Lineage, Hideaway, Streatham, London

From January 2013. Lineage made their London debut in Hideaway and this was only their second gig ever, the Streatham club had a busy Saturday night feel, as sleet fell softly outside. With a front line of trumpeter Byron Wallen, and saxophonist …

Published: 28 Jan 2020. Updated: 3 years.

From January 2013. Lineage made their London debut in Hideaway and this was only their second gig ever, the Streatham club had a busy Saturday night feel, as sleet fell softly outside.

With a front line of trumpeter Byron Wallen, and saxophonist Tony Kofi concentrating on alto saxophone and soprano sax, with a rhythm section of fine Mulgrew Miller-influenced pianist Trevor Watkis, bassist Larry Bartley, fresh from a date with Skydive at the 606, and UK-based American drummer Rod Youngs, like Bartley and Kofi, a member of the great Abdullah Ibrahim’s band Ekaya.

The Collins Dictionary defines the word ‘Lineage’ as meaning in one primary sense “direct descent from an ancestor, especially a line of descendants from one ancestor”, and both as a diaspora band united in shared musical and cultural approaches, and as stylistic descendants of some of the giants of jazz from the hard bop years and their modern day counterparts, the band succeeds on both fronts as it does on its own terms as top class players. It’s also a meeting of old musical friends, as for instance Kofi and Wallen go way back to the heyday of 1990s hard bop band Nu Troop, and you can tell when two instrumentalists have a close understanding as they know each other’s moves and can read each other’s direction beyond the letter of the closely arranged often intricate material as here. Kofi said he couldn’t think of anyone better to play the trumpet part on his ballad ‘A Song For Papa Jack’, which appeared on Kofi’s acclaimed 2006 album Future Passed, the song dedicated to Tony’s father who died 15 years ago, and Wallen played it beautifully.

Talking to the audience later in the set Wallen made the astute comment: “Music is about relationships”. And that’s something audiences and musicians neglect to remember sometimes, but this band doesn’t in the broader sense even for one moment. Bookended by Woody Shaw tunes, opening with ‘Sweet Love of Mine’ and culminating at the end of the first set in Shaw’s classic mover, ‘Moontrane’ (Byron explained the title by saying amusingly: “Woody Shaw had a dream of Coltrane riding a bicycle on the moon”). Other set highlights were Tony Williams’ ‘Citadel’, heard on the much missed drummer’s 1980s Blue Note quintet album Civilization, here featuring Trevor Watkis on fine form as he was throughout, especially later on his own tune ‘With Substance’, which featured Larry Bartley and the deep throb of his bass was captured accurately by the club sound system, while Youngs’ cymbals were crisp and clear in the body of the big room. This band just has to be heard. SG.

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Melodious Crunk: Gigs from hell

From 2014. Mr Bojangles, you say… Melodious Crunk consults the Robbie Williams songbook There’s a joke in jazz communities that most jazz tunes should replace the word ‘you’ in the title with ‘I’, as jazz musicians can be so self-absorbed. This …

Published: 28 Jan 2020. Updated: 2 years.

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From 2014. Mr Bojangles, you say… Melodious Crunk consults the Robbie Williams songbook

There’s a joke in jazz communities that most jazz tunes should replace the word ‘you’ in the title with ‘I’, as jazz musicians can be so self-absorbed. This leads to some great song titles: ‘I Stepped Out of a Dream’. ‘All The Things I Am’. That sort of thing. Jazz groups can even be competitive within the band, with everyone wanting to play a better solo than the last person, or be the one guy that plays the best solo all night. It’s almost like we’re playing this music for ourselves, to prove to ourselves that we can do this, or playing it for other musicians, to prove to them that we can do this and they can’t. Ultimately, jazz is about showing off. And really, we want to show off to other musicians. Joe Bloggs in the street just doesn’t get those altered dominant runs or that really hip Lydian line we just played. It just sounds like noise to non-musicians, but that’s OK, because we really want to impress other musicians.

This puts the jazz audience in an awkward place. The musician needs them there to play for them and pay the rent. But will they really understand all these great melodic minor runs over the sharpened fifth he’s been working on? Really, he wants a huge crowd of people to tell him he’s great, but also for them to be musically literate. That’s not always the case with jazz audiences, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sure, it’s great when someone comes up and says they really enjoyed your chords or your drum fill, but when a member of the public whose sole interest in jazz is an appreciation says they liked your playing…well, that’s cool too. And always appreciated.

The audience needs the musician there to listen to, to latch onto, to tell them a musical story or lead them on a journey. They might not understand every little nuance from the horn and the significance of that D instead of a D sharp, but broadly, they’re there because they like the music and want to hear more of it. The musically illiterate folks in the audience might just like the vibe of the music, or the overall timbre, but the artist on stage isn’t playing for them. He’s playing for the ones who will really understand it.

And then there are the others. These are the people who appear to stumble into jazz gigs and aren’t quite sure what to expect. All of the anecdotes you’re about to read are, unfortunately, 100 per cent accurate reproductions of actual events.

It was a quiet gig because the World Cup was on. The musicians were sitting around at the time the gig was supposed to start but no one was in yet. Talking about this and that, and football and other musicians. A man walks in and sits himself down beside the musicians. We all got the sense that he wasn’t quite all there – the numerous plastic bags and stilted speech were basically giant flags – but he didn’t mean any harm. He made small talk and then said: “do you have a CD player?” We were taken aback by this. A member of the public has walked in to a gathering of musicians about to perform music and he wants to play his own music? “I have a song I really want you all to hear,” he said. None of us had ever seen this guy at any jazz gigs so we weren’t expecting this. When we replied to the negative he tried telling us about this song his friend had written. And then he walked over to the bar and asked them if they had a CD player. The answer was still no.

He left, looking slightly disappointed. Maybe we missed out on hearing the world’s greatest song for the first time!

It was a quiet gig because… well, it’s a jazz gig. At the 8pm start there was no one in the audience. We ran a few tunes, rehearsed a few tricky passages, and mostly played for ourselves. We were having fun, playing the music we wanted to play and chatting between tunes. No pressure on this gig as we were pretty sure we weren’t getting paid in the first place. A man walked in and looked around as if he was expecting to see a friend there. There was still no one there. “Is this the jazz gig?” he asked. “Yep,” we replied “and you’re the first one here!” The response was a dejected “Ah…” at which point he turned around and left. And no one else came for the rest of the gig.

A house party gig – the musician’s worst nightmare and best friend. Good money, maybe some food, a chance to just play away in the background. But also you could be stuck there until 2am, no food, and getting endless requests for ‘Mr Bojangles’. We were between sets and getting a bite to eat, and the gig was going OK. A woman, who was slightly inebriated shouted out: “Do ye’s know any Elvis? He was the king!” Uh oh, here was trouble. “No, we’re a jazz band,” was our polite yet firm response. “But Elvis was the king of rock and roll,” she insisted. Yes, that’s true, he was. And we’re still a jazz band. “And he was king of jazz too!” No, I’m afraid he wasn’t the king of jazz. “Elvis was the king of everything,” she slurred, heading off with another bottle of wine.” Sometimes the general public just don’t get it, but it’s part of being a jazz player.