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Jon Cowherd: Jon Cowherd: Mercy
Pat Metheny
guitarb.1954
Lyle Mays
keyboards1953 - 2020
Pianist/keyboardist Jon Cowherd is nowhere near as joined at the hip to
Brian Blade
drumsb.1970
Cassandra Wilson
vocalsb.1955
Lizz Wright
vocalsb.1980
Kellylee Evans
vocalsOr so it seemed. Mercy, released digitally in late 2013 by ArtishShare and only now seeing hard CD issue as a collaborative effort with Blue Note, supports the idea that the Fellowship Band may be Cowherd's true home but, at the same time, it also suggests that there's even more to this talented composer/performer than his work with Fellowship has already amply demonstrated.
It's true that a good proportion of the eleven Cowherd compositions on Mercy could easily fit within Fellowship's combination of folkloric aesthetic, unfettered collaborative freedom and adherence to melody in whatever guise it may be found. Still, he has rarely been afforded this much space to stretch on record, though anyone who has seen the band in the past few years—in locations as far apart as Oslo, Norway and Ottawa, Canada—knows, as it has slowly whittled down from its original septet to a leaner quintet, that Cowherd has assumed an even great role in performance, both as a soloist and as a harmonic colorist whose voice is as definitive of the group's overall complexion as the other members of a band who have, over the past 17 years, truly become brothers: along with Blade, bassist
Chris Thomas
b.1963
Melvin Butler
saxophone
Myron Walden
saxophone, altob.1972
Still, while there's little on Mercy that couldn't easily be refitted for Fellowship, Cowherd's decision to recruit bassist
John Patitucci
bassb.1959
Bill Frisell
guitar, electricb.1951
It's also significant in providing a context where Frisell delivers, if not his finest work in recent years—that would be a difficult challenge when rendered against his own work in so many different contexts, most recently debuting his impressive Guitar in the Space Age! project at the TD Ottawa Jazz Festival, along with a fantastic revision of his music for Buster Keaton's 1925 silent film Go West the following evening—then certainly some of the most atypical work in a long time.
Frisell's gritty and angular work on the fiery "Postlude," for example, is the closest he's come to attaining the climactic power and structural beauty of one of his most memorable solos ever on
Don Byron
clarinetb.1958
Of course, an artist's music doesn't necessarily have to reference where he or she comes from—in particular from a pianist born in Kentucky, schooled in New Orleans and who now calls New York City home. No, not all of Mercy references those early roots—the album-opening "The Columns" a cornucopian blend of his many travels—yet there does remain something inherently folkloric about songs like the far gentler "Baltica," where Frisell's rich-toned yet twangy guitar entwines perfectly with Cowherd's confident but ever-sensitive lyricism and similarly collaborative nature. A feature for Patitucci—who has become an increasingly important player of his generation largely through his collaboration (alongside Blade) in
Wayne Shorter
saxophone1933 - 2023
There are also more through-composed pieces like "Surrender's Song," a rubato tone poem where Frisell manages to double Cowherd's bittersweet melody while, at the same time, creating the perfect accompaniment to the pianist's brief solo. And while acoustic piano is his main instrument here, just as on the Fellowship Band's Landmarks, Cowherd again turns to mellotron for a curious duo with Frisell, "Seconds," combining wavering flutes, swirling electronics, dissonant harmonics, gentle power chords and other quirky guitarisms that act as a palette-cleanser for Mercy's closing two tracks: the lovely waltz-time "Lowertown," where Cowherd reconciles his own roots with Lyle Mays' more decidedly Midwestern Wyoming upbringing; and the atmospheric "Four Rivers," where the pianist seems as connected at the hip with Frisell as Mays was, for most of his career, with the guitarist's relative contemporary, Pat Metheny.
While Cowherd's birth date isn't listed anywhere, it's a safe bet, since he was schooled in New Orleans where Blade was also educated (at the city's Loloya University), that they're both approximately the same age, placing the pianist in his early-to-mid-forties. That's a long wait to finally put out an album under his name but, with the Fellowship Band such a strong representation of Cowherd's identity—despite the pianist's many extracurricular activities—neither is it a particular surprise. It certainly seems a certainty, at this juncture, that the Fellowship Band will continue—the bond between these five men being so strong, by now, that it's hard to imagine anything breaking it up. But given that band's relatively diminutive output (just four albums in 16 years), now that Cowherd has made that all-important first leap with Mercy—an album inexorably tied to Fellowship but, at the same time, a departure in its emphasis and so strongly predicated on the remarkable chemistry shared by these four players who are connected in so many ways—it would be a real shame if this were to be a one-off event.
And the chemistry shared amongst these four players is no coincidence; instead, it's the sum total of working together in various combinations, just never in this particular one, with Blade representing a connective thread; in addition to his work with Cowherd in the Fellowship Band and his relationship with Patitucci in Shorter's quartet, Blade also toured with Frisell and the perennially undervalued
Sam Yahel
organ, Hammond B3With music this well-conceived and a band so telepathically connected, it may have taken Cowherd a long time to release an album under his own name, but with Mercy as the result, it's been well worth the wait; hopefully there won't be such a long one for the follow-up. ">
Track Listing
The Columns; Mercy Suite Part One; Mercy Suite Part Two; Mercy Suite Part Three; Postlude; Baltica; Surrender's Song; Newsong; Seconds; Lowertown; Four Rivers.
Personnel
Jon Cowherd
pianoJon Cowherd: piano, Wurlitzer, electric piano, mellotron; Bill Frisell: electric and acoustic guitars; John Patitucci: acoustic bass; Brian Blade: drums.
Album information
Title: Jon Cowherd: Mercy | Year Released: 2014 | Record Label: ArtistShare
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Jon Cowherd
Extended Analysis
John Kelman
ArtistShare
United States
New York
New York City
pat metheny
Lyle Mays
Brian Blade
Cassandra Wilson
Lizz Wright
Kellylee Evans
Chris Thomas
Melvin Butler
Myron Walden
John Patitucci
Bill Frisell
Don Byron
Wayne Shorter
Sam Yahel
Jon Cowherd: Mercy
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