Dallas, 9.20.2025

Saturday night, I headed to The Cedars in Dallas with my pals Mike and Cam to take advantage of the second opportunity this month to hear my two favorite bands -- Gregg Prickett's long-lived, Mingus-and-Ayler-influenced quintet Monks of Saturnalia and Stefan Gonzalez's jazz juggernaut Trio Glossia -- kicking 'em out on the same bill. The occasion was Gregg's 60th (!) birthday, commemorated with Black Forest cake at the end of Monks' set (bringing back memories of my own 50th at the Wreck Room in Fort Worth with Stoogeaphilia). The venue was Full City Rooster, a cozy community hub that's become one of my favorite listening rooms, which on this night was packed with creative music aficionados, giving the lie to the fallacy that "there's no audience for free jazz in DFW."

Trio Glossia was coming off the high of a performance at Ingebrigt Haker Flaten's Sonic Transmissions Festival in Austin last weekend, and in the intimate confines of Full City Rooster, they sounded like a different band than the one that played behind the screen at Oak Cliff's Texas Theatre a couple of weeks ago. The organic warmth of Full City's back room was a welcome change from the theatre's big rock PA, and you could hear all the subtlety, space, and counterpoint in their music that was lost in that earlier, bombastic performance. Besides "Dream Travelers" from their album, all the tunes were as-yet-unrecorded ones by bassist/guitarist Matthew Frerck or tenorman/drummer Joshua Canate. 

On the first number, they inhabited Eric Dolphy Out To Lunch territory, with Stefan on vibraphone and Joshua playing in an impressionistic, teenage Tony Williams bag. Later, his thunderous kick and tumbling tom rolls echoed '70s "arena jazz" Tony. The second tune was the opener at Texas Theatre and sounded like nothing so much as the "flying brick wall" Bruford-Wetton King Crimson rhythm section backing Archie Shepp at his blazing '60s zenith. 

Matthew moved between his guitar, short-scale electric bass guitar, and stand-up bass, sometimes in the course of the same piece. He plays with authority, displaying stellar chops and imagination while anchoring the music. Stefan is a marvel on mallet percussion, attacking the instrument with stunning physicality, and on the last piece (my favorite of the set), reverted to his Yells At Eels drum style, swinging relentlessly and tossing off fills like chaff. A formidable force, this band.

I've been watching the Monks of Saturnalia for a few years -- not since their inception in 1998, but for ten or 15 years at least -- and I think the current lineup, with Drew Phelps on bass, Alan Green on drums, and multi-reed master Dale Fielder (a California expat whose primary axe is baritone but here plays tenor, alto, and soprano) alongside youthful bari specialist Aidan Sears in the horn section, might be my favorite ever.

They opened, as ever, with Gregg's Ayler dedication "He Walked Into the River," which I first heard at Ronald Shannon Jackson's very last Decoding Society concert, with Gregg on guitar, and at Shannon's memorial, where Gregg and Decoding Society violinist Leonard Hayward performed. As ever, the audience responded "Music is the healing force" on cue as Gregg recited "My name is Albert Ayler," "They don't like my music, but they will," and "He walked into the river." 

A couple of Drew Phelps originals injected a dose of humor (on the faux '50s detective show theme "Cucuy") as well as memorable themes (the galloping, Western-sounding one I keep missing the name of but is always a set highlight). The Mingus influence came to the fore on "Baby Four" (a Beneath the Underdog reference that sent me back to the first edition of Mingus' 1971 autobiography I found at Recycled for a ten spot back in the early '90s) and the closing "Hika," a dedication to the last of Gregg's beloved trio of wolves who Leonard Hayward recalled being surprised by the first time he went to Gregg's house to rehearse. On that last tune, Alan Green conducted a master class in the malleability of the groove, shifting from waltz to shuffle to sprung rhythm.

Throughout, Gregg played composer's guitar, sketching out the forms and exchanging humorous glances with Alan and Drew as they responded to each other's playing, stepping out for a brief episode of fuzz-driven Frippertronic guitartistry that warmed the cockles of my feedback-scorched heart. At 60, Gregg Prickett is making the best music of his life. I hope this band keeps playing and, more to the point, I hope they release some recordings of this material soon. It's time.