The WHO Trio's "Zoo"

Better late than never, I guess.

My review copy of this 2014 release double CD arrived at a moment when I wasn't doing much writing, and had little time for critical listening. It didn't help that I was perplexed by the title, which put me in mind of a bootleg double LP I once owned by another group of geezers who've been using the name with some success for several decades. But having listened, I feel I owe Gerry Hemingway an apology, and wish I'd caught his performance when he was in Dallas at Top Ten Records with Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser recently.

What we have here is a solid set of improvisational dialogues, documenting a dynamic that these musos developed over two decades and five releases (including this one; they've since followed up with an album of Strayhorn and Ellington compositions), employing a lot of extended techniques on their "classic" jazz instrumentation, and providing a fair amount of light and shade.

These men are capable of performing with the utmost restraint  -- as in the minimal wisp of melody pianist Michel Wintsch introduces about six minutes into the 13-minute-plus "Raccita," before bassist Banz Oester's percussive arco (oxymoron?) leads the trio into a thumping (although, notably, still restrained) rock groove. They also excel at building and releasing tension (as on the 12-minute "Sloepper"). The busy and prolific percussionist Hemingway -- perhaps best known for his work with the trio BassDrumBone, the quartet of composer/multi-reedist Anthony Braxton, and the ensemble of pianist Anthony Davis -- always plays in a manner that reminds us he's a composer first (like Tyshawn Sorey, or the young Anthony Williams).

On the "electric" disc's three long pieces, Wintsch plays synth as well as acoustic piano (recalling Matthew Shipp on David S. Ware's Corridors and Parallels, as well as Braxton's early collaborations with Musica Electronica Viva alum Richard Teitelbaum). The electronic and acoustic textures are interwoven seamlessly and organically. Hemingway's wordless vocalizing on "Lamp Bowl" contributes to the track's dreamlike ambience. Modern music gets no finer.

Oak Cliff, 5.22.2019

The titanic German saxophonist Peter Brotzmann has been visiting Texas for a couple of decades, in the company of collaborators like Dutch dada drummer Han Bennink, Japanese noise guitarist Keiji Haino, trumpeter-saxist Joe McPhee, vibist Jason Adasiewicz, and his "Die Like A Dog" quartet partners William Parker and Hamid Drake. But his previous visits were all to Austin or Houston, never to North Texas -- until last night. Oak Cliff-based musician-DJ Ernesto Montiel and friends, under the rubric Further Jazz, brought Brotzmann and his duet partner (four albums and counting), the West Virginian-via-Texas-and-Scotland steel guitarist Heather Leigh, to The Wild Detectives -- a well-curated small bookstore with beverage service -- on a bill with another duo, which teamed LA punk-jazz guitarist Joe Baiza with Zurich-based artist-writer-muso Jason Kahn, heard here on voice and drums.

The first time I heard Brotzmann's early landmark album, 1968's Machine Gun, I thought, "Wow, this is like Ascension, but really angry." The '80s free jazz supergroup Last Exit (in which Brotzmann battled to be heard alongside avant garde icons Sonny Sharrock and Ronald Shannon Jackson) was similarly unremitting in its energy blast. But later recordings (my favorites: 1994's Songlines with Fred Hopkins and Rashied Ali, and 2012's Yatagarasu with Masahiko Sato and Takeo Moriyama) document a more multifaceted sound, and the combination of aging (a few years ago, Brotzmann was diagnosed with enlarged lungs as a result of his ferocious attack) and what one Dallas muso called duet partner Leigh's "feminine energy" has brought an elegiac lyricism to his music (amply audible on Sparrow Nights, their latest outing). That's not to say his sound lacks power. On tenor, his massive vibrato still disturbs the air like Ben Webster on steroids, and the overtones he wrestles from the bass clarinet can be kind of terrifying. Leigh sculpts her liquid silver tone to resemble anything from the wobbly orchestral sound of a mellotron to the feedback drone of Boris' Flood.

Opening set by Baiza and Kahn was also inspiring. Kahn's wordless vocalizing evoked inarticulate anguish, while his running commentary on traps and small instruments gave the music momentum. Baiza's clean-toned Telecaster sang with alternating dissonance and chromatic fluidity, augmented by a looper pedal. Their dialogue reminded me of Don Van Vliet's line "I froze in solid motion, well" -- sometimes they would pause in mid-intention before continuing. At one point, Baiza essayed the melody from Ornette's "Peace," which gave at least one Fort Worthian in the crowd a spark of recognition.

Speaking of the crowd, I counted about 120 people in the sold-out audience, more than half of whom I didn't know -- a thrilling development. Yes, there is an audience for this music in North Texas, although it was not always so. Post-show, nearly everyone I spoke to said, in one way or another, that after hearing Brotzmann and Leigh, they wanted to go out and be as creative as possible in whatever modality is familiar to them. It doesn't get any better than that. Hopefully Ernesto and Further Jazz will bring more events like this to DFW. I wasn't going to speak to the performers, but when I happened to encounter Brotzmann just before leaving, I told him, "After hearing you, my heart is very full." Listening to Sparrow Nights this morning, I noticed there's a track titled "My Empty Heart." No coincidences.

Pat Todd and the Rankoutsiders' "The Past Came Callin'"

You'd have to be out of your mind to start a rock record label in these days and times, when the "music industry" consists of a handful of tech companies trying to "monetize" advertising and the selling of subscriptions to people who are used to not having to pay to consume music (while paying artists next to nothing). But these days, the '80s DIY model has become the way 99% of the touring musos out there get by: the money from the gig gets you to the next gig, and the merch you sell is your payday.

Independent labels are key to this, for they're the ones willing to devote time and treasure to releasing records of limited, niche appeal, and they're generally run by lifers like Berlin-based Hound Gawd! Records honcho Oliver Hausmann, a punk and garage fanatic whose roster reflects his tastes. His current release list includes the first vinyl issue of Think About It, a 2014 EP by bluesy Atlanta garage rocker Rod Hamdallah ; Moronic Pleasures, a new full-length (19 songs on a single LP!) from venerable Virginia Beach punkeroos the Candy Snatchers; and our subject o' the day, The Past Came Callin', the fifth release from former Lazy Cowgirls frontman Pat Todd and the Rankoutsiders.

Pat Todd's the same kind of lifer as Hausmann: an '80s LA punker (out of Indiana) who operates on the same stretch of American highway once traveled by Hank Williams and Chuck Berry (and later, by the Stones and the Clash). Like those two icons, he's a storyteller, and a damn prolific one to boot. After fronting the Cowgirls for 25 years, he broke the seal on his new outfit, the Rankoutsiders, with a 28-song debut, The Outskirts of Your Heart, in 2006 (reissued on double vinyl by Hound Gawd! in 2016, the same year the label released Todd's last outing, Blood & Treasure).

Over time, he's amassed quite a backlog of material, and part of the impetus behind The Past Came Callin' was to document some songs that waited years for their turn to be heard -- 15 in the case of "If Only I Could Fly Backwards In Time" (which kicks in the door with raucous energy), 20 in the case of "Yeah, Ya Had A Bad Night" (replete with sonic allusions to "Time Is Tight" and "Safe European Home" that sound to these feedback-scorched ears like a Clash homage). More recently, "Goin' Nowhere," anchored by a four-on-the-floor beat and pedal tone bass that recall AC/DC, was originally intended for inclusion on 2013's 14th and Nowhere.

Produced, mixed, and mastered by simpatico ex-Sparks guitarist Earle Mankey -- who first worked with Todd on the Lazy Cowgirls' magnum opus Ragged Soul, wa-a-ay back in 1995 -- The Past Came Callin' captures all the Rankoutsiders' signature strengths, from Todd's snarling vocals and first-time (on record) harmonica, to Nick Alexander and Kevin Keller's blazing twin-guitar attack, to bassist Steven Vigh and drummer Walter Phelan's propulsive kick. Besides the aforementioned gems, there's a Keef-like vocal turn for Kevin Keller ("The Ring, The Bottle & The Gun"), a William Bell cover ("Any Other Way") that could have been written to order for Todd and reveals the singer's affinity for R&B, and a remake of Cowgirls chestnut "Somewhere Down the Line" that's less twangy, more rockin' than the 'riginal.

"Just Between You and Me" closes the album on a somber acoustic note. But when Todd sings "Failure's mostly what I see / And a lot of talk we hide behind / And a trail we ain't never gonna find," his whole career belies the defeated tone. Pat Todd keeps pounding the boards because he doesn't know how to quit. How fortunate are we.