A lot of songs on Mutopia are nods or dedications to musicians that have influenced your personal musical development. “One In, One Out,” is for Lee Morgan, “Turiya” is dedicated to Alice Coltrane, “Move Your Rug” is dedicated to Otha Turner. What elements of these songs reflect the artists that you dedicated them to, and how do you incorporate their influence when you’re performing?
“One In, One Out”: I was listening to some of Lee Morgan’s boogaloo stuff, and I just love that group. I’ve always been really into music that moves me, like literally moves me, and emotionally, obviously, as well. One of the things that I feel like a lot of music has lost is that element of dance. I don’t mean in the typical style. Even with Ornette Coleman, you can still dance to Ornette, even though it’s free. What I’m talking about is that movement, that motion within the music. I think that for me in a lot of ways, especially in improvised music, I get really bored at some points—I want there to be that swirl. The idea that we’re supposed to be communicating seems to have gotten lost somewhere. You’re not supposed to be a group huddled around in a circle so that nobody else can understand what you’re talking about. You’re supposed to be a community that flows outward rather than inward.
So, in a lot of stuff I write, I try to keep that in mind. Where is it going? What kind of movement and what kind of motion does it have? I wanted to write a modern-day boogaloo tune, so it’s really inspired about that kind of Lee Morgan stuff. Then I have a DJ in Nashville, Black Cat Sylvester, who Futureman has been working a lot with as well, and I found out about him from some buddies of mine. I had had DJ Logic on Bloom, but I didn’t want to totally revisit having a DJ on the whole thing, but I do like to have these sort of ties that connect the records together. So when I had him come in, I asked him for some ambient stuff and some rhythmic stuff, too and I went in and edited stuff around. It’s kind of a bridge with the old and the more contemporary. It’s kind of a weird form also: it’s a 13-bar, a 12-bar, then a 13-bar, so it’s A-B-A, which is a little strange also. But it’s a really fun thing to play, when it really locks in it feels really, really good.
As far as “Turiya,” I got really into Alice Coltrane’s music for the last number of years—I just think she’s brilliant. All of the Indian influence that’s in there as well. She was a brilliant, brilliant musician, whether it was a harp, piano, her vocal arranging, I find a real kinship in her music. So when I wrote this tune, this is one of the tunes that this bass line came out of also. I ended up writing this tune over the top, and it felt almost like an improvisation, and it’s one of the tunes that’s more of an acoustic nature on the record all the way through, and that kind of feels like where my next record’s going to go, it’s going to be more of an acoustic thing.
But you know, I really wanted her to play harp on that tune, but she passed before that was possible, and that was a big loss for me. I knew she was in the middle of a record, and I was just knocked over by it. That was a big loss for the community, I think. And Turiya was her Hindu name. She studied Hinduism for a long time. I actually got to see her with Ravi, her son, at UCLA. I was out recording a trio called Mondo Trio. After the second night of recording, I saw in the paper that she was playing, and Vinnie [Colaiuta] came out also and Jeff was on drums, it was just ridiculous man. It was a big fundraiser for the John Coltrane Scholarship Foundation. So it was really inspiring to get to hear her live.
For “Move Your Rug,” the original version I did—there’s a little snippet on Bloom that starts the record, that kind of goes into this brass band kind of thing. I felt it was too early to record that tune fully, and I had this other tune that I wanted to put on there, I just didn’t want to laden it down with too much of one particular style of music. When I did that, Otha Turner had recently passed, and I had bought one of his fifes and I had met him a few different times. He was 93 when he passed, and he was a brilliant, brilliant cat. And that’s a whole other discussion about that kind of music, too. Someone sort of suggested that I lay that fife over the top of it.
The full version that’s on Mutopia I wanted it to be a real kind of different version so we recorded it all in the same room, with a drummer from New Orleans, this guy Doug Belote, who sort of has that real sound of the feet, that whole up kind of dance thing. It starts off with this weird intro that’s in 13, and when we were doing it, Doug was like, “this is the second line in 13, I can’t believe it.” It almost has this awkward kind of thing going, but it feels so right, like a pirate dancing with one leg or something. It’s not only an homage to Otha, but also to all the music from New Orleans and that has come up the Mississippi, and it’s got that joy to it and motion to it, that joyful spirit that I love so much.
When we did it, there was a sousaphone player named Joe Murphy that played all that stuff also. The idea was for us to all play together in the middle of it, and the trumpet player couldn’t make the sessions, so I had him overdub, so there was trombone and tuba and just a whole bunch of us, there’s piano and organ on it. So when I was mixing it—Rod was the last one on it, the trumpet player Rod McGaha—felt kind of cluttered to me. So I thought well if I dropped all of the horns except for Rod out of it, then add starting at the bridge and everyone else at the last A, that’s the version that’s on there. I sort of distilled it down from what it was, which was a little bit of a cluster-fuck, into this other thing. And a lot of the success comes from the mix from that tune on the whole record.
My very good friend Richard Aspinwall mixed the whole thing and did a really incredible job. To separate all of the voices and to make them sound like you can listen to them with transparency of the music, that’s a really important thing. So that’s where a lot of it came from. The music of New Orleans has really changed my life and the inspiration of it. It’s music for all occasions, ceremonial music, I guess you would say. And that’s one of the things about listening to African music that has moved me so much over the last 20 plus years also, that there is music for each ceremony for the hierarchy of life.
And it moves me man, it’s incredible, I missed New Orleans before I left in February. It was kind of like, “What is this feeling that I’m having for this city?” And there’s every plan to spend more time there. I was out four or five nights a week sitting-in, every week I was there, I just felt embraced by the community. I fell in love with the musicians, and the people and the food and the struggle. But there’s a real community of people that are working down there and developing ideas, and community and kinship, and I have a lot of great friends down there. My roommate for two years was a saxophone player who got displaced by Katrina, and he’s teaching now at NOCCA, New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, which is a high school program. He’s teaching saxophone there now and I told him the other day, “Those guys are so lucky to have you there,” and he’s brilliant, he’s like an encycolopedia. He’s going to bring to them a whole world of knowledge. And I was already deeply into the music by the time I met him, so he turned me onto a lot of stuff, and visa-versa, I turned him onto a whole lot of world music stuff. So that to me is one of the beautiful things, that musicians can really open each other up to different styles and different concepts in music.
I was playing a tune for a buddy of mine last night by Bert Wilson. Bert is probably one of the greatest saxophone players on the planet, and he’s been in a wheelchair for the past 66 years from polio. Basically, he really can’t leave Olympia. His body is a mess but he plays at a level—I don’t think there’s been anyone who has spent more hours on the saxophone than this guy. He literally lives to play. He keeps his lungs strong, it saved his life when he was young, he started playing clarinet. With polio, most people die from pneumonia, but he was able to keep his lungs strong. It’s a trip, this is a guy that Relix should interview. Bert was one of Lenny Pickett’s instructors, from SNL—the sax player—with that crazy seven-octave range. Lenny talks about him a lot.
Bert was playing stuff and it was freaking my buddy out last night, we were just laughing. To have that kind of life experience is remarkable. He’s an incredible composer as well. We were listening to this one tune last night, and he starts talking about the tune, and about the form, and starts explaining the concept behind the harmonic motion of the tune. Just brilliant, brilliant. He’s going to be 70 this upcoming October. I can’t say enough about him. I’ve built a real kinship with his music, and I can’t complain about anything, seeing what that cat has been through, it’s truly unbelievable. It’ll blow your mind. Anybody thinks that they have it bad, forget about it. So I don’t complain about stuff, except for reeds every now and then [laughs].
But the couple of guys I know that have overcome such adversity; this drummer friend of mine, his back is 66 percent off-center, and he is a bad, bad, bad dude. He played on my first two records, Tom Giampietro, incredible musician. You would look at this guy and would think there is no way he can play. He’s gone through about 11 operations on his head, one leg is shorter than the other, never mind being completely mainstream, but being a musician of that caliber—unbelievable. It’s inspiring on every level. He’s one of those guys who continues to challenge himself on every level. Whether it’s chess, he learned how to swim a couple of years ago, and said, “I’ve always wanted to learn how to swim.” So he throws himself literally and figuratively in the deep end. I don’t think I’m that brave, so those people are definitely inspiring to me.
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