascist regime in DC, the depredations of DOGE, and the daily torrent of bullshit have a lot of us on our heels, but looking at the faces of the crowd in the freezing cold at Gloves, I was reminded that the human spirit still exists, it will be what it will be, and as it said on the back of one of Smothered's other T-shirts, "War is not peace. Freedom is not slavery. Ignorance is not strength." We forget at our peril. One of the best nights ever.

Ra Kalam Bob Moses' "Cozmic Soul Gumbo"

You could say Ra Kalam Bob Moses was born into jazz: Son of a jazz publicist, he grew up in the orbit of bop-era titans Max Roach, Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, and Charles Mingus; was present at the creation of jazz-rock and fusion through his work with the Free Spirits, Gary Burton (he's "Lonesome Dragon" on A Genuine Tong Funeral), Compost, and Pat Metheny; made his name as a leader in the '80s with a couple of classic albums for Gramavision (When Elephants Dream of Music and Visit with the Great Spirit). He's a spiritual devotee of guitarist Tsizji Munoz, who famously appeared on Pharaoh Sanders' self-titled India Navigation LP in 1977. Ra Kalam also played on the first Darius Jones Trio album, Man'ish Boy (A Raw and Beautiful Thing). 

After years in academia (teaching at the New England Conservatory), Ra Kalam (whose spiritual name means "the inaudible sound of the invisible sun") settled in Memphis and began practicing his philosophy of "living music," traveling and collaborating with other improvisers. During this time, he was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, so there is urgency to his mission. A documentary film on his life, Living Music: A Film About Ra Kalam Bob Moses, is currently in production. His new album, Cozmic Soul Gumbo, was recorded in New Orleans while the film was being shot. 

These days, most of Ra Kalam's releases are spontaneous improvisations (dig if you will Rune Kitchen with Jaap Blonk and Damon Smith, for instance), but for this occasion, he and his collaborators recorded a mix of his compositions (five out of 12 tracks on Cozmic Soul Gumbo) and group improvs. There are four saxophonists in the lineup here: Tony Dagradi (Carla Bley, Professor Longhair), Jeff Coffin (Bela Fleck, Dave Matthews), Art Edmaiston (Gregg Allman), and Michael Adkins (two Hat Hut albums as leader, with Paul Motian on drums). All four play tenor and soprano, to which Coffin adds native flutes and percussion, and Adkins alto. Ra Kalam's joined in the percussion section by Bill Summers (Headhunters) and Johnny Vidacovich (Astral Project). The band's rounded out by NOLA guitarist Chris Alford and Oak Cliff's own Aaron Gonzalez (Humanization 4tet, Unconscious Collective) on bass.

The album, with its dense percussion battery and multiplicity of horn voices, has a spiritual vibe like late Coltrane, but with more of a sense of serenity than struggle, as befits the time in life where Ra Kalam is. On the opening "Tony Calls the Drums to Prayer," Moses and Vidacovich's twin trap sets explode out of the gate like Elvin and Rashied on Meditations, with Summers adding color with his percussion array as Dagradi plays with deep soul. "Dancing Bears," the first of the composed pieces, boasts an angular, Eric Dolphy-ish head that the group takes "out" with a dense improvisation. 

Ra Kalam's "Hope" and "The Lioness" feature lyrical themes played in loose unison, then essayed by individual soloists with sparse backing on the former and a choir of voices on the latter. "Africano Libertad" is a nice feature for Coffin and Summers, mixing Afro-Cuban and Brazilian genetics, while "Train to Outer Soulville" is a polyrhythmic jungle waltz that rides on Gonzalez's deep bass song. This and Ra Kalam's "Christmas on Venus" sound like Sun Ra titles to me, and the sound is suitably cosmic. The closing "Blues in the Face" features the leader-composer on piano and brings us back to Earth, with Adkins' alto even taking us to church. This music is rich with humanity and spirit, a healing balm for troubled times.

Album's available now on all streaming platforms, or from Ra Kalam's Bandcamp page.

Trio Glossia makes a solid debut

I first laid eyes on Stefan Gonzalez back in 2002, when they were drumming in family free jazz trio Yells At Eels with their father, trumpeter Dennis Gonzalez, and sibling, bassist Aaron Gonzalez. Yells At Eels was a band that I saw a few times every year, and every time I did, they’d become more amazing, honing their chops and fine-tuning their onstage communication. Around 2005, Stefan started playing tuned percussion as well as the trap set, and played both instruments alongside master percussionists Alvin Fielder, Don Moye, Louis Moholo-Moholo, and Ronald Shannon Jackson. Stefan also played in the thrash metal duo Akkolyte and the genre-bending ensembles Unconscious Collective, Humanization 4tet, and The Young Mothers. 

Following father Dennis’s passing in 2022, Stefan became the driving force behind the Dennis Gonzalez Legacy Band and began a new project: a trio with bassist Matthew Frerck and tenor saxophonist-drummer Joshua Canate. It’s a unit that embodies a lot of dualities. Frerck is a schooled virtuoso who holds a degree in Double Bass in Contemporary Performance and Improvisation from Oberlin Conservatory, while Canate is an intuitive musician who’s drummed in the psychedelic rock outfit Same Brain and took up tenor just three years ago. There’s also the contrast between the lead and solo voices of Gonzalez’s vibraphone and Canate's tenor, and the difference between the two percussionists’ drum styles; Canate tends to float like Roy Haynes (his brushwork is especially noteworthy), while Gonzalez is more prone to sting like Ed Blackwell. “It’s a great combination of angelic and demonic in one,” Stefan said.

While Trio Glossia started out as a purely improvisational unit, after a year, they decided they needed some compositions to hang their extemporizations on, and the result is the nine tracks you hear on their self-titled debut album -- recorded, mixed, and mastered by the always excellent Aubrey Seaton and out February 7 on Norwegian-based Sonic Transmissions Records. As you read this, they’ve already composed a new set of material; it’s important to them to keep the music fresh. 

The album opens with Frerck’s “Arcane’s Dance,” which provides a nice overview of the band’s strengths: Gonzalez’s propulsive swing, Canate's throaty multiphonics (which recall vintage Pharaoh Sanders as well as Joshua’s fellow Fort Worth native Dewey Redman), Frerck’s prodigious musical imagination and mastery of arco and pizzicato attacks. The title is Gonzalez’s and comes from a character in Swamp Thing comics – a lifetime enthusiasm of theirs. “Dr. Anton Arcane is the true villain in the Swamp Thing world,” said Stefan. “He created Swamp Thing and he is a scientist that makes mutants out of men and is obsessed with immortality.”

This programmatic theme is continued in Gonzalez’s “Ode to Swamp Thing,” which opens with a clattering, tumbling, splashing drum solo from Canate before the memorable theme kicks in, played in unison by vibes and bass (a signature sound of Trio Glossia’s). Then Frerck essays an expressive arco solo, backed by vibes. “I was always a fan of [Swamp Thing] because although misunderstood as a monster in a cruel world with vengeance on his mind, he is also a romantic, scholar, and intellectual,” said Stefan.

The band's second single, Frerck’s “Zoomorphology,” was inspired by a workshop with AACM alumnus and Pulitzer Prize winning composer Henry Threadgill that the bassist attended while at Oberlin. The piece features Canate demonstrating the fecundity of his ideas on tenor – truly astonishing for someone so new to the instrument – and an expansive drum solo from Gonzalez. 

Stefan’s “Dream Travelers” has another memorable vibraphone-led theme and shows how strong is the bond between the three players. Their cohesion reflects the fact that Gonzalez and Canate share a house with Stefan’s partner, fellow musician Katie Kidd. “It’s cool to have a collective, bohemian vibe at the house where all of us are trying to do some nifty, artistic, musical, expressive thing,” Stefan said. Frerck takes a stunning arco solo, and then the composer cuts loose on vibes, combining facility and intention with great force. A dialogue between drums and arco bass ensues, followed by a busy-but-lightly-textured drum solo. When the theme returns, with Canate all over the drums, it’s a cathartic moment. 

Canate's droning dirge “For a Fee” works off a deep, Elvin Jones-inspired groove that recalls the one from “Many Mansions” on Sonny Sharrock’s epochal Ask the Ages. It’s a tenor tour de force, with the rhythm team backing the saxophonist to the hilt, and more conversation between drums and arco bass. All three of these musicians have a lot to say, but their confluence never sounds cluttered – it sounds dense, like a rainforest. 

Asked whether the percussion showpiece “Cikatiedid” was a tribute to their partner, Stefan said, “It’s really inspired by cicadas and katydids and city sounds, but I couldn’t not put Katie’s name in there. It’s also a little industrial sounding, and we share an affinity for roots industrial music.” 

The piece provides a nice lead-in to first single “Nerdy Dirty Talk,” with its synchronized percussion paradiddles. Stefan said, “The song is just a rhythmic figure that when applied to any instrument will sound composed in a harmolodic manner. It was the first song I composed for the band, and a celebration of sharing this dialogue and being influenced by our obsession with free jazz nerdism. It was a revelation to find one another because it’s such a particular musical medium. So yeah, it’s a party song.”

Gonzalez’s “Shedding Tongues,” the most complex construction here, begins with a Frerck pizzicato solo that ventures into Mingus/Haden territory before the vibes state the waltz-time theme. Gradually but inexorably, the pulse shifts from waltz to staccato gallop to 4/4 swing to a section where Canate conjures the spirit of Tony Williams playing “Rat Patrol shit” behind ‘60s Miles Davis, before the waltz returns. 

The tune, Stefan said, “is about validating LGBTQ people and meeting them where they are and how they want to be seen, considered. Shedding our tongues of the tendency to need a gender designation right off the bat of any given social interaction. It’s also just about how language changes over time and trying to keep up. More than anything, it is my song of solidarity to the LGBTQ community as a non-binary person. That’s why there are so many moods in the song. It encompasses a wide range of emotions that hopefully communicate our ability to be multi-faceted in gender and sexuality. I think of our kind of jazz as non-binary. It’s tied to a tradition and a protest of tradition. It has macho and feminine moments.  It has solely human moments too. It is not one thing. We humans, regardless of assigned gender, are by nature a combination of both masculine and feminine, and the grey areas in between.”

Summing up their thoughts on album and band, Stefan said, “I really love that this band brings an energy that is beautiful, catchy, intense, free, structured, highly sentimental but also ready to burn the whole establishment down. I really wanted all those things included in this band’s repertoire.” This record is the sound of Trio Glossia striking a blow for freedom of all kinds – and the stunning debut of two powerful new jazz voices: Matthew Frerck and Joshua Canate. Listen now and say you knew them back when, later. And catch their release show at Full City Rooster on March 1.

Jon Irabagon's "Server Farm"

Photo by Chris Benham.

Chicago-based Filipino-American saxophonist Jon Irabagon played on two of my favorite albums from last year: Patricia Brennan's Breaking Stretch and Miles Okazaki's Miniature America. I first became aware of him via his boppish 2009 album The Observer and his work with the tradition-saturated experimental quartet Mostly Other People Do the Killing. He's also been a mainstay in Mary Halvorson's groups, and recorded extensively as leader and co-leader, notably on his I Don't Hear Nothin' But the Blues series with drummer Mike Pride.

For his latest release, the album Server Farm -- due out February 21 on his own Irabbagast Records label -- the composer addresses the encroachment of Artificial Intelligence into every aspect of human endeavor with a suite of five new compositions, adding vibraphone and voice to his sonic palette, altering his horn's sound with pedals and post-production, and employing AI-like analysis to incorporate phrases and motifs from his collaborators' own work into his compositions. No surprise that the album is co-produced David Breskin, who also did the honors on last year's Brennan and Okazaki sets.

And what collaborators! The ten-piece band of New York's finest augments Irabagon's regular quartet (pianist Matt Mitchell, bassist Chris Lightcap, and drummer Dan Weiss) with violinist Mazz Smith (who sings Irabagon's lyrics to the closing "Spy"), the leader's MOPDTK bandmate Peter Evans on trumpet, guitarists Miles Okazaki and Wendy Eisenberg, percussionist/electronic musician Levy Lorenzo, and (on the Ellingtonian "Graceful Exit") standup bassist Michael Formanek. A formidable lineup for a challenging set of compositions that also allows the players much expressive freedom.

Opener "Colocation" is based on the pitches of Lorenzo's kulintang, a set of gongs used in traditional Filipino music. The piece has a forward motion reminiscent of early '70s fusion, with Evans' trumpet, Lightcap's electric bass, and Mitchell's Fender Rhodes leading the charge. A second, contrasting section is a moody tone poem, overlaid with electronic effects, before horn fanfares herald the return to forward motion. "Routers" is a study in contrasting rhythms; Irabagon's solo here is particularly piquant. "Singularities" opens with an Ornette-ish theme, then takes off into a section of dense collective improvisation. 

On the aforementioned "Graceful Exit," violin, arco bass, and trumpet sing a song of lyrical beauty. The edgy closer "Spy," with lyrics that imagine a bumblebee as spy drone, mirrors the unease of our dystopian time with rustling polyphony as Okazaki and Eisenberg (the latter my fave among the current crop of NYC axe-slingers) make like Larry Coryell and Sonny Sharrock on Herbie Mann's Memphis Underground. 

Now that the gloves are off, it's time for the artists to stand against the tech bros. Perhaps inadvertently, Jon Irabagon has sounded the clarion call.

Dallas, 2.1.2025

The first concert of the year at Full City Rooster was a slam dunk: a pair of musicians' musicians, composing live before our very eyes, and the full house -- 40 people when they started, with more filtering in as they played -- included the likes of Paul Quigg, Gerard Bendiks, Mike Daane, Lily Taylor, Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez, Bobby Fajardo, and Nathan Collins. Guitarist Gregg Prickett and bassist Drew Phelps had played in a duo format twice before, once at Fort Worth's Grackle Art Gallery and once at Full City, and on this occasion, they worked their way up to (by my count) "Improvisation #15," plus an asynchronous deconstruction of the Chantays' surf hit "Pipeline." 

On this occasion, Prickett ran his electric guitar through a stereo output to small Gibson and Fender amps (the former of which broke down during the performance) with a looper, delay, and volume pedal in his signal chain; his acoustic stayed on the table where he'd laid it. Phelps brought his 5-string Fender to the party as well as his standup, and employed distortion on both axes at different times to stunning effect. 

The duo opened with some electric chamber jazz, arpeggiated guitar chords and arco bass reminding one at times of the group Oregon. Next came a desert soundscape with chords that shimmered like heat rising from hot blacktop. Phelps strapped on his Fender and kicked on his distortion pedal, summoning visions of John Wetton parachuting in like the Christ figure in '70s midnight movie fave Greaser's Palace. 

The duo splattered shards of notes as a bored young man seated against the wall contorted himself as far as he could from the performance, seemingly doing everything in his power to avoid looking at the players, in marked contrast with the rest of the audience. There was an episode where Prickett played suspended chords that seemed to imply questions without answers; a metaphor for our historical moment? Phelps followed up with a mutated blues walk. 

Prickett asked the audience if we needed a break. As the response was generally negative (a couple of listeners got up and left), they continued with my favorite piece of the evening, in which Prickett droned on a single staccato note while Phelps responded with sympathetic feedback from his big dog kennel and spiky, fuzzed out arco scrapings. Prickett played echo-laden chiming harmonics that sounded like bubbles rising from underwater, leading into the aforementioned "Pipeline." The long set closed with a meandering minor blues, with Prickett playing lots of diminished chords. An immensely satisfying performance.

Afterwards, Phelps and Nathan Collins discussed Monks of Saturnalia business. Hopefully, that ensemble, which plays Prickett's Mingus and Ayler-influenced jazz compositions, will reconvene soon. In the meantime, Full City co-owner Michael Wyatt says Stefan Gonzalez will be bringing a group (presumably Trio Glossia?) there in March. Can't hardly wait.