Bill Frisell: S/D, comment upon brilliantly

wow, that version of "surfer girl"

i should listen to the new record. i guess at this point i shouldn't be surprised that he manages to work in a ton of interesting dissonance and melodic variation into everything.

the review above suggests that some of the covers on the new record are played pretty straight, which surprises me because frisell seems almost incapable of playing something completely straight

oh, i finally up and bought the new record, and i enjoy it. perhaps 1/3 of the tracks are indeed played a bit straight for most of their length. "turn turn turn" has an indestructibly beautiful melody but frisell doesn't do much with it. but there are some other tracks, notably his version of "telstar," that are incredible. and that beach boys cover! yum.

I really loved Bill Frisell back in the early 90s, but got a bit turned off by his music as he shifted away from weirder haunted melodies to more and more covers of pop songs and standards. It felt like he lost his way.

I'm happy to say Music Is is his strongest album in a very long time. It's one of his few solo releases and it contains immaculate and inventive guitar playing throughout. I'm really enjoying it and hope y'all check it out.

very enjoyable record indeed

Really shocked that this is only his second (or third) solo guitar album, you'd think he could just crank those out.

I guess there was a documentary I missed, too?

Power Tools Strange Meeting is a really nice lp.
Wish it was more available.
Also really wish there was something available from the post-Frisell line up with Pete Cosey on guitar.

OK, started the documentary, which is streaming on Amazon Prime, and it's really lovely and gentle, like Frisell himself. But there's an A+ story from Joey Baron in it. He and Frisell met on a session and instantly clicked, so Baron wanted to set up a gig, but no one would say yes to what they were up to. In a moment of desperation/inspiration he called the Jewish School for the Blind (or something like that), and they were interested, but wanted to hear what they sounded like. Frisell had released his first album on ECM, and Baron had these cassettes he recorded of himself practicing, so he brought both the LP and cassette and played them both at the same time, telling the person "this is sort of how it sounds." And they said yes. Baron said it was the best audience he ever played for, not just blind young people but a host of kids with various ailments, all paying perfect attention to what they were up to. There was a Q&A after, and Baron says a girl, who couldn't see, just shouted out "is the guitar player cute!?" What a great story.

It's really inspiring how many people simply love Frisell as a person. Just nothing but praise for what a wonderful man he is.

aw man, that's such a cool story

Joey Baron seems like the best, as well

Baron basically says he's benefitted as a person just from being friends with Frisell. He just brings a smile to everyone's face (even Zorn). Baron tells another story of a dude with a guitar showing up at the end of a gig, asking to sit in. Baron is complaining about it to Frisell later, and Frisell is all "that was Arto Lindsay, he's such an inspiration!" And Baron had never heard of him but learned his lesson not to dismiss anyone (esp. non-jazz folks) as unworthy, then took the deep dive into NYC's weird scene to catch up.

He's so sheepish and shy about his guitar collection in the movie (he literally has them stored all over the house - closets, etc.). He feels bad that he's accumulated so many, and more than once wishes he could just play them all at once. But he does go into why he may play one over another, for practical reasons (he does't want to mess up a friend's cool custom art) but also for creative reasons. For example, he may stick with one guitar for a couple of weeks, playing at home or taking it on trips, mostly because he has no roadie and traveling with more than one or maybe two guitars is a recipe for trouble. But he notes that sometimes he'll just get stuck and switch to a new guitar, and that will lead him in some new direction until he makes a breakthrough, and then when he goes back to the first guitar the breakthrough comes with him.

The doc goes into his effects a bit, and has a good interview with John Abercrombie, who notes that where lots of guitarists get lost in the fx, Frisell can get away with it because so much of his personality shines through the pedals, which only help bring his personality into clearer focus.

The doc also goes into his prolific, almost stream of consciousness writing approach. He'll just notate things simply, but then the chords start to evolve and get more complex in later drafts, until at the end he has something great that is still almost foreign to him when he plays it. He's also obviously immensely talented but so modest about it. There's a bit where he's trying to recall a Coltrane melody and can't quite get it, even though he sounds great and even though coming 90% close to remembering this piece is an insane achievement.

Ok, dialing this doc up rn

Power Tools - Strange Meeting is indeed a great album. I have several of these earlier, hard to find, CDs that I can put up on Dropbox, if anyone's interested, DM me.

Power Tools
News For Lulu ft. John Zorn and George Lewis
Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus

Weird Nightmare is my favorite of the Hal Wilner projects. Great musicians, Partch instruments, crazy Mingus autobiography, awesome original compositions to riff off of.

Here's a good live video. I saw this same trio in Somerville, MA around this time. Absolutely mindblowing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJrSJB3dVW4

For such an awesome guitar dude he played the oddest, ugliest guitars for a while.

Yeah, those Kleins were odd. He seems to have an endless supply of beautiful guitars these days.

Didn't he (or doesn't he) play an SG, too? Basically the total/tonal opposite of a Tele.

I think that was mostly back in the 80s before he switched to the Klein.

This old interview:

Another way that you’ve carved your own path is with your equipment. While the hollowbody is still the de facto jazz guitar, you’ve used an SG and even headless guitars at one point. Speaking of which, are you still using the Klein guitar?

No, I haven’t used that for a long time. I sent it back to get repaired years ago and it went away from me for quite a long time, so during that time I started getting back to mostly Fender stuff. I’ve been playing Telecasters a lot—different versions of it—and most recently I’ve also been playing Stratocasters.

Mexican- or American-made Fenders?

A bunch of them. I had a Mexican-made Thinline Tele. I changed all the parts on it and everything.

What swaps did you make?

Oh man, I’ve definitely gone off the deep end. Getting into Telecasters you start thinking, “What does this pickup sound like and what does that pickup sound like?” I have Lollar, Don Mare, Lindy Fralin, and Seymour Duncan pickups—the Antiquity model. I also use a Tom (TV) Jones Filter’Tron pickup in the neck position of a Nash Tele-style guitar. What’s kind of seductive is that it’s all still this basic Telecaster and I can get comfortable with the scale, size, and shape of the guitar to where it feels at home, but from one to another—putting certain pickups in certain guitars—there are amazing differences.

Any other guitars?

I also have a few Tele-style guitars that are put together or modified by J.W. Black. He also recently made me a Strat-style guitar that is very similar to my original ’63 Strat, which I played a lot, along with a Yanuziello guitar, on All We Are Saying. I also have a Rick Kelly Tele-style made out of pine from a piece of wood taken from Jim Jarmusch’s old loft on the Bowery. It’s got Lollar Charlie Christian pickups, and I used that one on a lot of things—Sign of Life, The Windmills of Your Mind. I Just got a Collings I35-LC, which is an incredible guitar.

A Halvorson/Frisell collab coming up on Tzadik:

Mary Halvorson: The Maid With The Flaxen Hair—A Tribute To Johnny Smith [#4024]
Mary Halvorson is one of the most acclaimed guitarists of her generation—a virtuoso improviser, distinctive composer, arranger and a deep student of the jazz guitar. Here she joins forces with living legend Bill Frisell to pay tribute to Johnny Smith, a guitarist who has been a huge influence on them both. Performing nine ballads associated with Smith and his classic composition Walk Don’t Run, this is an essential CD of soulful guitar duets by two of the most beloved and original guitarists in modern jazz. A beautiful CD of ballads like you have never heard them before!

count me in

Living legend Bill Frisell! I mean, he's 67.

thx for the recommendation on the documentary. enjoyed it immensely.

I might be missing something here, but Johnny Smith? if someone could disabuse my feeling he is a complete mediocrity - I'll check something out.

He wrote "Walk, Don't Run"!

just listened to some, i was being harsh!

but still he's no Kenny Burrell or Wes Montgomery, but few people are.

I'm enjoying his recent live album Epistrophy with Thomas Morgan on bass. Just very chill jazz workouts 9f various standards and covers. Frisell is at his best when he's free to explore.

love the new one HARMONY on blue note

ANOTHER new one?

man musicians sure release like crazy these days

Music IS holding up extremely well. I think it could be as good as anything else he's done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrjkSBdRNQI so pretty. someone upthread mentioned Pajo solo – this is right up in this alley

lovely

Currently obsessed with the Dave Holland and Elvin Jones trio record, after listening to this podcast: https://player.fm/series/tape-op-podcast/discussion-episode-34-rafiq-bhatia

The texture, the feel, everything. I don't mind the overdubs, along with the loop pedal stuff that was presumably done on the main takes (?) it's all very subtle and cool.

It looks like this didn't get very well-reviewed at the time, like this dumb AMG line: "Jones sounds at times utterly bored with his rhythm duties, desperate for a chance to stretch out." No way, he sounds totally tuned in. I find it constantly fascinating to hear him in this mode & dynamic.And don't forget about Elvin's Guitar Blues!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auXbk34S5Hc

Cool record, unspeakably bad album cover

The Frisell/Holland/Jones record I mean, not "Heavy Sounds", that's a great cover

Haha, very true, I didn't even notice the cover (thanks Spotify)

Watched this Paul Motian docu last week, which has some nice behind-the-scenes footage of his trio with Frisell in the Vanguard. Manfred Eicher is in there too. The Motian trio with Frisell and Lovano recorded quite a lot of records over the years. Frisell's playing is quite free compared to his own work, playing without a bassist, only the asynchronous drumming of Motian. I think the tribute albums to Monk and Bill Evans are some of the highlights.