Two Gigs with Marc Fendel
Saturday was another full day of music making, this time with longtime friend and musical compatriot, Marc Fendel. I first met Marc at the Port Townsend Jazz Workshop back in the early 90s when we were still in high school, and since his move to Seattle after graduating from Berklee, he's been on the scene with such bands as Bebop and Destruction, Big Bang Band, and his newest solo project, Swampdweller.
Marc had called me a few weeks ago to play a benefit gig for Books to Prisoners, a non-profit organization based in Seattle that gets books and other reading materials to prisoners across the country. While we were ably supported by Eric Bell on drums and Jon Batisti on guitar, we were without our bassplayer Lamar Lofton the whole first set, which certainly made things a bit tough, but kept a nice open sound for the event. Lamar made it for the second set, but we lost Jon (who had to split to another gig). We wrapped up the second set, and Fendel and I headed directly to Jack Straw Studios for the second-half of our double-header.
Doug Haire has been running the Sonarchy radio program for years, and it's always a pleasure to work with him. He's easy going, super-experienced, and generally seems at home among musicians, especially when it's music that fits his own tastes. Instead of doing the show live like it used to be, we just played for a solid hour and taped it direct -- it still feels like we played a full, straight set, and even though it isn't broadcast live, there are no edits or fixes or second takes. This is the way to record music!
Fendel's Swampdweller (at least for this session) is: Marc Fendel, Jay Roulston, Ari Zucker, Joe Doria, Andy Sells, Farko Dosimov, and Mune Yamakawa on turntables. I basically told Fendel after hearing the first CD that I wanted to be on the new one - period! And what a fun session it was -- a great mix of groove, jazz, turntablism, and more mixed with original compositions by Fendel and Zucker. Be sure to look out for this program on Sonarchy -- it should also be available as a podcast as some point in time.