New series are very much still a thing

It's always nice to talk about new series. The pie's still growing, and new slices keep coming online as part of this now almost three-year wave of momentum:

1

I was grateful to play in the debut of a new series at The Hargrove artist space on Sunday. Madeleine Elkins presented her trio with Kevin Romain and I following Cole Schmidt and Alvaro Rojas' twin-guitar compositional duo. Kevin and Cole are the curators of this biweekly series called Lost Dog Sundays. Our draw was decent, especially considering it was walk-up only and an unknown thing. Madeleine's trio music is like an experimental, instrumental rock with threads of folk, free improv, and jazz. These DIY rooms are a better fit for that mix than most other places. Plus, doesn't it look cool and moody in the photo at the top?

The next Lost Dog Sunday has more of a free-jazz leaning and features a quartet of Julia Farry, Saba Amrei, Róisín Adams (whom I also feature in item 5 today down below), and Bella Beinert alongside the chordless trio of Romain, Dominic Conway, and Nikko Whitworth. Admissions are at the door only once again. Here's the poster (I'm not affiliated with this edition):

2

I went down to Apollo's last night (Thursday) and heard the trio of Jason de Couto on organ keyboard, Chris Fraser on guitar, and Buff Allen on drums. They opened with a downtempo take on this tune "Mellow Mood" which Chris said he used to hear at the Cellar's B3 nights. I too can recall Chris Gestrin playing it somewhere. But last night, Chris Fraser pulled way more from the Peter Bernstein bag than the Wes one.

It's awesome to have a musician of Allen's pedigree coming all the way down to Apollo's, like many did at the Tangent before. Last night was my first time back to the venue after my now-slightly-infamous pan. So how was it this time?

The current state of Apollo's is much closer now to the District Bar, Provence, or another off-the-beaten-path casual restaurant gig; except instead of District playing Monday Night Football on a couple screens, you have an entire drumset hoisted atop the bar as decor, a hi-hat standing next to the doorway by the washrooms, a cherry Strat straddling the former beer list wall. At its worst, it continues to come across as the owner/manager's plaything. He and his entourage walk around and seem to make most of the noise in the empty house. It's a weird vibe still, yes, but a relatively mundane fate. The servers still choose to speak with you in moments of quiet between tunes so often, and at so loud a volume, that it feels intentional; but I didn't get the impression anymore that "the staff don't care about the music" as I wrote in October, at least I hope not.

Anyway, the world has plenty of levity and good in it, as Chris, Jason, Carson Tworow, and I spent most of the set break huddled around Allen, laughing while he barreled through Ross Taggart stories. Any venue can still provide that on the right night.

3

Back to discussing new series – a new, small one has popped up in North Vancouver every Saturday evening this month at a restaurant called Coastal Cravings on the north side of Victoria Park (Keith Road and Lonsdale). The series is on the February gig list and in the weekend gigs section of this email. Its booker is Rachel Guerzo; it began with a jam oriented toward CapU students last Friday, featuring Guerzo as the host. I look forward to meeting her when I can attend for the first time and check it out. The first one I'll make is probably our gig list editor Kayla Price's date on February 22nd. She's also singing tonight in my neck of the woods, though I'll miss it.

4

Guerzo is a CapU student herself, as is bassist Dave Marfleet. I want to take a moment to recognize how great it is to have CapU cohort-mates of all ages. (I'll do some CYA and say I'm talking just about Marfleet, because I don't really know Guerzo's age!) Just like my former band Early Spirit – which I often describe as being more fun because it was two 22-year-olds, a 30-year-old, and a 60-year-old than if it was four 22-year-olds – CapU's commonplace inclusion of different generations and walks of life makes the program a lot richer in certain ways than hotbeds of youth like Berklee, which have their place. I loved it in the early 2010s; some of you who are a bit older than me, but were there with me then, are reading right now. Thank you for being yourselves and showing me that being yourself is the thing to do.

5

The most poignant moment from Zameen Art House last Friday was Róisín Adams dedicating a piece to the late Paul Plimley as Clyde Reed looked on from the front of the house, which is intimate and brings you face-to-face with the artist. Adams, joined by Matthew Ariaratnam on guitar and Alex Mah on vocals and effects, debuted several new compositions with improvisational natures that resist firm documentation – further to the left than her Jazz at the Bolt 2024 set, which was more like a piano trio recital. Mah was little-known to many of us there, but he has been a comrade of these two and their Millennial free associates for a handful of years, playing cello among other instruments. Ariaratnam had a sensitive outing. Before the set, he handed me a limited-edition copy of his own, louder improv duo CD, Novel Echopath. That album features him with drummer Adrian Avendaño and will get a feature soon in our free weekly.

Adams' show was well-attended, as will be the Infidels show there tonight featuring John Korsrud and Tony Wilson's co-led group. I'll be manning the door.

6

At Frankie's last Thursday, Sean Fyfe came from London, UK to visit his home province and play the music of Cedar Walton with Jodi Proznick and John Lee. He's a shy person but a burning player with a passion for everything in the Walton extended universe. You can learn all about Fyfe in my interview produced for Cellar here. Meeting and hearing him in-person was a pleasure.

7

Before the Quincy Jones feature on Saturday Night Jazz with Laila Biali last weekend, it was nice to hear tracks from David Lavoie, a friend who came to Vancouver for a bit and then went back to Calgary. I really should send my Queen's Park tracks into the CBC library and see if any of them earn that random spin a couple times a year for several years. Lavoie's album called Juno doesn't get a lot of attention. How often does the 2020s jazz press casually bust out reviews that are this negative?

On that note, there's a different early-2020 album by a friend that I'll write about retrospectively soon.

8

On Tim Reinert's Infidels Jazz Show, I enjoyed some John Gross on a cut from Strange Feeling by him, Dave Frishberg, and Charlie Doggett. (The review at that link is by one Ken Dryden. Go figure.) It's fun to hear Frishberg play with fellow Portland musicians after I've only been introduced to him as a songwriter via podcasts and shows from Angela Verbrugge, Darlene Cooper and Bill Sample, and Carman J. Price.

9

I feel like I sort of got to hear the Stéphane Wrembel show at the Kay Meek last Friday, even though I didn't, because of how heavily Nou Dadoun featured it on A Trane the past two weeks. Thanks!

10

I went back into the radio booth and made episode 2 of Will's Mood, this time going into the music that inspired my teens, which definitely doesn't mean the music that was popular between 2009 and 2015. There's an even longer list of songs I couldn't program into this one than there was on episode 1 (my twenties), so I'd like to do a grab bag segment/episode of what didn't make it.

11

Madeleine, Kevin and I built further on the show that I mentioned in the first item: on Wednesday we entered Afterlife Studios together for one day to record our set of music. The final product is still to come of course, but I thoroughly enjoyed the day.

The vibe that Madeleine set as a leader (and that engineer John Raham facilitated) was fun for me personally as well as wholly appropriate for the music. No headphones, no click track, no problem. I'll also pass along this episode of the long-running podcast Song Exploder featuring Adrianne Lenker that she recommended to me. No further context needed, except we certainly didn't mirror Lenker's interesting studio process!