What a great night to be kickin’ it in San Francisco. You know the nights when there’s zero traffic on 101, getting across the bridge there’s just enough fog to notice, Geary is flowin’ easy to Fillmore and there’s always plenty of $5 parking. Entering Yoshi’s and finding my favorite seats available, we find the room filled with incredibly like-minded loud jazz fans and the very few girlfriends who came along.
And then it began.
Oz Noy, Dave Weckl, and Darrel Jones began working through material from Oz’s latest release “Twisted Blues”. Darrell was reading most of the tunes and seemed cautious at times, Dave didn’t use charts but you could see him thinking deeply about where the trio was going next, and rightly so. Check the album, it’s twisted!
So this guy, Oz. Now I’d seen his name listed for the clubs in New York and saw that he was playing with some of the best rhythm section players out there, but not until last night did I begin understanding what Oz is. Oz is bad ass!
Firstly, his outfit; worn jeans and t-shirt. Classic “fusion head” attire.
Second, his axe. Cosmetically, the guitar was worn from extreme use in all the right places, and the player brought it to life, again. Now I don’t claim to know anything about the inner workings of guitars, so I’ll tell you that the sound(s) he pulled from this thing, granted with the use of an array of stomp boxes, and the means used to extract the sounds took me away from gawking at Weckl and wishing I “could do that”. A player who players come to see ‘cause we respect the time that’s been put in to earn our respect. Then there’s the player’s respect for the art. In this case, the blues. Now I don’t claim to know anything… well you see where I’m going here, but Oz knows blues! I’m sure of it! I can hear his heroes when he plays and though he’s not breaking a lot of ground yet, his reverence for these heroes and commitment to continued gigging as a way to move towards the goal of being able to tell his blues to the audience really has made me stand up and take notice.
Oz plays the blues and he’s put a twist on it that the jazz musicians can further feed on. Still steeped in groove, the twists come in the form of deceptive chord cadences and rhythm modulations inside the swing. Not knowing how this guy composes or what he presents to his players, I give a lot of credit to his side men for pulling off these twists, but I feel much of it is pre-thought in Oz’s head. Again, check the album.
Lastly, the groove. I always walk away from the blues thinking I’ve got no idea how to play in that pocket. This trio’s ease with the time, the places they settled with the grooves, the unhurried presentation of the sometimes crazy and at others times quiet and calm tunes was so cool to hear and really insightful to watch. You just can’t hurry the blues and expect to be convincing.
The take away? Take your time so the story gets told.
More on the latest release; http://youtu.be/gmWgieU6V8g
I've got to gripe just a bit here about the patrons trying to get their personal videos of the show. This was my first show where I was disturbed to have so many screens popping up for a few minutes only to have the floor manager walk by and ask again that they don’t video the performance. It just seemed like these guys were missing the show in order to capture the show for later. This article articulates the point as well; http://www.fastcompany.com/1718250/keith-jarrett-save-your-soul-turn-off-your-gadget
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