M@'s EPK & Press Propaganda —Reviews
Accentuate the Positive
Posted: Wed, Feb 14, 2007
From Downbeat Magazine, by Michael Jackson. February 2007
Matt Wilson Offers Humor, Levity and Stellar Drum Chops as a Bandleader and Sideman
Whenever Matt Wilson comes through Chicago, one of his first ports of call is Steve Maxwell Pro Percussion and Jazz Workshop on Michigan Avenue. Not that he’s a drum tech-head, despite various equipment endorsements. Wilson just loves being around all of the shop’s vintage kits, day dreaming about Rufus “Speedy” Jones backing Duke Ellington behind his twin bass Slingerland setup, for example. He tries out a few vintage K Zildjian cymbals and generally makes himself a nuisance for two or three hours before any of a number of gigs for which he might be in town.
Perhaps this will be for a week with Denny Zeitlin and Buster Williams at Joe Segal’s Jazz Showcase, or he might be passing through on a Midwest tour with Trio M (with pianist Myra Melford and bassist Mark Dresser). He may be in for a weekend hit at the Green Mill with his rambunctious quartet featuring alto sax rebel Andrew D’Angelo, or come for a performance at Symphony Center with his tasteful Arts & Crafts quartet, which currently features organist Gary Versace, bassist Dennis Irwin and trumpeter Terell Stafford.
Wilson has emerged as one of the most in-demand and versatile musicians in jazz, comfortable as a bandleader or as a sideman, at home in a grassroots touring band playing small venues or performing at Carnegie Hall. He travels well, and has energy for more. After his set with the Lee Konitz nonet at the 2006 Chicago Jazz Festival, he lit a subtle fire at jam sessions at the Jazz Showcase and then dipped into the Velvet Lounge to contribute to another brand of improv action, all of this just hours before hopping a plane to Paris to play with Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra.
“There’s a period where I played with Wynton Marsalis and then a few nights later with John Zorn at The Stone during one of his improv invitation nights,” said Wilson 42. “I loved them both. I don’t see the difference. They both create a great sound and put out what they are doing, and it feels like their sound is coming out of the drums. That is one of my favorite things to think about, that somebody else’s instrument is coming out of mine or hopefully mine is doing the same. There are both sides and I don’t judge it; the lines are drawn less and less now with guys like Don Byron and Dave Douglas saying there is nothing wrong with swing.”
Perhaps this is why Wilson refuses to apologize for the old-school version of “Tenderly” on this new Arts & Crafts album, The Scenic Route (Palmetto).
“Terell swings like crazy on that,” Wilson said. “This record doesn’t have any Radiohead or Bjork. Nothing against that, but that’s run it’s course too. Arts & Crafts started out as a more straightahead-not to use that word because I hate it-more of a ‘conventional jazz’ thing. But now with Dennis doubling on clarinet and Gary playing accordion, plus adding vocals and trying different things, it’s met the quartet in the middle; Both groups swing and have these interesting personalities, just with different instrumentation.”
“The important thing is not to squelch what feels natural,” he continued. “I love dissonance and I love consonance. I don’t need to classify. Lord strike me down if I ever do an ‘electric project’ and call it that. Bands can play all the music they want to play.”
Wilson’s tastes are eclectic if not quixotic. On his various recordings, he’s enlisted a live-stock auctioneer, coined such secular titles as “Schoolboy Thug” and “Big Butt,” romanced with “Strangers In The Night” and Nelson Cavaquinho’s “Beija Flor,” and included traditional pieces “All Through The Night” and “Sweet Betsy From Pike” among sets of choice bop and Ornette Coleman tunes.
“In this day and age, you grow up being attached to certain styles but you never know when you may turn the corner, turn the radio on, or hear a concert that may make you go, ‘Holy moly! I’ve never heard anything like that before,’” he said. “In my Wichita days, in order to play a lot I played anything-r&b, blues (it came in handy later that I could play a shuffle with Dewey [Redman]), ballads, the Great American Songbook-knowing those tunes, the words, the feelings. I love playing with singers.”
It’s cliche to talk of being “in the moment” in improvised music, but Wilson exemplifies that presence. The catchy mix of mischief and diligence, humor and reverence that he imparts into his music has made him popular across genre lines. Attention to the total presentation of his art, through communication as well as technique, derives from his painter/writer mother, who did not believe in doing things in halves.
Wilson’s former boss, the late saxophonist Redman, used to say, “I’m just a country boy from Texas trying to make it in the big city.” Wilson empathizes with this, given his rural background. As a geeky 10-year-old in Knoxville, Ill., he’d tap paradiddles on milk churns or clout an orange sparkle snare in duet with his saxophone-playing brother, Mark, at 4-H Club or PTA meetings. His journey to the Big Apple started inauspiciously on the back of an apple cart. Wilson refers to his formative years as more or less the end of an era.
“There was still enough live music going on in the country so that I got to play,” he said. “It wasn’t like we were buring Monk tunes at the local tavern but were playing standards-a period in the late ‘70s early ‘80s when people would still go out and hear those tunes for dancing or whatever.”
When his brother left for college he sent Wilson Sonny Rollins’ Love at First Sight with advice to check out Al Foster’s drumming. “When I went to visit him Minneapolis I went to this record shop and heard that ride cymbal of Philly Joe Jones through the speakers in the store,” he said. “It was from a Prestige twofer of Miles Davis’ Workin’ and Steamin’. I had to have it.”
Wilson soon developed a passsion for jazz. Nevertheless, he didn’t follow the normal path of study, attending Wichita State University primarily because of J.C. Combs was on the faculty. “Combs was one of the most creative people I’ve been around, hands down,” Wilson explained. “We did these wild pieces, including a composition by Walter Mayes for professional wrestlers and percussion ensemble, or maybe it would be for cloggers and percussion, or pinball machines. His concerts were always sold out and he had this amazing entrepreneurial spirit that was instilled in me, a ‘If you build it, they will come’ mentality.”
Combs was a strong enough teacher that he wasn’t afraid to import other talent. Wilson met Buster Williams at college, as well as mentors like Jeff Hamilton and Peter Erskine, and he got to play with Charlie Rouse. In 1984 he received a National Endowment for the Arts grants to study with Ed Soph on the East Coast. This was when his career started to jump into gear.
“I was staying in Boston that summer but also came down to New York,” Wilson said. “I heard Billy Higgins for the first time. I heard Elvin [Jones] at the Village Vanguard and Philly [Jo Jones] at Lush Life on the same night! I heard Airto, Victor Lewis. I am still amazed when I walk past the Empire State Building or when I play at the Vanguard. I walk in and think, ‘Wow, this is a long way from Knoxville.’ But in a certain way it’s not. If you want to do this, you find a way.”
Wilson, who currently resides with his family on Long Island, returend to Boston in 1987 with his wife, Felicia, a classical violinist. While Felicia was in school at the New England Conservatory of Music, Wilson was on the road with such group as Russ Gershon’s Either/Orchestra and saxophonist Charlie Kohlhase’s quartet. These groups developed Wilson’s sensibility to programming music, and reminded him that it was possible and permissible to attempt the gamut of styles in a single set.
While playing in a quartet with Gershon at Nightstage in Cambridge, Mass., Wilson was approached by Redman, who was playing upstairs at the venue. He liked Wilson’s playing and told him to “keep in touch.” Taking this comment to heart Wilson called Redman every month for a year-and-a-half until he joined his band, with which he remained for a dozen years until Redman’s death last year.
Wilson’s proactive effort to work with Redman indicates that his resume is curated by his personal taste. Has he actively sought out the musicians with whom to work rather than wait for the phone to ring?
“Yes and no. It comes mostly by recommendation and totally by chance,” he said. “But with Dewey, when somebody says that to me, that he wanted to play, I took it seriously. I tell guys, if someone says to you, ‘keep in touch,’ you should call them. I don’t know if I’ve done it with anyone else per se, but I’m so glad I did it with him. In the dozen years I played with him I learned so much.”
As he gleans wisdom from each artist with whom he plays, Wilson also injects his own genial style into the mix as a sideman. It’s no accident that Wilson is frequently heard in small-group contexts with the most discerning musicians. Pianists Zeitlin and Bill Mays, soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom and bassist Haden have enjoyed the levity Wilson has introduced to their music.
“I’ll never forget this one gig with Matt and Mark Dresser at the Jazz Standard back in 2001,” Bloom remembered. “We were playing a piece of mine called ‘Denver Snap’ and it came to the drum solo. Matt floored us by picking up the snare drum and playing the entire solo strumming with his hands on the snares like a washboard. I don’t think I’d seen anything like that since [Ed] Blackwell. Matt is special. If you were going on a dangerous mission into uncharted space he’s the drummer you’d want in charge of the warp drive engines. Playing with him, he visualized the energy of the drum set more like a spiral-a solar system of gravitational forces.”
Zeitlin had a recent gig with Wilson at the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles. “He started off a piece with two boxes of electronic crickets he had purchased in Chinatown,” the pianist said. “Any object in his environment is a percussion instrument. He hardly needs a drum set. You’re just as likely to see him rhythmically squeezing an empty plastic water bottle with one hand while the other plays the snare with a towel.”
Haden, who first came into contact with Wilson when he got a phone call from him asking for advice about the impending birth of his triplet sons (Haden has triplet daughters), evenutally asked Wilson to join his group. “Last December we had a gig at Yoshi’s in Oakland,” Haden said. “Matt had been out shopping and had bought his battery-operated Santa Claus drummer. He set it off on his drums and let it take a solo. Another time he took this marching snare drum and during his solo, marched out into the audience then into the street. One time in 2004 with the Liberation Music Orchestra, we were playing Ornette’s ‘Skies of America’ and Matt started singing ‘America The Beautiful’ in the middle of it. He’s a complete musician who listens.”
“If the music isn’t happening then the presentation ain’t gonna happen,” Wilson said. “But why not draw some people in and have it be whatever you want? If you can make people laugh, you can make the cry, though if you are only in that middle ground, you are not doing either. To do a little bit of all of that is a successful engagement.”
But when he spearheads his own musical projects, does Wilson have to swallow a vial of mischief elixir after so much dutiful sideman activity?
“I get to express myself in all the contexts I play,” he responded. “With the quartet, it can be the most mischievous band and also the most romatic-as weird or theatrical or gritty as it gets, the way those cats play ballads-whew! I love that. I don’t feel slighed playing drums on ballads. I love that real romantic, feminine side of the music, the spaciousness, the sound wrapping around and how itweaves. I’m not so inclined to have something always burn.”
As a drummer, what percentage does he feel insurgent and what percentage reactionary?
“I don’t go in with an agenda,” he claimed. “We have roles. I know that I want to make the song feel good and everyone comfortable just like everybody would be I don’t know if I have an agenda like, here it is man, check it out! If it is, I’ve tried to steer away from that but I like reaction in music.”
In 1996 Wilson started his association with producer Matt Balitsaris at Palmetto Records, recording his debut as a leader, As Wave Follows Wave, which featured Redman, bassist Cecil McBee and organist Larry Goldings.
The CD gave notice of a unique talent, with its use of space, spoken word and painterly percussion. Wilson milked the tone of his toms to mimic an old porch swing in the breeze, featured pastoral material such as “Sweet Betsy From Pike,” wrote a beautiful elegy for Don Cherry showcasing Redman and ended the disc with a juvenile jam on toy instruments. The latter experiment presages Wilson’s fascination with the untrammeled imagination of a child’s mind, evident of “Swimming In Trees,” a compositions sparked by a comment from his daughter on the superb quartet disc Humidity (Palmetto, 2003).
Another elder, Lee Konitz, joined Wilson on his sophomore Palmetto outing, Going Once, Going Twice. Wilson has since recorded in duet with the alto saxophonist more than once (notably Gone with the Wind Suite, Steeplechase, 2002). “Matt has a melodic sound, and I like his time feel,” Konitz said. “I never feel with Matt that he is hitting the drums as such. He has a magic touch and I enjoy his exclamations.”
Such exclamations of joy on the bandstand are captured on Konitz’s New Nonet (OmniTone). Wilson defends his involuntary bouts of spontaneous laughter. “I can’t help it, ever since I had kids,” he said. “Life throws you a lot of mysteries, and it’s a gift to be able to get up there and play. I’m going to have fun and react to it and encourage folks. It’s not artifical. Louie Bellson always has a smile on his face when he plays. Billy Higgins had a smile, and Dizzy Gillespie-they looked like there were enjoying it. I wasn’t thrown all this opportunity I have now at 22 years old. I took a while, so I don’t take it for granted. The more you invite people into the moment, the more you put your fellow musicians and the audience at ease and share the moment, then you create this big fantastic feeling.”
When Wilson plays he’s Janus-faced, vacillating from knitted brow to beaming grin. He juggles mood without compromising whim. He’ll attentively punctuate a complicated head with polite but skittery beats or imitate a turntablist, scratching the snare with the back of a stick. He’ll flip from hilarious puerile conceits like “Schoolboy Thug” and “Go Team Go!” to the reflection of “Daymaker” or the hymnal “Beginning of a Memory” (a valediction for his mother).
Wilson’s ability to maintain balance in a hectic work and family life mirrors his equilibrium at the drums. He manages, uncannily, to keep everything buoyant without antagonizing anyone and remains wide open to what is offered musically.
The new Arts & Crafts disc hints at the political undertones of the group’s previous release, Wake Up! To What’s Happening, and echoes Haden’s openhearted offensive against the depressing tide of world events brough on by misguided governmental policies. Wilson and his band even sing John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” without a trace of marketing guile.
Originality and grounded quirkiness have kept Wilson’s conception from becoming too wholesome and winsome, and made it hip to be the nice guy again (though a mass of natural talent has helped). The joy of the fellowship he finds in music has rewarded Wilson with his most unusual trait-an absence of bitterness. This is rare among the travails of the jazz life.
“Mel Lewis told me a long time age, ‘I never have a band night, I just have better nights than others,’” he said. “That’s the way I think about what I do.”