JMP: IT'S JUST TOO MUCH IN ONE HIT

Photo by Greg Kessler

I recently had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Jamie Masefield about the Jazz Mandolin Project and its latest album, Jungle Tango, at one of his shows in Northern Virginia. As it turns out, this album has been an ongoing process that actually began more than two years ago up at Trey’s barn in Vermont. Apparently JMP was in the studio for a week, recording what would become their studio effort and crafting it with love for quite an extended period of time, until everything was in place to unleash it upon our souls. That tenacity and devotion should be an indicator to anyone that what awaits them on the disc is something very special. There could be no way for an artist of Jamie’s caliber to devote that much attention and love to the creation and mastery of recorded music and have it not be worth a dedicated ear.

In my opinion, Jungle Tango is easily one of the greatest explorations of the ongoing musical adventure of life, and required listening material for the astute audiophile. After I sat through the band’s sound check, which included a marvelous perspective on “Third Stone From The Sun,” I asked Jamie about those recording sessions and was curious to know what, if anything, they had planned as far as songs were concerned when they decided to record. He said, “We had a handful of actual songs. And we also wanted to get the best improvising on the CD as well. And at that point we were very much into a kind of drum & bass jungle type of improvisation that we wanted to capture, so all those things are on the CD.”

I asked him what it was about those sessions that initiated such a long process of creation for the band after having been in the studio for only seven days. He energetically divulged:

“Well first of all there was a lot of material to choose from. And I changed my mind a number of times about what made the cut and what didn’t make the cut. And if I had been in a rush the CD would have sounded a lot different than it does now. But since we really took our time, things kept changing and I think that was really all for the better. I axed a couple of things and brought in one or two other pieces of music. Basically the mission was to find the best grouping of songs that seemed to be interconnected; that all had a similar aesthetic to them. And so that changed a bit. And then we also edited stuff. As a matter of fact we edited some things one week before the CD was manufactured. So, over that period of time lots of little tinkerings took place.”

Photo by Matt Earhart

I had to ask him to discuss a little more about what some of the post-recording process was about. He explained in more detail:

“The things that we wanted to accomplish on this CD was that we wanted to put music on it that really sounded like nothing else, that was exciting and unique to us, and those were the key characteristics that provided the cut line for what made it and what didn’t. For instance, we played ‘Milestones’ by Miles Davis in that session too and we ended up putting that out on After Dinner Jams. We just though that ‘Milestones’ didn’t belong on this CD because we have all heard various renditions of jazz standards many times and this CD just wasn’t about that. So that was the kind of thing that didn’t make the cut. Basically things that did make the cut were the moments that just seemed as if all our minds were really one mind; that it was just really clicking in a special way. So more typical things didn’t make it onto the CD. Things that we thought were special and unique to us did.”

Photo by Scott Smith

The album for me predominantly conjures up nightmarish images of maniacally sinister knife-wielding clowns on parade, dancing and pirouetting under a morass of flashing colors and insanely gianormous boots, hammer pants and bloodied spherical noses. A klezmer-esque vibe initially shocks you as you are catapulted through the first few tracks alone, which whistle like a bomb that just blows you out of your skull and cracks open your body, your spirit taking off in this sort of cosmic rush in which you have to stay focused to wander within that realm. That’s been my overarching experience with learning the Jungle Tango.

There is a complexity in the music that reflects their approach and the Jazz Mandolin Project was very much in tune with that energy. They offer the listener a glimpse into the other side and channel some kind of raw, living power and that really comes through the music, especially if as a listener you are able to get into the space. I was curious to hear Jamie’s thoughts on what I perceived as a particularly unified sound on the album in being very haunting and he seemed to agree.

“The CD has kind of an eerie feeling to it. In some places it’s a little spooky. In fact, four of the songs, ‘Freddy,’ ‘Ipanema’s Sister,’ ‘Pointillism’ and ‘There’s A Pipe In The Cellar’ are all part of one 25 minute jam that happened the first night of recording. And afterwards we just couldn’t top that jam. Whenever someone would walk in and say, ‘Well play me some of the stuff!’ we always would take them to this 25 minute jam and everyone loved it.

“There was a lot of talk about just plopping a 25 minute long jam, because we thought it was perfect, on the CD, and after a lot of consideration which was part of that two year period. I said, ‘It’s just too much in one hit.’ And so we cut it into four logical chunks and dispersed them throughout the whole album. So that jam really had a crystalline quality to it where everything was so sharp and right on. It was our best jam of the whole seven days, and that makes up a good portion, probably about half, of the CD.”

Photo by Matt Earhart

I remarked to Jamie about something that I thought was peculiar about the jam-oriented scene and how it often inculcates jazz, perhaps to make up for some of its more lackluster music.

“Sometimes I feel that in the ‘jamband’ world things can get sappy, just too sappy for my taste,” he said. “Everybody’s trying to make the fans happy in the typical sense of the word. I just think that there are so many emotions that we all experience in life and that we can draw upon in our music. You know Picasso’s paintings weren’t really happy, or Van Gogh’s weren’t really happy. All the greatest artists go for the full palette.”

As with any true musical art, the listener needs to pay attention carefully so as to soak up the myriad of flavors and activity and this album is no exception.

Photo by Ian Stone

“I think this album is a strong statement. I think this CD is a challenge to the listener, but I’m hoping that the improvisations and energy are strong enough that people understand it. It is obviously not just trying to please everybody. It’s saying, ‘This is what we believe in. This is our hunch about what we think is hip.’ And we’re not watering it down. We’re not compromising at all. It’s a very naked thing to do.

“But man, if there is any scene to do it in it’s the jam scene, ‘cause that’s where all the open-minded people are. I think that’s why they come to this music because everybody involved in the whole scene is real. Everybody is making an effort to be very open-minded and honest and respectful. It’s a good place to be.”

To hear him talk about the creation of this lofty sonic endeavor reveals a wondrous sense of passion for music and a reverence to its power of transformation. Jamie touched on that:

“I also think that I will never make another CD like this again, or at least not for a long time. I feel like this is the end of a process. I don’t think my next album will sound anything like that. I don’t think we can take that aesthetic much further. Not that we have accomplished everything there is to accomplish, but we just really delved in deep and I think that the feeling is at least for me, that now I want to move onto other sounds and experiences and music to share with the fans.

“I mean the process started a little bit in Xenoblast, that you could hear us getting interested in more of a jungle, drum and bass thing and then After Dinner Jams is from the same session as the new CD and that has part of this sound, this live sound, and then this new album is kind of our crown jewel and now I think we really need to investigate new things.”

Over the years I have been very curious about what it is that the Jazz Mandolin Project understands improvisation to be, and Jamie enthusiastically piped in describing the approach to musical fluidity:

“One of the analogies that I have always thought of with JMP and trio music in general is that playing in a trio format is like a stool that has three legs and if one of the legs gets cut off, if one of the legs isn’t functioning, then the stool falls over. So you have to have those three points of connection to make the pieces work and that is really evident in the improvising that we do on this CD.

“For instance, the second piece called ‘Freddy’ is an improvisation and what you often hear is a complete change of gears, like the music is going along on a groove and then it seems to switch naturally into something else. What often happens is that we’ll get some kind of repetition going, some loop, and how people will leave the repetition while the other one stays on it so you get an overlapping and morphing, can be because everybody is not changing at once. Sometimes we do, but it’s this overlapping process that we’ve been developing.”

This kind of dialogue can often be very stilted and awkward, but Jamie made it easy, often bridging the gaps in discourse with an effortless ease much in the same way his playing flows. However, the understanding that the limits of language are so pervasive so as to make such communication about what music is and how such responses are ineffable was not remiss, as he continued:

“Music is sound organized in space. So we’re using our minds to organize this sound and we’re doing it in a group way so we’re all contributing to it. And we’re organizing the sound that just comes from I think, really our humanity and what we gravitate toward. So it is a very abstract thing to talk about.”

The conversation naturally had me curious as to what he thought about the exchange of energy between the musicians and the audience and he stared off recollecting years of experience, coalescing them into a few palpable moments in his mind:

Danton Boller Photo by Scott Smith

“When you walk out onstage and maybe the place is maybe not too filled and people are kind of holding back, or even if it is filled and you come out and you think that you played great stuff and you get no reaction from them and you look down at them and you see them kind of looking around, you feel a sense of disappointment. Whereas obviously on the other hand, if you go out and you play a tune and you get a great reception it just warms you up.

“So you always want to have it be that but I also think that you can’t always expect the crowd to float you. Cause they’re the ones paying the money to come see you do something and I feel strongly that it doesn’t matter if the crowd seems into it or not, it’s our job to take things to the next level.

“But there are times when we’re just hooking up and you feel like the audience is hooked up as well. That’s something that we experience in Japan. At first I didn’t think that they were that into it, but then as we played longer I started to get the sense that they were just very disciplined and focused listeners and that they really were connected and then that really inspired me. So it was as different experience.”

With the festival season dancing eagerly upon all of our minds, I was interested in hearing his thoughts on the differences in the energy and flow of music with an intimate JMP show like State Theatre in contradistinction to a festival like the All Good Music Festival. He went on to describe their uniqueness:

Photo by Matt Earhart

“There again, there are lots of pros and cons. Sometimes when the weather is perfect and you’re playing well and the people in front of you are loving it, I just have these moments of elation where I just feel lucky that I am the guy standing up here playing my music with the wind blowing against my face.

“One time we played this jazz festival gig outdoors with Bela Fleck in Manhattan and while I was playing I could look up and see the skyscrapers and there was a full moon that came up over the skyscrapers while I was playing. All these people were there and I just felt like it was one of the greatest moments of my life that I was really in the middle of the action. So the festival thing can be really powerful.

“But then on the other hand, to have a show all to yourself where you get to play for the crowd and get on friendly terms with them for two to three hours and have it be your thing and not just have an hour set where you try to give them everything you got and really razzle dazzle ‘em… Sometimes that’s just too forced and a nice, ‘Evening with…’, where you can really relax and get into all kinds of different stuff and have a more intimate experience, is great. I love ‘em both.”

I wanted to hear a little more about the live setting and its effect on people and what it takes to elicit the pure, unadulterated power of music and he went on with an almost childlike fervor and excitement:

Photo by Matt Earhart

“I have always said about JMP that we try to take risks. Because when you’re doing things spontaneously you have to take risks and that’s what makes it in the moment. Every show is different and unique and people hopefully walk away thinking that something special happened that they get to take with them that its not happening every night just this way it happened just this way, tonight.

“And there is nothing better than meeting somebody on the road and them coming up and saying, ‘I saw you in blah blah blah. Remember when you guys did this, that, and the other thing?! I’ll never forget that in my whole life!’ That’s what makes my day. When I hear someone say that, that it really made an impression on them. So we try to take risks.

“The risks don’t always work out. That’s why it’s a risk. Sometimes it connects. You know you jump off a cliff and sometimes it hooks up and sometimes it doesn’t. With regards to the new disc, because we were in the studio and had plenty of time these are examples of moments where everything hooked up. Where our minds were really in sync and things just happened the way would hope and guess that they might happen.”

After a very long wait between albums, the Jazz Mandolin Project have faithfully endeavored to jump the abyss of our collective musical consciousness and deliver one of the most astounding collections of music from the intergalactic fringe of the mind’s eye. Jungle Tango is an emblematic resource for the devotee of the improvisational tradition of living music and is a miraculous testimonial to the force of the boundless healing energy found within its inspiring sounds. It has been well worth the wait.

Laurin Wollan
JamBase | Northeast
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