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By Dennis Cook
Benevento/Russo Duo |
"Every time we get on stage it's fun. We don't take ourselves, or each other, very seriously. I think that's what keeps the pressure there," says Joe Russo, the percussion end of The Duo, a symbiotic pairing with flipped-out keyboard wiz Marco Benevento. There's the unmistakable play of surprise on their faces as they make music - a kinetic exuberance that carries over to the crowd and has been a major factor in their meteoric rise in the live music ranks. "We're able to throw curveballs at each other, and we're not worried about anything. It's a complete abandonment of everything when we're on stage, and I think that's what makes it fun for audiences to watch. If we mess up, we just laugh and talk shit about each other. Nobody dies if you fuck up, so we're not afraid of trying things even if the end result is fucking up. It keeps the vibe good, and it feels so good to have a number of people say it seems like we're having a good time on stage. We are! We're the luckiest people in the world – we're playing music and this is our fuckin' job. Sweet! I've had a lot of shitty jobs in my life, and this one is definitely the best."
BEGINNINGS
Joe Russo |
To some, it seemed like the Benevento-Russo Duo came from out of nowhere a few years back, storming festival stages and guesting with a who's who of jam world superstars. The truth is that both had been slogging it in the NYC underground jazz world for some time, Russo with proto-electro jamband Fat Mama and Benevento with the Jazz Farmers. Together, they combine the swing of classic organ-drum combos like Brother Jack McDuff and Idris Muhammad with splashes of video game noises, pretty-paranoid Radiohead exploration, and the big stomp of Zeppelin's John Paul Jones and John Bonham. In a word, they're ballsy.
Benevento & Russo Middle School Picture |
"With us, it was an instant connection. We kind of grew up together in 7th and 8th grade and then didn't see each other for ten years. Maybe it's that history, that underlying connection that made us never have to work for it. In that aspect, we're just lucky to have found each other," remarks Russo.
A lot of musicians shy away from a situation this intimate - a prolonged, exposed conversation with a single other player. With these two, you see the sparks fly every time the lights fall in darkened halls. Russo says, "We really lucked out playing together. It was never a contrived thing. The band started as a means to make $50 each a week playing improvised music at the Knit [The Knitting Factory, NYC]. We realized how fun it was to play with each other. All these unspoken things would happen while we were playing like being on the same page instantly. It's developed more over the years, and it's such a comfortable situation. I've never had that connection with another musician ever."
PLAY PAUSE STOP
Sloppy at times, especially in the early stages, their sound has evolved from pure, gut-level bravura into something more refined. Many aspects remain unconstrained, but something more grounded, more tuneful is taking shape now. Their sophomore studio album, Play Pause Stop, is drenched in bright, yearning melodies and controlled playing. It also doesn't hurt that the album was produced by two major sonic mensches, studio percussion ace Matt Chamberlain (Critters Buggin, Bill Frisell) and Grammy-winning engineer Tom Biller (Kanye West, Fiona Apple). Released in July on the band's own Butter Problems label, the new release moves them a good deal further away from their initial jazz tag.
"We're getting more comfortable with writing songs with a rock idea," observes Russo. "On the last record, we started making the switch from being an improvised instrumental band to trying to compose songs. We listen to all this rock music, so why can't we put this with our music? For a while we kind of set ourselves up as this instrumental jazz band. Then we wondered why should we put any restraints on what we do? On the last record [Best Reason To Buy The Sun], we dabbled in shorter songs with catchy melodies. This has developed into more powerful stuff. This new album is us trying to expand our songwriting vocabulary, not being afraid of any idea, and I think we're getting a lot more comfortable with that."
Benevento/Russo Duo by Kevin Quinn |
The natural inclination is to put their music in the jazz section, but these guys are definitely rock stars. Frequently shirtless and always teetering on the edge, The Duo is no subdued supper club pair reproducing past glories. 30 years back, when artists like Weather Report and Return To Forever were flooding jazz with a very rock-inspired heavy electricity, The Duo would have fit in perfectly. With the bebop purists ruling jazz today, there's less tolerance for mavericks like Benevento and Russo.
"The weirdest time for us was when we started switching between the two (genres)," says Russo. "We played the JVC Jazz Fest one or two years ago, and we started doing all these rock songs and it was really weird. We were men without a country for a while making that transition. From our inception it's been all improv, and now we're really comfortable with where we are. The people who listen to us are comfortable with where we are. We might have lost some of the jazzers, but I think a lot of them came along with us too. Everybody listens to everything these days."
He continues, "There's a kind of dry genre placement of music. People hated when Miles went electric, but it's now regarded as the hippest shit of all time. I'm in no way trying to compare us to Miles! It's just a way of saying change takes time. This record is much easier to file under rock than the last one, which was filed under jazz in some stores and under rock in others so nobody could find our fucking record. Just put it somewhere under 'B'!"
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