Dirty Impound

Stanton Moore is widely known as the driving funk engine for Galactic and Dragon Smoke as well as the slinky lubricant in his organ trio with Robert Walter and Will Bernard, and a controlled mayhem maker with Garage-A-Trois, but his jazz side is something known only to New Orleans locals. Moore rectifies this blank spot for the larger listening public with his utterly winning new album Conversations (released April 15 on DI fave Royal Potato Family), where he shows off his subtle side with pianist David Torkanowsky and bassist James Singleton. The title is aptly chosen as the trio embodies the core charms of the jazz piano trio, where one is allowed to eavesdrop on the intricate, empathetic interplay of three utter pros weaving through a perfectly chosen song cycle.

Conversations slots in nicely between the Ahmad Jamal Trio’s The Awakening and Ellington-Mingus-Roach’s Money Jungle, dense but flowing playing applied to material with clear personal connection for the musicians. While chops abound, it’s what the three weave together that’s most compelling about Moore’s first foray into straight jazz. Yes, Torkanowsky plays with the versatility of John Hicks and the homespun sophistication of Erroll Garner, and Singleton is both a visceral presence and a spinner of terrific, bowed bass elegance in the vein of the great Scott LaFaro, but it’s what happens when you put them with one of the most focused, potent drummers of his generation that really pricks up one’s ears. And it must be noted, Moore is simply stunning throughout, a creature of pure groove but this time with shades of Elvin Jones and Philly Joe Jones. There is so much communication happening in these pieces, including a good deal of listening and laying back in ways that elevate the compositions and what the other players are doing.

New Orleans, understandably, looms large on this album, which came about after the trio woodsheded for a year-and-a-half Tuesday residency at Snug Harbor. The city also surfaces in the song selection, all except one piece written by New Orleans composers including the trio themselves. However, this is no Mardi Gras shindig but a happy reminder of the richly diverse jazz traditions afoot in New Orleans, a river source for so much jazz that emerged elsewhere, something Moore and his compatriots highlight in unforced ways throughout Conversations. This is an album to lean into and luxuriate in, a fresh angle on a player beloved by jam and festival fans, and a bang-up showcase for Singleton and Torkanowsky, who both merit much further inspection for any serious jazz head.

Here’s what Stanton had to say in the Impound’s drummer survey.

read on for Moore’s answers

Ezra Lipp by John Margaretten

No matter what setting the Impound has encountered Ezra Lipp in – the Ben Harper-esque folk-rock of Huckle, the classic rock pounding of Guitarmageddon, gliding behind pop-rock singer-songwriter Sean Hayes, skipping across genres with Lebo & Friends – he appears and sounds utterly natural, as if each of these varied environments is his organic state as a drummer. Versatility like this isn’t wholly uncommon today where working musicians have to figure out all sorts of ways to shake their moneymaker in order to pay the bills, but Lipp exhibits a steely-eyed intensity and no-holding-back intensity that speaks of an artist that gives himself to the moment, open ears craning to catch what the music needs as his body blurs beautifully to tease out the right moves and deliver them right on time. His sense of swing and power remind DI a bit of a young Art Blakey, a pretty swell model of what a fundamentally terrrific percussionist can be. Our gut says Lipp is going to be one of the greats one day, and it’s not going to suck to witness his evolution on the way – Lipp is just plain fun to watch work.

Hogs of Change

While his earlier work has found him working in largely rock-oriented projects, Lipp has revived a duo with flavorful, Benovento-esque keyboardist Eli Geller that’s redolent of jazz, free form improvisation, and melodically-minded experimentation. Hogs of Change, whose roots go back at the University of Vermont during the early 2000s, does bear some resemblance to Marco’s celebrated Duo with drummer Joe Russo [check out Russo’s installment of Gimme Some Skin] in that the pair use similar instrumentation and work in the instrumental format, but where they share deeper, truer kinship with the Duo is in their adventurous, beauty courting ways. Possibilities seem wide open with the Hogs of Change, and that’s always the most exciting thing for a certain stripe of listener who hungers for something more than cultured conformity. They’ve got an appealing nose for good covers (see their treatment of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” below), and like the best duos past, they’re charmingly attentive to one another, pushing and prodding in ways that go beyond practice into places of instinct and rudimentary telepathy, the music rising, falling and snapping in time to their widening eyes or groovily nodding heads. More basically, there’s something happening here and while it may not be exactly clear yet it’s got the unmistakable aura of excellence in budding germination.

Here’s what Ezra had to say in the Impound’s drummer survey.

read on for Lipp’s answers

Seasick Steve

When Seasick Steve gives you some advice it’s best to pay attention. Steve, that ragtag ancient-future bluesman with a beard and untamed pickin’ style to rival the mighty Billy Gibbons, seems to see through shit that fogs up most folks’ windshields. So, when he pulled the North Mississippi Allstars in close for a word they sharpened up. Steve told ‘em, “You are the one, you are the link, you have to keep it primitive and take it to the people.” The band answers this call to arms on the superbly raw, dirt floor ready World Boogie Is Coming (released September 3 on Songs of The South Records and available on iTunes & here).

By turns jubilant and downright nasty, World Boogie Is Coming – a “favorite valediction” of the late, utterly great Jim Dickinson, father of NMA’s Luther & Cody Dickinson – is both steeped in tradition and fired up to break with it, a record that feels as old as horse-drawn carriages and modern as some new upper drug.

Fife & drum sashays with hip-hop-ready beats and sizzurp-y production, all the while teased, spanked and twirled by Luther’s positively lascivious guitar (and other string things) attack. A who’s who of roots and blues musicians throw down including Kenny Brown, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Lightnin’ Malcolm, Duwayne and Garry Burnside, Sid and Steve Selvidge, and legendary longhair Robert Plant, who blows some pretty mean harp.

The whole album speaks to Plant’s notion of being “lashed to the blues,” a calling stronger than mere inclination that’s bound to an electrified landscape of rivers, hills and winding back roads filled with real people living both low ‘n’ lean and high on the hog. World Boogie Is Coming takes them tight ol’ blues and stretches ‘em out with prodding, groping fervor. This feels dangerous, homebrew and straight razors just off-camera, rescuing the blues from their yuppified, sanitized, tidy, white-people-at-a-festival contemporary existence, returning them to a land of dry brush and ice tea where trucks sit up on blocks, hound dogs bark, mosquitoes and cicadas feast, and government men best step lightly less they stumble on a still or a hot plate bubbling Sudafed into something meaner and more profitable. There are good folks here, too – lots of them – but this project is dedicated to un-gussying-up the genre. By reconnecting with the local, poor-as-fuck but alive-as-hell underpinnings and putting them in the same room as 21st century innovations and global-minded awareness of the blues’ presence in places well outside of the American South World Boogie Is Coming lights a beacon for others to gather around and join in keeping this music correct in the most scrumptiously visceral & communal ways.

Cody Dickinson

A big part of the atmosphere here and the NMA’s sound in general is the seductively organic pulse Cody Dickinson generates. It’s so goddamn natural it seems as if the earth is speaking, the rocks and stones transmitting their preferences through Cody’s lanky, giddily pummeling limbs. Weather systems stir in his style, thunder and rain expressing their force and delicacy, and always the man making it happen listening attentively to the players around him as well as the audience taking it in. Cody is sharp as a butcher’s blade, cutting through bullshit to get down to the bone. Put another way, he’s like that insane 100-year-old dude that’s been blowing minds forever in some way, way, way back juke who simultaneously possesses a childlike delight in contemporary rhythm innovations – remember this band cut a Chopped and Screwed EP and their previous few albums showed increasing savvy with up-to-the-minute production techniques. More than any of this wordy flailing, it always seems to DI that Cody is trying to locate the drum inside of others and whack it just right. It’s an admirable mission and one he’s far more successful at than he probably realizes.

Here’s what Cody had to say in the Impound’s drummer survey.

read on for Cody’s answers

Mike Dillon

While critics and “serious” music fans endlessly praise and muse over the likes of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, few pause to savor (and salute) the musicians with a pulse carrying the torch for groovy outsider art-rock-jazz-prog-whatever music. To wit, how master percussionist, persuasive blue-eyed MC, and all around creative dynamo Mike Dillon isn’t universally loved and applauded amongst modern music’s intelligentsia. So be it, the kids who read liner notes, gobble acid, and spend long hours inside Mahavishnu Orchestra, The Beastie Boys, Art Ensemble of Chicago and Minutemen albums are likely already switched onto Dillon and his wayward but ever evolving sounds, be it his pioneering work with Critters Buggin, his role as wicked foil for Les Claypool for many years, guest turns with Polyphonic Spree and Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, a long term gig as Ani DiFranco’s rhythm ace, or any number of countless tangents with saxophonic devil Skerik.

Dillon is restless but dedicated, a digger for treasures in crevices others wimp out on exploring, emerging with a fresh silver grill he’s fashioned with his own mallets and sharp incisors. For as outré as his work can be, he’s a groove machine, teasing out captivating drum parts and ear-snagging vibe licks that make one wriggle like a worm on a hook, the body charged by his zap and slither, taken places by this ridiculously skilled percussionist that one can’t predict but welcome once the trip has gotten underway. Mike D is an imposing figure, carved out of wood like a true Fight Club champion, stage diving (he’s done so a couple times on DI’s Editor/Publisher Dennis Cook) with the sincere lustiness of a young punk and yet handling his various instruments as only a truly practiced and naturally gifted player can. Contradictions abound in Dillon, but almost always in appealing ways, where tradition dances with innovation as just plain freaky energies crackle and hiss within the inner workings. Dillon is the musical embodiment of Mark Twain’s aphorism, “Life is short, break the rules. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably. And never regret anything that makes you smile.”

Mike Dillon Band Studio Debut

His focus for the past year or so is the simply named Mike Dillon Band, where sparks and fur fly as this attuned, instinctive, very young aggregate locks minds and limbs with Dillon. As last year’s killer shows revealed – including two highlight sets from the 2012 High Sierra Music Festival, where the band returns again this year – all of Dillon’s sonic exploration over the years haven’t been as random as one might think given the cool mastication of many flavors he achieves with Carly Meyers (trombone, Moog Taurus pedals, vocals), Cliff Hines (guitar, bass) and Adam Gertner (drums). The depth of this combo continues to thicken as continued touring reveals greater interconnectivity as well as greater openness to experiment individually in this context.

Urn (released September 2012 by the reliably excellent Royal Potato Family), the studio debut of this lineup, is some of the craftiest, most swinging compositions yet from Dillon, a crucial aspect of his talents that’s often overlooked because of his he-man musicianship and undeniable stage presence. While Urn contains some of Dillon’s trademark scatological rhymin’ – he shouts “motherfucker!” a dozen times on the Ween-wishes-they-wrote-it “Leather On” – there are also moments of unvarnished beauty and luminous strangeness in some of the most well conceived pieces he’s ever penned (as well as seen successfully executed by his collaborators). “River Is Burning” is both old timey and extraterrestrial, while “Cedar” is a Middle Eastern tinged cousin to Buck 65 with inspired sax work from guest Mike Southerland, who mixes up Klezmer and Ayler in a most delightful way on this track. Opener “DVS” struts in like Mr. Natural after a good limbering up, stride wide and riding a honking buzz. The impulsive zaniness of Reefer Madness informs the swoop and slide of “Sunny Is Drunk,” and every other cut is an evocative, thought provoking bit o’ fun from one of the most promising, switched-on outfits Dillon’s ever been involved in – and that’s saying something given the man’s pedigree. The Mike Dillon Band is on tour right the fuck now, so check out their itinerary here and get to a show so they can sweat on you and make you gyrate happily!

Here’s what the electric vibraphone, tabla, etc. pro had to say to the Impound’s percussionist survey.

read on for Mike D’s answers

Cochrane McMillan by Suzy Perler

Take a good look at percussionist Cochrane McMillan when he p