AMP Trio's M(Y)our World, Dallas area Album of the Year

Matt Young, Perrin Grace, Tahira Clayton, Addison Frei.

AMP Trio’s M(Y)our World (2015) is our Dallas area Album of the Year. How fitting! One of the songs is called Dallas.

We excluded all the mega-stars (the Erykah Badus, the Leon Bridges, the Kirk Franklins, the Shaun Martins) from consideration for this honor. Of all the other 2015 releases in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, M(Y)our World is the most creative.

AMP Trio opens with Riding Periphery, composed by drummer Matt Young. It is a bit of straight-ahead jazz which gives the feel of expansiveness and wide-open possibilities.

Stand by You comes in on a bouncy piano by the nifty-fingered Addison Frei and some funky basslines by Perrin Grace. The pleasant surprise here: AMP Trio introduces the gorgeous voice of Tahira Clayton which elevates the group to yet another level.

The title track M(Y)our World, the centerpiece, is a kaleidoscope of sound. It has some electronica and other interesting sounds.

The song Circa continues with the experimentation in sound. It is the expansion of the jazz trio, the breaking of boundaries, the freedom of the artist.

Boundless presents the beautiful voice of Tahira Clayton once again. She demands and commands your attention; her phrasing, her articulation, backed nicely by the trio. In between the breaks of Tahira Clayton’s singing, pianist Addison Frei cuts loose, lets it go, and shows everyone what he’s got. And on her return, Tahira Clayton is prepared to match his virtuoso and holds her ground to bring the song to an end.

This new work by AMP Trio, the follow-up to their first release Flow (2013), is a celebration of sound and demonstrates that this group is hitting its stride and ready to burst out on the scene.

Kamasi Washington, The Epic, Album of the Year

Kamasi Washington and band in Los Angeles. Photo: K. Ho

The most ambitious album of the year is Kamasi Washington’s The Epic (Brainfeeder, 2015); and that makes it our Album of the Year. Kamasi Washington brought together some friends he has known all his life. It is amazing that a group of friends and acquaintances all grow up to be world-class musicians.

The result is a cornucopia of sound that recall the styles of classic jazz, rhythm and blues and orchestral music.

This three-disc album starts off with Change of the Guard which opens with a 32-piece orchestra led by piano, rolling drums and a 10-piece choir. Cameron Graves comes on with a piano solo and Igmar Thomas follows on trumpet. Kamasi Washington moves in with a bebop solo on tenor saxophone which ends in frenetic screams. Then in come the drums which add to the turbulence, strife and turmoil. Some of the songs are long and Change of the Guard, over 12 minutes long, continues into a slow elegy, all the time the choir in background like a Gregorian chant.

Askim opens with the bass of Kamasi Washington’s childhood friend Thundercat and has Leon Mobley on percussions; a slow, jazzy tune with moments of patience.

Final thoughts is a danceable, jooky tune with great horn melody and a grating, scratchy tenor sax solo and some rollicking drums. It unfolds and unfolds like a river emptying waterfalls on several levels; a fierce, frenetic pace.

Rhythm Changes is destined to be a favorite of many with a rollicking piano, island drums and elegant vocals by Patrice Quinn. The choir encourages her and carries her along to a trumpet solo which plays her voice and onto a tenor sax solo with articulate phrasing.

Patrice Quinn sings, ‘Our minds, our bodies, our feelings, they change, they alter, they leave us. Somehow, no matter what happens, I’m here.’

An outstanding album; Kamasi Washington and crew deserve all the love and recognition they are getting for this work.

Shaun Martin's players: Seven Summers Musicians

Robert Glasper & Bobby Sparks. (Photo: Jeremy Tudor Price)

Shaun Martin recently completed a tour of southern U.S. cities in support of his album Seven Summers (Ropeadope, 2015). We continue with our look at some of the players on the album.

Bobby Sparks

Bobby Sparks grew up in Corsicana about 50 miles south of Dallas. He began playing piano at the age of three. He moved to the Dallas area where he met Kirk Franklin. The two worked together for many years with Sparks playing as well as serving as musical director. He is on numerous movie and TV soundtracks; worked with many of the greats like Prince and Herbie Hancock; and even played at the White House.

Bobby Sparks plays organ on the song One Big Party on the Seven Summers album.

Jamil Byrom

Jamil Byrom, a graduate of Alcorn State University, won the prestigious Guitar Center Drum-off. He has played with Roy Hargrove, Kirk Franklin and Erykah Badu.

He was inspired by drummers like Dennis Chambers, Vinnie Calaiuta and Steve Jordan.

Around town in Dallas, he heads his own band called the Grown Folks and he also plays with Andrew Junior Boy Jones Blues Band.

On Seven Summers, Jamil Byrom plays drums on One Big Party, Have Your Chance at Love, Long Gone, and The Torrent.

Nate Werth

A native of Dyer, Indiana, Nate Worth started playing drums at the age of seven. He studied orchestral percussions at the University of North Texas where he worked under instructors like Poovalur Sriji, Jose Aponte, Gideon Alorwoyie, Paul Rennick, Christopher Deane and Mark Ford.

 

He plays percussions for Snarky Puppy. Nate Werth and Snarky Puppy bandmate, Robert ‘Sput’ Searight recently formed a new band Ghost-Note and put out an album Fortified (RSVP Records, 2015).

Nate Werth plays percussions on Seven Summers' Long Gone.

 

Quamon Fowler

Quamon Fowler, from Fort Worth, attended Weatherford College under the guidance of Tom Burchill. He transferred to Southern University in Louisiana to work with jazz clarinetist Alvin Batiste. Batiste encouraged him to put out his first CD called Introducing Quamon Fowler.

He went on to earn his Master’s Degree in Music Performance at Texas Tech. He plays the tenor sax and the EWI. He has won the Herb Albert Young Composer Award twice. Some of his favorite players are Sonny Rollins, Johnny Griffith, Cannonball Adderley and Branford Marsalis.

Quamon Fowler plays tenor sax on Seven Summers' One Big Party.

Jim Suhler and the Monkey Beat at The Kessler

Jim Suhler and the Monkey Beat.

Jim Suhler and the Monkey Beat

The Kessler

Dallas, TX

November 28, 2015

They say you can’t go back home again, but Jim Suhler returned home Saturday night. He returned to The Kessler just a few blocks from his parents’ old home on Clinton in Oak Cliff; his dad collected tickets at the door when  The Kessler was a movie theater.

Jim Suhler and the Monkey Beat decided The Kessler would be a great venue to do a show and record a live blues-rock album.

Suhler, who also plays guitar for George Thorogood and the Destroyers, played cuts from his Panther Burn album (Underworld Records, 2014), Tijuana Bible (Underworld, 2009) and Bad Juju (Lucky Seven Records, 2001); as well as some covers like Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced.

Thrilling fans with his slide guitar and vocals, Suhler got help from keyboard player Shawn Phares, bass Chris Alexander, drums Beau Chadwell and extra keys and accordion from Tim Alexander.

Earlier in the night, guitar-singer Charley Crockett opened up accompanied by trumpet player Charles Mills Jr. He played songs from his Stolen Jewel album (2015) as well as an upcoming album In the Night.

Apparently, both acts are fans of late Houston bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins. Charley Crockett joked that he uses the Lightnin’ Hopkins style of guitar tuning.

And Jim Suhler sang a song in honor of Lightnin’: Po’ Lightin’ dead and gone, left me here to sing this song.

Ladies and Gentlemen...Nigel Hall (Feel Music, 2015)

Nigel Hall (Photo: visitphilly.com)

Nigel Hall has come out with an album, long-in-the-making Ladies and Gentlemen…Nigel Hall (Feel Music, 2015). He did it in collaboration with famed producer Eric Krasno who has worked with a diverse group of people like Norah Jones, Justin Timberlake, and Aaron Neville.

When Krasno first contacted him, Nigel Hall -- originally from Washington, D.C. -- was making a name for himself as a keyboard player and vocalist in the northeast in places like Boston and Maine. Nigel Hall knew the reputation of Krasno so he didn’t believe it was Krasno on the phone and thought it was a friend playing a trick on him.

But it was Krasno; and Krasno flew Nigel into New York for the first time he ever flew on a plane. They went straight from the airport to the studio and pulled an all-nighter. Over the next few years Nigel Hall would work with groups like Lettuce and Warren Haynes and on breaks he would reunite with Krasno and continue to work on music. They brought in people like Questlove (drummer of The Roots), Adam Deitch (drummer of Lettuce), Ivan Neville (son of Aaron Neville and leader of Dumpstaphunk), Ryan Zoidis (Nigel Hall’s best friend and saxophonist of Lettuce), Charlie Hunter, James Carey and Maurice 'Mobetta' Brown.

The album was crafted and sat in the vault for years; Krasno telling Nigel Hall to be patient and wait for the right time. Now is the right time. The result is a soulful album with an old-school feel.

The album opens with Gimme a Sign, a head-bopper listeners can sing along to, with some harmonizing background vocals. Nigel Hall is a student of music and his love for Motown comes out in Gimme a Sign as it does later in Never Gonna Let You Go, and I Just Want to Love You.

I Just Want to Love You, a duet with Nigel Hall’s close friend and collaborator Alecia Chakour is actually a re-make of a Stanley Clarke-George Duke tune but it has the feel of The Temptations’ The Girl’s All Right with Me.

There are a few old-school R&B numbers that bring the feeling of a smoky nightclub in Mississippi; songs like Lay Away, Latimore’s classic Let’s Straighten it Out, and Call on Me.