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BassDrumBone: The Long Road

By Dan McClenaghan
October 30, 2016
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BassDrumBone

band / ensemble / orchestra

" data-original-title="" title="">BassDrumBone has been in the business of making bold, muscular music for forty years, starting their unusual instrumental collaboration in 1977, and releasing their first album, Ohaspe on Auricle Records, in 1979. Trombonist

Ray Anderson

trombone
b.1952

" data-original-title="" title="">Ray Anderson, bassist

Mark Helias

bass

" data-original-title="" title="">Mark Helias and drummer

Gerry Hemingway

drums
b.1955

" data-original-title="" title="">Gerry Hemingway employ a free form, powerhouse approach—there's not much pussyfooting going on with this instrumentation, in these energized hands. And with The Long Road the group has made its expansive and definitive statement, on two discs. And bring in the guests: pianist

Jason Moran

piano
b.1975

" data-original-title="" title="">Jason Moran and saxophonist legend

Joe Lovano

drums
b.1952

" data-original-title="" title="">Joe Lovano.

The trio members, individually, have collaborated with the likes of

Dewey Redman

saxophone, tenor
b.1931

" data-original-title="" title="">Dewey Redman,

Cecil Taylor

piano
1929 - 2018

" data-original-title="" title="">Cecil Taylor,

Anthony Braxton

woodwinds
b.1945

" data-original-title="" title="">Anthony Braxton,

Wadada Leo Smith

trumpet
b.1941

" data-original-title="" title="">Wadada Leo Smith,

Sam Rivers

saxophone, tenor
1923 - 2011

" data-original-title="" title="">Sam Rivers: a crowd that gives a good idea of the road that BassDrumBone has traveled over it's four decades, and nine previous recordings. The relative Ornette Coleman-eque simplicity of the trio—without the chording instrument—is one of its in-your-face charms, and when they bring in

Jason Moran

piano
b.1975

" data-original-title="" title="">Jason Moran—a flexible sideman if ever there was one—and the spaciousness of the trio recedes, giving way lush harmonic undercurrents and peculiar and beguiling piano soloing. Then they bring in

Joe Lovano

drums
b.1952

" data-original-title="" title="">Joe Lovano—who stays with the tenor sax here. "Blue Ray," with Lovano, sounds like a late fifties Mingus ramble, the tenor sax weaving throaty growls around Anderson's talking trombone.

"Different Cities," penned by drummer Hemingway, is just the trio, on an inexorable, ruminative trudge that slips into slither through the city streets. "Cherry Pickin," with Lovano, begins with a two horn power walk, before the saxophonist involves himself in a circuitous solo, a loopy journey through the orchard looking for the ripest fruits, before trombonist Anderson follows him and points out, stentorian style, the best of the crop. Then the horns squabble, in the best possible way.

BassDrumBone closes the set with a pair of extended live cuts that explore freer territory, sounding loose, reveling in the sounds they are creating, a fitting close to their energized music-making.

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Track Listing

CD 1:
Oh Yeah; Bungle Low; Blue Ray; Kemp; Why Not?; Quompot; Tone L; At Another Time.
CD 2:
Bluish; Different Cities; Cherry Pickin; The Line Up; Land's End.

Personnel

BassDrumBone

band / ensemble / orchestra

Mark Helias: bass; Gerry Hemingway: drums; Ray Anderson: trombone. Guests: Jason Moran: piano (CD 1, tracks 2, 5 ,7); Joe Lovano: tenor saxophone (CD 1, track 3; CD 2 tracks 1, 3).

Album information

Title: The Long Road | Year Released: 2016 | Record Label: Auricle Records

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