EZ, ED & ADD

[raneyjr]

Thought this offramp on Max Miller thread deserved it's own thread

Hey, Sam'l. Just to put in my dos pesatos -

What's it like to record with Eliot? - Pretty much fun. He's a nice cat; during the couple of rehearsals we had in prep for the recording he had, what I thought, were some pretty insightful suggestions as regarded the music. In particular Jon's tune MAPLE WALNUT - there's a lot going on and it's pretty balls-to-the-wall; Eliot suggested playing the melody exposition twice through instead of once. It really seemed to ground the tune more. He's pretty open to whatever the experience is in the studio.

How does EZ's history weigh upon you, if it does? Hmmm. In a way, it doesn't really. At least at this point. Maybe if this had been the first time working together, but since it wasn't....
He's a pretty down to earth cat and, although it's not like he's trying to put you at ease, you just kind of ARE, cause there's no pretense or attitude or whatever.

How's the music, now that you've listened? Well, I'll let Jon chime in on this one mostly. I WILL say -it was some hard f**king music, I left a number of sore spots on a dear and tender piece of my anatomy. But, like the first record, I'm Very Happy to have been able to play on this and it is absolutely positively what I sounded like on that day. Personally, I liked my solo on one take of the ballad (A MUSING) and was pretty happy with one on LOOSE ENDS. There's a number of spots on there that I feel like we did get to a place where we were just playing TOGETHER, and not playing a tune or whatever.

Anyway, here's a coupla fotos of a gig we did with Eliot recently....

[raneyjr]

I'm aware that he's EZ.  That's really the extent of it. I played some with him and Ed MacEachan and I got my self-conscious Bill Evansisms out of my system the first gig He's a very down to earth guy and I appreciate his interest in me and we like playing together.

My reaction to the playing was in two parts. I felt very good by the end of it. I was in severe back pain, so somewhere I "medicated" myself mid-session. But later I found that that my being relaxed doesn't necessarily translate into saying something great-- at least for me. That my expectation up to that point HAD BEEN that I equate being relaxed and comfortable with saying something on the instrument. This was  one more wrinkle in the "impossibility of objective assessment conundrum". I just have no idea how to predict how I sound. And I was so sort of shocked that I didn't like it more and one point--disliking it.  Eliot thought we had a hit on our hands and Ed feels pretty good about his efforts. So I'm the only one doing the suffering artist thing and Ed knows the whole story and feels the cauliflower ear for it.
 
I acknowledge that my music can be difficult to digest and play due to the constant chord shifts and density and sometimes wierd bar lengths.  Most of it to the ear- at least what I have currently given to the world on Waltz for Talia  - makes the music sound easier than it actually was. But that's the achievement. To one degree or another, all of us rely on programmatic language. So in the case of this music, which was more difficult in many ways than WFT, it's very difficult to assimilate without a lot of work and getting the trio to see the vision. In a way I feel that more difficult music spoken in a  "change to change" fashion communicates less than very straight ahead music that is performed in that way.  It runs the risk of sounding obtuse if it really doesn't get in the groove, so to speak. So in my own mind my immediate reaction was that I failed because it was missing the usual drama and coherence that I expect from myself and the sound of the band . It sounded like--yeah some hip chords and some nice turns of phrase but I wasn't really going WOW. My role is to lead the band thru my musical maze dynamically and thematically and at times I felt upon listening that I had not mastered the music enough to do that. I did practice- to the detriment of my back.

But- I'm willing to grant that I could possibly miss some good things or overfocus on the bad things preventing proper assessment of good things. This is why I was begging Ed and Eliot for their opinions.

And now...that I've gotten over the shock of what I wanted it to be not being what it was, I am slowly making an adjustment to my heavy critic's axe towards it and giving it a fair chance. Hejii is giving me the raw tracks in a day or two. Will let you know what happens.

I'm a difficult guy to please. What can I say

Thanks for asking. I'm sure this is WAY too much information

[Sam]

Naw, JR.  That's mighty fine.

I went through a "startlingly similar" process with my second CD.  Maybe even worse:  I had brought people in from out-of-town for one weekend and that was THE day and if it didn't happen then all my plans for galactic domination were foiled again . . . . 

The ultimate result of that process was a product in which the growth was not performance-based.  That's jargon for, "I played better on the previous record but I dig the songs more on this one and it's a gas to play with these guys anyway." 

It took me a LONG time to accept that answer.  It almost didn't happen -- the stuff very nearly stayed in the can.  I'm glad I let it out.  I hope that you find the same, Jon.

BEST, SAM